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Ironically enough... by pcjabber · 2005-10-03 13:17 · Score: 1 · on Google Office Still in the Wings?

That's how I access my Gmail at school. BESS, the awful filtering system used by our school system, doesn't allow us to use "free mail sites" at school (among other things), but it has a [seemingly unfixable] bug in it -- it cannot filter HTTPS/SSL requests, because they're, well, secure. The only solution is to block all https sites. And they won't do that, because some of the sites the teachers and students rely on are SSL. I love loopholes. =)

Then... by spac3manspiff · 2005-08-03 09:16 · Score: 1 · on Spammers Lose Court Battle Against Univ. of Texas

Then why aren't they suing schools that use Bess.
Or even Corporations that block emails/websites?

Lets get the facts straight by LogicX · 2005-06-24 14:40 · Score: 5, Insightful · on Felony Charges For H.S. Hacking

This news was also reported in the Reading Eagle/Reading Times.

In that article, it was said that the students were accessing porn sites, and HAD infact hacked the administrative network.

However, living in this area, I feel it necessary to point out that the papers around here can't handle technical articles, and and usually get the facts wrong. For all we know, they got the admin pass, and disabled the proxy (which was likely the n2h2 Bess Proxy), and all of this is being blown out of proportion.
Once more facts become clear, maybe we'll learn why the rest of the 80-100 students weren't charged.

I attended and worked IT for Conrad Weiser Area School District which is about 20 minutes away from Kutztown, where we had the BCIU come in to do a lot of work on machines. The BCIU is clueless, and security is their lowest priority. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the BCIU worked with Kutztown High to setup this network, making it all the easier for these kids.
Also, here are the nyud mirrors of the links:
FAQ
Kutztown Area Patriot Article
Laptop Initiative

Re:From an Australian school student's perspective by NeuralAbyss · 2004-12-02 01:09 · Score: 3, Informative · on Australia Chooses Education Over Filtering

I'll give up my modpoints in this article, and post a network admin's view from Victoria.

I used to (well, still do on a part-time basis) work as a network admin for a secondary school in Victoria. Previously, until about 2 years ago, all government schools were mandated to use a state-government-selected ISP (Fuck you, Edunet!) which had a DEET-approved filtering system (N2H2). Given that they were working within the constraints of the VicOne WAN, they did an acceptable job, but outsourcing the filtering was one of the worse moves possible. Many educational and open-source-related sites were blocked, and it took upto 24 hours to get a site unblocked - the central filters were updated via a daily cronjob.

Things have improved slightly with regards to filtering - they have now allowed schools to filter by category, and turn off filtering for users (network admins/staff), but there's still the problem of inappropriate content being blocked.

I, personally, would like to see an instant unblocking option available for staff in schools, once they have reviewed the site in question. Yes, many within the system say that staff should check this when developing their lesson plans, but given the time constraints, the current filtering system is less than workable. I should say that, for the record, we have moved to the private (non-Telstra) incarnation of Edunet - Schoolsnet. Different name, same low SLA.

Pssst, look here!!! by Eberlin · 2004-01-30 10:13 · Score: 3, Informative · on Chinese Internet Censorship Proves Difficult

Lots of people in the US subscribe to these guys for Internet censorship: N2H2

I know it's not quite the same as "Communist Country" censorship, but the US isn't without Government-influenced information suppression. Just google for CIPA. You filter, you get funding. You don't filter, you find funding elsewhere.

"False-positives" anyone?

Re:This is not about the 2nd, it's about the 1st by danielsfca2 · 2003-11-02 09:33 · Score: 1 · on Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites

This is definitely why censorware is bad. But Symantec isn't the bad guy here, the people who got laws passed to require censorware are. The fact is, that if "big brother" or parents don't want their users/children to read about things that go against their fundamentalist beliefs, such as sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and in this case, guns, then that's what the filters will filter. Anti-gun sites do not feature any material worth filtering (unless there were a filter category called "Political Discussion"). As such, they should not be blocked just to "balance out" the political scale. If for every blocked site, an opposing one were blocked "just to be fair," you'd essentially double the number of blocked sites, thereby greatly increasing the already too-severe censorship.

