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I am calling for a boycott of Michael Sims, America's number one enemy in the fight against anti-anti-censorware, until he gives me an apology for his rampant goatse'ing and usurping of the Censorware Project , my pride and joy.

Frankly, I'm shocked that I am not revered by all of Slashdot. My contributions to the world of anti-censorware research are comparable to the contributions of Jesus Christ to the field of religion. I won more awards from that project than Michael won in his whole damned life.

Do not underestimate me. I will be heard.

Though this message is posted anonymously, I will attest to it and verify it if needed. Other message posted by similar-looking accounts, or not attested, are frauds. - Seth Finklestein, uid#90154

I am calling for a boycott of Michael Sims, America's number one enemy in the fight against anti-anti-censorware, until he gives me an apology for his rampant goatse'ing and usurping of the Censorware Project, my pride and joy.

Frankly, I'm shocked that I am not revered by all of Slashdot. My contributions to the world of anti-censorware research are comparable to the contributions of Jesus Christ to the field of religion. I won more awards from that project than Michael won in his whole damned life.
Do not underestimate me. I will be heard.

Michael Sims, I am once again disgusted by your unwillingness to talk about real technology issues relevant to our world today, such as when you usurped control of the Censorware Project . If you cared, you'd stop your whining about anonymous posting on Slashdot.

Michael Sims, you are a fraud and a very bad man. Please terminate your relationship with the Slashdot at once.

What does this have to do with how Michael Sims hijacked the censorware project?

Michael Sims, I am once again disgusted by your unwillingness to talk about real technology issues relevant to our world today, such as when you usurped control of the Censorware Project. I know that there's a lot of trouble in Africa, and I'm making a difference by sponsoring a child for just 35 cents a month. If you cared, you'd stop your whining about compu-fucking-ters and buy them some goddamned food already.

Michael Sims, you are a fraud and a very bad man. Please terminate your relationship with the Slashdot at once.

I'm in favor of free speech, unlike Michael Sims, who took away my pride and joy, the Censorware Project. I won more awards from that project than Michael won in his whole damned life.

Now we're reading about people impeding commercial entities' right to advertise. Heaven forfend companies actually be able to upload. Heaven forfend a company might be able to push its business with less wasted natural resources than direct mail. HEAVEN FORFEND WE LIVE IN AMERICA GODDAMMIT!

Thank you for your time. I would rather receive positive moderation than your piddling replies.

Dear esteemed members of the Slash-dot community:

It gives me great pain to announce that one of your editors, Michael Sims, is a member of the Communist party. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Sims has engaged in a number of practices which aid and abet known Communist organizations, jeopardizing the security of the United States of America and other miscellaneous nations.

I am calling for a boycott of Michael Sims, until he gives me an apology for his rampant goatse'ing of the Censorware Project, my pride and joy.

Thank you.

Dear Michael,

I think it's great that you consider yourself a technology journalist, but let's review the facts. You have no knowledge of the technology world besides your knee-jerk herd-mentality "analyses." You are anti-capitalist and anti-corporation, yet you still work as an editor on a site whose major stories always revolve around corporate developments. Mindlessly bashing corporations does not make you an activist; it makes you an alarmist. There's a difference.

Furthermore, I'm still waiting for my apology for your ruthless "goatse'ing" of America's favorite web site, the Censorware Project. I want you to tell all of the members of this discussion board exactly why you thought it was a good idea to silence me. I am America's leading authority on the subject of anti-censorware. I bet you're jealous.

There. I've said it. Any questions?

Please consider the fact that Blizzard is suing people who write software to interoperate with theirs when deciding whether you want to purchase this game.

That's pretty funny that you mention that, Michael Sims. Ha ha ha! Now I want you to please consider the fact that you, Michael Sims, singlehandedly destroyed the Censorware Project. I have won over fifteen awards for my writings, but you chose to spurn me. Why, Michael, why?

I want you to please resign your post at Slashdot immediately, and cede all of your possessions to me. Including your base.

Michael, you have a lot of nerve posting news stories after what you did to the Censorware Project. I am the world's greatest authority on the subject of anti-censorware, and by failing to obey me completely, you have given me a great insult.

Mr. Sims, if that is your real name, did you know that I am the recipient of a prestigious Pioneer award, given out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation? My work is the finest in the industry, and you had to go and spoil it all. Worse still, you hijacked the domain that I was using for my award-winning writings and used it to write invalid, incorrect, and inhumane things about myself, Seth Finklestein.

Please resign your position at Slashdot immediately, Michael Sims. I know where you live.

