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.

RSAC's 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 agency's 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 RSAC's 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.

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 RSAC's 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 country's 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