Filters cut across political boundaries, all the time. It's impossible not to. On the other end of the spectrum from the gun debate, they block sites about safe sex and discussion about sex but wouldn't block a site about abstinence from, say, Focus on the Family. (I just confirmed this is the case with N2H2's Bess.) This is because there is not a category for "Christian Conservative Rhetoric." Probably very few parents and other users of this type of software have requested to have their users "protected" from the latter. This behavior favors conservatives, just like the gun behavior favors liberals. Big deal. Filtering software always favors the more puritanical on any issue. Usually that is conservatives in Internet filtering issues, so the NRA racket should shut up.

To conclude, just like this gun story pisses off conservatives (who were the ones to get this bad-idea software installed in the first place), it pisses off liberals that you can't get information about safe sex through these filters, but you can get an admonition from Pat Robertson about how you should wait until marriage. Both of these debates get a one-sided treatment when passed through a filter. This is by design, is a side-effect of overprotecting "our children," and is not cause for singling out Symantec. Do you really think Symantec is some sort of evil liberal-agenda-pushing corporation? Liberal corporation is an oxymoron. Symantec's users, probably the paranoid overprotective parents who love this software so much, probably made a case for why they wanted this site blocked, and Symantec went along with them, in an attempt to keep its customers happy.

Re:This is not about the 2nd, it's about the 1st by danielsfca2 · 2003-11-02 09:33 · Score: 1 · on Symantec Says No To Pro-Gun Sites

This is definitely why censorware is bad. But Symantec isn't the bad guy here, the people who got laws passed to require censorware are. The fact is, that if "big brother" or parents don't want their users/children to read about things that go against their fundamentalist beliefs, such as sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and in this case, guns, then that's what the filters will filter. Anti-gun sites do not feature any material worth filtering (unless there were a filter category called "Political Discussion"). As such, they should not be blocked just to "balance out" the political scale. If for every blocked site, an opposing one were blocked "just to be fair," you'd essentially double the number of blocked sites, thereby greatly increasing the already too-severe censorship.

Filters cut across political boundaries, all the time. It's impossible not to. On the other end of the spectrum from the gun debate, they block sites about safe sex and discussion about sex but wouldn't block a site about abstinence from, say, Focus on the Family. (I just confirmed this is the case with N2H2's Bess.) This is because there is not a category for "Christian Conservative Rhetoric." Probably very few parents and other users of this type of software have requested to have their users "protected" from the latter. This behavior favors conservatives, just like the gun behavior favors liberals. Big deal. Filtering software always favors the more puritanical on any issue. Usually that is conservatives in Internet filtering issues, so the NRA racket should shut up.

To conclude, just like this gun story pisses off conservatives (who were the ones to get this bad-idea software installed in the first place), it pisses off liberals that you can't get information about safe sex through these filters, but you can get an admonition from Pat Robertson about how you should wait until marriage. Both of these debates get a one-sided treatment when passed through a filter. This is by design, is a side-effect of overprotecting "our children," and is not cause for singling out Symantec. Do you really think Symantec is some sort of evil liberal-agenda-pushing corporation? Liberal corporation is an oxymoron. Symantec's users, probably the paranoid overprotective parents who love this software so much, probably made a case for why they wanted this site blocked, and Symantec went along with them, in an attempt to keep its customers happy.

google cache listed as "loop hole site" by Khopesh · 2003-04-30 08:10 · Score: 3, Informative · on When N2H2 Mistakenly Calls Your Website 'Porn'?

it's even an example on the page explaining filter categories:

Loopholes
Sites filtered because they open a loophole that can be exploited to access pages which would otherwise be filtered out from your service. Unless this category is selected, the system's Internet Content Filtering protection can be compromised.

Examples:
www.kaza.com
www.triangleboy.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache

clicking on an example pops up a little warning image that states:

WARNING!
The page you are trying to access is an example of the potentially objectionable control that is filtered by our technology. Certain users may find the material on those pages offensive.

N2H2 does not endorse these web sites, and assumes no responsibility for their content.

The link you just clicked has been disabled for the benefit of our younger visitors.

google cache listed as "loop hole site" by Khopesh · 2003-04-30 08:10 · Score: 3, Informative · on When N2H2 Mistakenly Calls Your Website 'Porn'?

it's even an example on the page explaining filter categories:

Loopholes
Sites filtered because they open a loophole that can be exploited to access pages which would otherwise be filtered out from your service. Unless this category is selected, the system's Internet Content Filtering protection can be compromised.

