Disclaimer: I don’t do anything like this in my job any more.

I know a lot about censorship and content rating systems. I spent several years working as a software product manager for the “parental controls” products of major Internet service providers, another year cracking the “you must make this more accurate” whip, reviewing customer complaints about sites that were blocked or allowed, and training content raters on an outsourced team that we hired to clean up our 16 million already-rated site database.

Before that, I spent 4 years as a First Amendment lobbyist, mostly fighting federally mandated Internet filtering in schools and libraries, and also fighting laws that would have required web sites to censor themselves or block access to themselves.

During that time, I was also part of the team that launched the web site GetNetWise, which gave parents safety tips and a comprehensive database of parental controls Internet access and content management tools. I was specifically responsible for making sure that database was robust when we launched.

While I believe that the government has no business deciding who can see what kind of content, I think that adults who want to avoid seeing material they find offensive, and who want to limit what their children may be exposed to, have the right to make their own decisions about that. And that helping them find tools that more-or-less reflect their values is a good thing.

Back in the day, say 1997-2000, everyone and their brother was launching web filtering software. You could get one where the filtering choices were made on an Orthodox Jewish basis, an Evangelical Christian basis, a “we’ll only block porn and parents can add others or remove sites from the list themselves” basis, and countless others that didn’t really make it so clear where they were coming from.

All this is a prelude to say, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to content rating systems.

The smackdown here is MPAA vs the ESRB. The movie rating people vs the Entertainment Software Rating Board — the video game rating people. In the United States. Readers abroad, you’re on your own, I don’t know anything about your rating systems.

Last weekend, Jill and I watched the amazing documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” by Kirby Dick. It’s an expose on just how secretive, biased, and unnaccountable the movie rating system is.

Honestly, even I was shocked. I always figured that they had some kind of proprietary and secret checklist of reasonably objective criteria. I imagined it included things like X showings of the following body parts = R, or X curse words = PG-13, 2X curse words = R, etc.

No. Or at least, not at the time. Since that movie was released, the MPAA has made announced some improvements to their system, but their web site doesn’t reflect any noticable change.

Here are some of the troubling things that the film exposed about the MPAA rating system:

• Sexual content was treated differently if it involved same-sex couples than opposite-sex couples, even if the actual content was similar.
• Movies by major studios are treated differently than movies by independent filmmakers, with studios getting much more detailed recommendations on how they might be able to obtain a less restrictive rating.
• Sexual content that strongly indicated a woman was enjoying herself — even if that indication wasn’t graphic/didn’t show her body below the shoulders, was more likely to get a restrictive rating than similar depictions of male pleasure.
• Graphic violence is not rated as restrictively as sexual content.
• The difference between a R and a NC-17 could, in some cases, come down to the number of sexual thrusts in a movie’s sex scene.
• Although the MPAA claimed that they were parents of school-aged children, actually, most of them were parents of adult children. Using objective criteria and training, I think anyone can accurately rate content, but the MPAA made a point of claiming that these people were “ordinary parents” like the people who presumably use the rating system. But most 26 year olds don’t ask Mom & Dad if they can see a particular movie.
• The raters’ identities were kept secret, and moviemakers could not speak to them or try to explain any disagreement with the decisions while asking them to reconsider.

Let’s compare this to a really good rating system: the ESRB’s system for rating video games.

Like the MPAA, the ESRB has an easy to read graphic that goes on the front of the box, telling parents at a glance what games it considers age-appropriate. But it’s a lot more detailed than the MPAA’s. The ESRB has 6 categories: EC (early childhood), E (everyone), E-10+ (everyone 10 and over), T (teen), M (mature - 17+), and AO (adults 18+ only).

Of course, your idea of 10+ appropriate and mine might differ.

Fortunately for us, the ESRB provides more detail on the back of the box.

There, they list more than 30 possible specific descriptors. If you don’t want your child exposed to simulated — or real — gambling, you can avoid those things.

More concerned about the level of violence?

There are NINE different, specific descriptors that include violence. You can avoid them all, limit exposure to only cartoon-like depictions, or fantasy-violence that involves “situations easily distinguishable from real life,” and if you choose to, you can allow older children to play games that are more graphic.

And if you are concerned about the kind of sexual content your child may be exposed to in video games, that’s rated too. There are eight different descriptions of sexual content, ranging from “partial nudity” and “mature humor” to “sexual violence” and “strong sexual content.” Some parents may not be concerned about their older teens playing games with mature humor, while others feel differently.

Even better? You don’t have to remember to look at these things every time you buy a video game, or your child trades games with his or her friends. You can set up parental controls on your Wii or X-Box, your PS2 or PS3, and even your home computer. And you can customize them to allow only up to X, Y, or Z levels of depictions of these things.

And the ESRB has instructions on their web site. (Except for Mac. But the instructions for Vista are similar, and if you’re a Mac user, you can figure it out. I have confidence in you.)

Can you imagine how much more useful the movie rating system would be if you knew that a movie was rated R because the characters swore a lot, there was some violence, and partial nudity? Or because there was graphic violence, use of drugs, and gambling? Or because there was sexual content, nudity, crude humor, and use of alcohol?
Can’t you imagine making different decisions about whether or not to see those movies, or to allow your older child or teenager to see them?