Testimony Regarding the Protection of Children 
             From Computer Pornography Act of 1995
 
                  Submitted by Stephen Balkam

                      Executive Director
              Recreational Software Advisory Council

                Hearing of the Judiciary Committee

                         U.S. Senate
                       Washington, D.C.
                        July 24, 1995


Introduction

My name is Stephen Balkam and I am the Executive Director of the 
Recreational Software Advisory Council. Thank you for the opportunity to 
give testimony to this Committee on what is an increasingly important 
issue as the span and breadth of the Internet continues to grow. I would 
like to request, Chairman, that the record be left open so that I and 
others may supplement my testimony after the hearing . 

The RSAC is an independent, not for profit organization established in 
September 1994 with the help of the Software Publishers Association and 
five other trade associations. The rating of computer software is too 
important an issue to be left to a trade association, so our independent 
constitutional status and our Board of Directors (made up of a majority 
of those from outside the industry) is free from any undue outside or 
commercial influence.

RSACs very existence is a direct result of the legislative initiative 
taken by Senators Lieberman and Kohl last year that raised the issue of 
excessive violence in video and computer games. During Senate hearings 
last year, the case was made for the establishment of an industry 
sponsored ratings board for recreational software in order to give 
parents and consumers accurate information regarding the games and 
educational software they were buying for their children and for 
themselves. The Computer Games Working Group, a coalition of six trade 
associations, parents, pediatricians and academics, enlisted the help of 
Dr. Donald Roberts, Chairman of the Communications Department at 
Stanford University to develop the RSAC rating system. 


RSAC and the Internet

There are many ways in which the RSAC rating system could be used to 
empower parents and consumers with the information they need to make 
choices about the material they and their children see on their computer 
screen. The output of the Internet is vast and would far outstrip any 
one agencys ability to fully review everything on it before it was 
posted on a home page or downloaded onto a hard drive. Through the RSAC 
system, however, many hundreds if not thousands of web sites and home 
pages could be rated and regulated. And, together with the emerging 
technology, such as what SurfWatch has developed, parents could block 
all Internet sites that were not already rated. And of those, they could 
block out any site with a high violence or sexual content or vulgarity 
content. 

Content labeling is essential for the new screening technologies being 
developed for the Internet and television. The software needs code to 
read to enable it to do more than just simply block out entire sites. 
RSAC anticipated this eventuality when we devised display standards for 
the RSAC labels to be used in digital format at the beginning of a piece 
of software.

The screening technology used together with the RSAC rating system would 
not be censorship by government or by an outside agency. It would simply 
be a mechanism for choice. If increasing numbers of parents and 
guardians exercised their choices, then market forces alone would 
encourage web site providers to rate their material and in some cases, 
reduce or withdraw what would be seen to be highly sexual or violent in 
nature.

The RSAC content labeling system is most appropriate for static sites 
such as home pages, documents, games, picture galleries and libraries. 
It would not be able to deal with interactive chat groups or bulletin 
boards as the nature of such sites is highly fluid and instantaneous. In 
this case, however, the new screening software packages, such as 
SurfWatch, could simply deny access to these chat groups. 

Unique Rating System

In the early days of RSACs creation, the founder members decided not to 
develop an age-based rating system. The Working Party frankly 
acknowledged that not all families are the same and instead, looked to 
devise a system which would give parents the information they needed to 
choose the software they thought was appropriate for their children. The 
FDA food labeling system was used as a model, as it provides objective 
and quantifiable measures of various ingredients within a product 
without making a judgment as to who should or should not purchase it. 
The new system would be a content-labeling system which would be as 
objective as possible, open and accessible to the public, non-judgmental 
and regularly reviewed and developed. A methodology was created which 
included an integral algorithm that branches the applicant to a series 
of questions to determine the levels of violence, nudity/sex and 
vulgarity. 

Because of the nature of recreational software, full prior review of 
every title was not a feasible option. Whereas a movie takes two hours 
to view, interactive software can take upwards of one or two hundred 
hours of playing and the viewer may still not have opened all the doors 
or reached every level. In addition, there are an estimated 2,000 new 
titles published each year which would make full prior review virtually 
impossible unless a vast army of reviewers were employed, making the 
system extremely expensive and unwieldy. It was essential that the 
rating system include a self-disclosure questionnaire as the basis for 
reaching the rating levels and descriptors in each category together 
with tough sanctions for any willful misrepresentation by a software 
publisher. 

