Patent ID: 7016898

Claim:
A method of establishing access control within a data processing system, comprising: obtaining content label categories at the data processing system that present a unique label identifying the type of content for each respective category of a plurality of categories; Obtaining associated user restrictions at the data processing system defining at least one user's access privileges to each respective category of the plurality of categories as a function of the content label categories; distributing the obtained content label categories and obtained associated user restrictions to each of a plurality of communications programs within the data processing system, wherein at least two of the communications programs employ different communications protocols; setting access controls for at least two of the communications programs within the data processing system that employ different communications protocols as a function of the content label categories and associated user restrictions; and during installation of a communications program subsequent to setting access controls for each communications program within the data processing system as a function of the content label categories and associated user restrictions checking for existing access control settings for other communications programs and setting access controls for the communications program being installed utilizing the existing access control settings.