The censorware.org material has long been retrieved, and is mostly back up now at http://censorware.net. As to not having a separate backup, we mistakenly trusted Michael Sims as webmaster.

As you see, the destruction was done by Michael Sims, now a Slashdot editor. There is also a great deal of other politics not mentioned my essay. This had, and has, a significant impact on publicizing recent and future anti-censorware work.

In a moment of frustration over all the grudge-holding politics, compared to front-page slots being wasted on months-old triplicates (not duplicates, triplicates), I vented some of my feelings about Slashdot's editorial lackings in my posting. I shouldn't have done it.

Something is only censorship when imposed by the gov't, or by any private party upon material which they don't have rights to.

What you're missing is that no one has accused Slashdot of Censorship; therefore you are refuting an assertion that has not been made. The assertion is that Slashdot contains Censorware. The difference between these terms is vast.

Jamie McCarthy of the Censorware Project defines Censorware here as:
"software which is designed to prevent another person from sending or receiving information (usually on the web)."

I hate to break it to you, but the lameness filter is designed to prevent a person from sending information on the web. So are the negative moderation subnet bans, account bans, and IP bans. I'm not saying that they're not a good idea; they may actually improve the signal to noise ratio. However, to remain objective we must accept that all of these components meet the technical definition of Censorware, and must be referred to as such.

The anti-abuse mechanisms in Slash 2.2.0 are probably the most sophisticated "selective Censorware" mechanisms available in a weblog product, and they're going to a be large "value-added" in this release for administrators everywhere. Whether users will embrace them as well remains to be seen.

From the article
Mecham (the bad guy) wrote:

While the committee's report is indisputably strong and viable, I believe you may wish to respond to those privacy concerns which are legitimate, such as protecting the confidentiality of official chambers communications. I believe that making the minor changes suggested above will respond to those privacy concerns and help forge consensus on the committee's recommendations.

Thus, they didn't blink. He said that the Judge has a few minor concerns, strictly limited to chamber communication. This is far from over.

our tax dollars are being spent to protect judges, and library users, against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, a grocer, a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company--and some free speech advocates. All of these sites are blocked by WebSENSE under the Sex1, Sex2 or Adult Entertainment categories, the settings used in the federal courts and in libraries.

The letter is which AO Director Mecham Blinked is here.

Nice article, btw.

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"

our tax dollars are being spent to protect judges, and library users, against Liza Minnelli, Jewish teens, a grocer, a speakers' bureau, a mortgage company--and some free speech advocates. All of these sites are blocked by WebSENSE under the Sex1, Sex2 or Adult Entertainment categories, the settings used in the federal courts and in libraries.

The letter is which AO Director Mecham Blinked is here.

Nice article, btw.

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"

I noticed that there was a bad link to James Tyre's article. The proper link is here.

"My ongoing complaint about the YRO articles is that whatever is currently being proposed is always ridiculed in favor of something else. Government regulation? Schools and libraries should set policies. Schools and libraries restricting access? It should be up to parents. Parents take responsibility? How dare they!"

If you'd followed what I've written, you'd know that I stand 100% for parents to make decisions about their own kids, rather than the government. I opine mostly about censorware, so I assume that's what this was directed at. I don't support parents who block ideas from their kids. But I stand up, over and over, for parents' rights to make decisions about their own kids -- not anyone else's kids.

And I'm totally in favor of schools and libraries setting sensible policies which are enforced by human beings (not robots). Schools should be free to put a stop to wasteful use of computer resources, but they shouldn't think that installing censorware is a quick fix. Libraries should be free to put a stop to any behavior that interferes with other patrons' ability to use the community's resources, but again, censorware is not a quick fix. And in both cases, censorware usually violates the First Amendment: our government, whether acting as the federal legislature, state legislatures, school boards or library boards, is not allowed to "abridge the freedom of speech or of the press."

"In this case, I would be extremely reluctant to join a workplace that monitored my computer usage. But unlike the hypocritical, dishonest bigots who edit Slashdot..."

Awwwww. We love you too.

For your edification about what happened here's the summary I posted on the Censorware Project page:

Having learned how very long these things can go on, and knowing that it is inevitable that the bill one is interested in will be the very last one presented, I didn't go to the hearing. I did, however, monitor it in the background on my office PC so I could see what they did with the filtering bill.