The three categories of the RSAC rating system are: Violence; 
Nudity/Sex; and Language. Within these categories are four levels: 0-4. 
The higher the level, the greater the objectionable content to be found 
in the software product. In addition, there are brief descriptors that 
give further information about the title, such as: Blood and gore or 
Explicit sexual activity. If a title has no objectionable content it 
receives an All rating, i.e., Suitable for All Audiences. These labels 
are then placed on the front of the boxes or on the opening screen of 
the software. Examples of these rating labels can be seen below:

Checks and balances

It was imperative that the RSAC system had a strongly regulated series 
of controls to ensure that software publishers and other media providers 
were not able to cheat the system. The RSAC application includes a three 
page legal contract that is signed by the producer stating that he or 
she has fully disclosed all the potentially objectionable material 
within the product. The software publisher also agrees to adhere to the 
RSAC regulations regarding the display and use of the trademarked icons 
and logos. Further, the contract lays out stiff penalties for non 
conformance, including fines of up to $10,000, removal of product from 
retail outlets and enforced re-rating. In addition, RSAC regularly 
audits a percentage of all products that have been rated by the RSAC 
system. These spot checks ensure that a software publisher is fully 
aware that their products are closely monitored and reviewed.

Statistics

Since RSACs incorporation in September of last year, over 200 software 
titles have been rated with nearly 80 software companies. It is 
anticipated that some 500 titles will have been rated by the Christmas 
season. The current cost to rate a product with RSAC is $350 with a 
sliding scale for smaller companies who may only pay $25 per title 
depending on their size. Over 500 RSAC Self-Disclosure Questionnaires 
have been distributed to software publishers, the media, schools and 
individual consumers. Over one million RSAC educational postcards are 
being distributed by Wal*Mart and through software companies in their 
software packaging.

Retailers

A key part in making the RSAC system effective is the active involvement 
of major retailers in the scheme. Wal*Mart, the countrys leading 
retailer has announced that they will no longer accept titles unless 
they have been rated. Toys R Us has made a similar statement. Sears and 
Target strongly encourage software publishers to rate their products, 
though they have not, to date, set a time limit after which they will no 
longer accept unrated products. Senator Lieberman has taken a strong 
stance on this issue and together with Senator Kohl, continues to try to 
persuade more retailers to take the Wal*Mart line.
It is our hope that many more of the top retailers in the country will 
announce their requirement of ratings on recreational software before 
the Christmas shopping season.

Ratings and other media

Considerable research has shown that TV violence and images of explicit 
sex have a profound effect on children. In the recent Telecommunications 
Bill debate, Senator Kent Conrad successfully amended the Bill with a 
call to television manufacturers to install Choice Chips inside all 
television sets and for the networks to develop a ratings system to 
empower parents to make real choices about the programs that they and 
their children watch. On the floor of the Senate and in subsequent press 
conferences, Senator Conrad commended the RSAC system as an excellent 
example of what could be achieved in a short period of time. Senator 
Conrad was praised for his steadfast work on a rating system for 
television by both the President and Vice President at the recent 
Families and the Media conference in Nashville. At that conference, 
RSAC offered to work with the Coalition that Senator Conrad has 
developed over the past two years, to help the television networks to 
set up a system by July 1996. 

Conclusion

The Recreational Software Advisory Council is committed to providing 
parents and consumers accurate information about the recreational 
software and other media they purchase for themselves and their 
children. RSAC is opposed to censorship and respects the right of free 
speech and expression.

While we have a number of reservations about the Act as drafted, we 
would like to invite any organization interested in the RSAC system to 
work together with us to find a practical solution to the necessary 
protection of children from objectionable material on the Internet and 
in other media.

Testimony Summary Sheet

1) RSAC is an independent, non for profit organization which provides, 
promotes and administers a content labeling system for recreational 
software and other media.

2) The RSAC system could be adapted to rate Internet home pages, 
individual documents, on-line games, pictures and video. A content 
labeling system is essential for the new screening technologies to work 
effectively. SurfWatch, which has already developed software to block 
certain parts of the Internet, will be able to read the RSAC rating 
labels and provide parents with a way to block objectionable material 
being seen by their children.

3) The ratings for Violence, Nudity/Sex and Language are determined by 
the Self-Disclosure Questionnaire developed by Dr. Donald Roberts, 
Chairman of the Communications Department of Stanford University. 

4) Each rating category has four levels, 0 - 4, which indicate the level 
of objectionable material in the product. In addition, detailed 
descriptors give the parent or consumer further information about the 
software, e.g., Blood and gore; Explicit sexual activity. 

5) RSAC has rated over 200 titles with 80 companies including LucasArts, 
Broderbund, Interplay and id Software, maker of Doom. The cost ranges 
from $25 to $350 per title depending on the gross revenue of the 
company.

6) A series of checks and balances are used to ensure full compliance 
with the RSAC requirements including spot checks, stiff penalties for 
non- disclosure and enforced re-rating of products. 

7) Senator Kent Conrad commended the RSAC system to the Senate last 
month in his successful amendment to the Telecommunications Bill. It 
calls upon the TV networks to develop a similar rating system for 
television linked to Choice Chips .

8) RSAC is committed to providing parents with accurate information 
about the software and other media they and their children view. We are 
opposed to censorship and we respect the right of free speech and 
expression. RSAC invites any interested party to develop a practical 
solution to the problem of protecting children from pornography on the 
Internet.