It's already happened in some areas. For example, the Recreational Software Advisory Council was formed by a number of software associations to develop content ratings when violent computer games became a problem. And, my agency, NTIA is working hard to look at these kinds of questions more systematically. We have commissioned papers from experts around the country to address these issues in a privacy context, and we plan to issue the resulting report in the next month. We expect that much of what we learn will be translatable to other issues raised by electronic commerce.
Technology is another tool for solving problems that arise in electronic commerce.
We have also already seen the power of technology to solve many of the problems raised by cyberspace in other contexts. For example, various filtering technologies, such as PICS have been developed to deal with parents' concerns about kids' access to sexually explicit or violent sites that allow parents to block their kids' access to those sites. Technology undoubtedly can also be developed to address many of the problems that arise in electronic commerce. The private-sector has an incentive to develop such solutions. They will do so only if they are confident that transactions conducted electronically will be secure, reliable, and kept confidential.