At the hearing this evening on HB 1295, the author of the bill, Rep. Garcia, ended up asking the committee to leave the bill pending, with no action taken on it. Rep. Garcia stated that he'd gotten a few ideas for reworking the bill after hearing the comments of the committee and of the two witnesses who spoke against the bill. Rep. Garcia said that maybe the goal of his bill could be achieved by simply mandating an instruction sheet for how to obtain filtering software, rather than imposing a requirement that software be included.

Rep Garcia brought no witnesses to the hearing to speak in favor of the bill. (Aside: a bill with no witnesses in favor of it is doomed at the Lege in my experience.) He cited his son's experience with explicit porn spam as showing the need for the bill. He said that the ISP linking law wasn't enough because the process of going to a website, downloading software and installing it on a PC was too difficult for most family users of PCs. He also cited CIPA, saying that if Congress can mandate filtering software at the Federal level, then surely Texas can mandate it at the State level. He also said that the term "personal computer" in the bill meant that the bill would only apply to computers for family use, and not those for office use.

Speaking against the bill were Chase Untermeyer, head of governemnt relations for Compaq Computer Corporation of Houston, and also William Silverstein, a former employee of a computer company he left unnamed.

Urging the committee not to pass the bill, Mr. Untermeyer cited the competitive disadvantages that Texas computer makers would be placed under if the bill passed. He also mentioned the recent ACLU and ALA suits concerning the CIPA. (Aside: Besides working for Compaq, Mr. Untermeyer is also a member of board of the Texas State Board of Education.)

Mr. Silverstein discussed the inaccuracies of Cyberpatrol, and the broadness of the bill's applicability to all personal computers. He also mentioned the problems the bill would cause for sellers of PCs with operating systems for which there are no filter software products available.

The committee members sounded skeptical of the need for the bill, with one saying that there was already an existing ISP filter link requirement under Texas law.

Apparently giving up on passage of the present HB 1295, Rep. Garcia said that he would try to rework the bill with some new ideas and asked the committee to take no action on it and leave the bill pending, and that is what the committee did with the bill.

A realudio stream of the hearing ought to be available on theTexas House Committee on Business and Commerce's audio archives page at some point tomorrow. You will have to forward through the stream to about thirty-five minutes before the end of the stream to hear the twelve minutes or so that were spent on the bill.

All I have to say is kudos to the two witnesses against for hanging out there for five hours to speak out against the bill.

Ed

"Jamie would rather lather up the troops... I don't trust Jamie's reporting. His involvement in censorware issues is as a participant, not as a journalist. His reporting on other issues is misleading and inflamatory (moreso than other /. authors). I've learned to double-check anything Jamie says before I get my panties in a twist."

Assuming you're not trolling...

In classic Slashdot style, I make no attempt to hide my biases. I am strongly biased in favor of free speech generally, and my stories will reflect that fact. If you expect a writer for "Your Rights Online" to be neutral on censorware, you're deluded.

I don't think any of my stories have been "misleading." Accuracy concerns me; when I've screwed up, I correct myself ASAP, and the difference between facts and my opinion has never been unclear. As for "inflammatory," get a grip. This story was a report on something I found interesting from several angles, not least its humor value. There's a cautionary element to it, but you didn't exactly see me calling for anyone's head on a platter. If this was an attempt to inflame the "troops," it was a pretty lame one, don't you think?

Your thoughts are welcome: jamie@mccarthy.vg.

Jamie McCarthy

There is a piece on censorware.org that talks about some political campain sites being blocked

And you won't find any censorware reports on censorware.org these days. Michael Sims (yes, that Michael Sims, Slashdot YRO editor) shut-down the censorware.org site, in a failed coup d'etat to control Censorware Project. Some of the material is now on a different site, censorware.NET.

The history is given in my essay below. Michael Sims has taken to abusing his Slashdot editorial position, to downgrade my postings whenever I mention what he did. Maybe this'll slip through. It's worth burning the karma over it.

Note censorware.NET would also like Michael Sims to stop confusing people over the domain names. No luck so far.

Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:
What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

There is a piece on censorware.org that talks about some political campain sites being blocked

And you won't find any censorware reports on censorware.org these days. Michael Sims (yes, that Michael Sims, Slashdot YRO editor) shut-down the censorware.org site, in a failed coup d'etat to control Censorware Project. Some of the material is now on a different site, censorware.NET.

The history is given in my essay below. Michael Sims has taken to abusing his Slashdot editorial position, to downgrade my postings whenever I mention what he did. Maybe this'll slip through. It's worth burning the karma over it.

Note censorware.NET would also like Michael Sims to stop confusing people over the domain names. No luck so far.

Sig: My Latest Censorware Essay:
What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)