Before you label your site, you probably have several questions which we've tried to answer below:

•   Introduction
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•   Why bother to label?
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•   The ICRA questionnaire
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•   Adding the label to your site and what happens next
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•   Protecting Kids with Digimarc"
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•   Further help
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•   Glossary
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Introduction

ICRA's dual aims are to:

• protect children from potentially harmful material; and,
• to protect free speech on the internet.

In short, ICRA is about choice not censorship.

As a web author, we invite you to use our system to generate a label which you can then apply to your site. The system is designed to be objective: ICRA makes no value judgements at all about any site.

Users - principally parents of young children - then apply their own judgement in deciding which sites should and should not be available in their homes or workplaces. This is done by means of the filtering software such as ICRAfilter the Content Advisor function in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, first included in version 3.0 (released in February 1996). ICRA continues to work with software companies, ISPs and other industry members around the world to incorporate ICRA-based filtering into a variety of products.

So what do I have to do?
Labelling your site involves filling in a questionnaire and submitting it to ICRA. The form generates a label which you add to your web site. This is not visible to users but is read by the filter if this feature has been enabled. If you so choose, you may then add one of a choice of ICRA logo buttons or a text link to show that you have labelled your site.

Is it difficult?
No. Absolutely not. If you can copy and paste in a word processor, you can add a label to your site. If you can't copy and paste - we'll even show you how to do that as well!

For web professionals, we are able to offer advice on how to configure your servers to include ICRA labels in HTTP headers. This is the efficient, elegant way of labelling web content. Please click here.

How much does it cost?
It's free!

Why bother to label?

There are a number of compelling reasons why you should consider labelling your site with ICRA. Let's take four examples:

1. If you run a commercial site or any other site with little or no objectionable material you don't want your site to be blocked "by default." When a parent sets up the filter for their child, they will be offered an option to allow or disallow access to "sites that have no rating" (i.e. unlabelled sites). As the ICRA labelling system gathers momentum, more and more parents are likely to choose "disallow".
2. If you run a site designed specifically for children, labelling your site will make a positive, machine-readable statement that the site is "childsafe."
3. If you run an "adults only" site, an ICRA label is a simple step you can take to help to avoid access by children. As well as protecting children, it sends a clear signal to governments that the World Wide Web is willing and able to self-regulate, rather than have the heavy hand of legislation decide what is or is not acceptable.
4. All other things being equal, a site carrying an ICRA label is more likely to be perceived as trustworthy than one which is not.

The ICRA Questionnaire

Below is the list of "descriptors" in the ICRA questionnaire. You'll be asked to indicate (by check box) whether each one is present on your site. The descriptors fall into natural groups, some of which include "context modifiers." Further explanation is given in Definitions. The questionnaire and help is also available in these additional languages:

• Erections or female genitals in detail
• Male genitals
• Female genitals
• Female breasts
• Bare buttocks
• Explicit sexual acts
• Obscured or implied sexual acts
• Visible sexual touching
• Passionate kissing
• None of the above

Context - this material ... [Definitions]

• appears in a context intended to be artistic and is suitable for young children
• appears in a context intended to be educational and is suitable for young children
• appears in a context intended to be medical and is suitable for young children

• Sexual violence / rape
• Blood and gore, human beings
• Blood and gore, animals
• Blood and gore, fantasy characters (including animation)
• Killing of human beings
• Killing of animals
• Killing of fantasy characters (including animation)
• Deliberate injury to human beings
• Deliberate injury to animals
• Deliberate injury to fantasy characters (including animations)
• Deliberate damage to objects
• None of the above

• appears in a context intended to be artistic and is suitable for young children
• appears in a context intended to be educational and is suitable for young children
• appears in a context intended to be medical and is suitable for young children
• only appears in a sports related context

• Explicit sexual language
• Crude words or profanity
• Mild expletives
• None of the above

• Promotion of tobacco use
• Promotion of alcohol use
• Promotion of drug use
• Gambling
• Promotion of weapon use
• Promotion of discrimination or harm against people
• Material that might be perceived as setting a bad example for young children
• Material that might disturb young children
• None of the above

• Chat
• Moderated chat suitable for children and teens
• Neither of the above

Adding the label to your site and what happens next

There are two elements to an ICRA label:

• the actual piece of code that carries the information about your site (the label); and,
• either: one of a choice of "logo buttons" or a "Labelled with ICRA" text link you can display on your site if you so choose.

  (The glossary includes definitions for all the key terms used here).

Full details of how to physically add the two elements to your site are given in FAQ 3.1 on the support page. As well as basic instructions, a complete "walk-through" is provided along with plenty of extra information to cover a range of situations. There's a separate set of instructions for professional webmasters responsible for large complex sites.

About a week after you rate your site (or a week after a date you give as the predicted publication date) the ICRA system will check whether the label is in place. If so, all well and good. If not, we'll contact you and see whether you need any further help. Ultimately however, sites not carrying the label more than 30 days after its issue will be deleted from the database.

Displaying an ICRA logo button or "Labelled with ICRA" text link without carrying the label is a breach of our terms and conditions, full details of which are available here.

ICRA makes both automated and manual checks on sites to verify that labels are in place and that they are applied appropriately.

Further help

The support pages include detailed answers to all our most frequently asked questions. These cover everything from the basic steps needed to add an ICRA label through to more detailed answers for web authors responsible for large sites or whole networks of sites. In the event that the FAQs don't have your answer, an e-mail address is provided.

The glossary below may also help to clear up some confusion!

Glossary of terms used on this site

The IT industry has given us more new words than most, so here's a guide to what we mean by some of the key words and phrases used on this site.

• Content: The words, pictures, movies and sounds on your web site.
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• HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language, the basic computer language used to encode all web pages for display in browsers. There are other languages, such as JavaScript and Macromedia Flash, but all web pages have at least some HTML.
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• ICRA Label: This is the general term we use to describe the meta tag and the logo button or Labelled with ICRA text link (if included). Although "Meta Tag" is perhaps more accurate in technical terms, by adding a tag to your site you are labelling it as having xyz content. So we call it a label!
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• Logo button: Once you have rated your site, you have the option of adding an ICRA logo to your site. It's a logo because... it carries the ICRA logo. It's a button because we ask you to link it back to this site. Since we can't decide whether to call it a logo or a button... we call it a logo button!
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• Meta Tag: As well as the actual content of your web site, HTML allows you to send additional information to the user's browser which the user won't see. This includes things like the character set used on the site and keywords which some search engines will pick up on when indexing your site. An ICRA label is an example of a Meta Tag.
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• Rating your site: The process of filling in the ICRA questionnaire, identifying which elements (if any) in the questionnaire you should check as being present on your site. NB This action is carried out by you not ICRA. The Internet Content Rating Association does not rate internet content!
  
  ICRA does maintain a database of all sites rated with us, which includes personal information such as e-mail addresses. This Private data is NEVER disclosed or sold and is used purely to verify the authenticity of anyone making an enquiry about a particular site. See our Privacy Policy for details
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• Users: people who use (surf) the internet