AOL, MSN and Yahoo! judge smutty content

It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it...

The three giants of the internet AOL, MSN and Yahoo! have said they will voluntarily rate the content on their sites. The content providers will be using a voluntary system developed by the US-based Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) to categorise content based on sex, violence, drugs and gambling. Parents will be able to block certain pages through their browsers, which will detect the unsuitable pages. Content Advisor is a function built into Explorer that will be able to recognise many of the rating labels on the web pages. The move can be likened to the film industry's decision to introduce a rating system, which it did to avoid legislative intervention. An ICRA official, quoted in the Washington Post said by tomorrow MSN will have labeled all its sites with Yahoo! and AOL following close behind.