Examples:
www.kaza.com
www.triangleboy.com
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache

clicking on an example pops up a little warning image that states:

WARNING!
The page you are trying to access is an example of the potentially objectionable control that is filtered by our technology. Certain users may find the material on those pages offensive.

N2H2 does not endorse these web sites, and assumes no responsibility for their content.

The link you just clicked has been disabled for the benefit of our younger visitors.

Reviewing sites for N2H2 by Phronesis · 2003-04-30 07:18 · Score: 1 · on When N2H2 Mistakenly Calls Your Website 'Porn'?

How many people would need to review http://www.riaa.org as porn before they'd rate it as such? Thereafter, one could start asking them to block home pages for legislators who voted for DMCA, Microsoft, whoever we don't like. If there were enough traffic, perhaps the slashdot effect be a powerful lobby for a nice little blacklist.

Do they have a "Useless" category? by Wee · 2003-04-30 06:58 · Score: -1, Troll · on When N2H2 Mistakenly Calls Your Website 'Porn'?

If so,they'd be in it. N2H2 looks to be pretty much useless. They don't even rate themselves.

Who gives two squirts if they rate your site as pr0n? It shouldn't affect you at all.

-B

Unix.org = Pr0n? by saintm · 2002-07-11 03:21 · Score: 5, Funny · on Latest UDRP Stupidity: Unix.org, Canadian.biz

I thought I'd take a look at unix.org to see what their take on the decision would be.

I was a might suprised to find it blocked by the wonderful corporate content filter.

Checking the URL checker I got the following response:

URL Checker

Thank you for your submission. Below please find a listing of the category (ies) in which your submitted URL appears. For a detailed description of each category, visit our filtering categories section.

The Site: www.unix.org
is categorized by N2H2 as:
Pornography

Should you still wish to inquire about the URL in question after checking with your System Administrator, please submit your request to N2H2's Review Editors for further analysis.

Yeah bess block 2600 too by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-01 08:45 · Score: 0 · on All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter

Our school's (bess) filter blocks 2600.com and slashdot, even though they don't block www.kuro5hin.org.

I'm trying to work on a Anonymizer (anyone know a good php book?), becuase bess block them as loop holes. What's more anonying that the IP blocking is the keyword filtering, blocking simple words such as download, games, cache.

Yeah bess block 2600 too by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-01 08:45 · Score: 0 · on All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter

Our school's (bess) filter blocks 2600.com and slashdot, even though they don't block www.kuro5hin.org.

I'm trying to work on a Anonymizer (anyone know a good php book?), becuase bess block them as loop holes. What's more anonying that the IP blocking is the keyword filtering, blocking simple words such as download, games, cache.

Filtering solutions generally stink by qurob · 2002-07-01 08:07 · Score: 2, Insightful · on All Sourceforge.net Being Blocked by SmartFilter

I know, what else can corporations do, other than hire baby sitters for all the employees with net access.

But, in most cases, they are much more trouble than they are worth. Nothing lowers morale like big brother controlling where you go.

Sometimes the most useful sites are blocked. I remember working at a school district, I got NOTHING but complaints/questions about N2H2, the filtering solution we were using.

N2H2 by Anonymous Coward · 2002-03-07 09:21 · Score: 0 · on Interesting Concepts in Search Engines

"The first application of community searching may be to fence off areas of the web such as pornography or hate-speech communities, says Flake." N2H2 has been doing exactly that for a couple of years now.

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

Experiment - censorware collateral damage verify by Seth+Finkelstein · 2001-10-30 19:21 · Score: 5, Informative · on Thousands of Sites Wrongly Blocked

Well, maybe it's safe for me to post this to Slashdot ...

[Originally sent to a mailing-list]

In honor of the censorware material just released by ACLU, I thought I'd try a little experiment in distributed verification.

I took one example from Edelman's report:

16. Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters #6809
http://www.albertaflyfish.com
Blocked by: N2H2 (Pornography - Sep 11, Oct 7), Websense (Sex - Jul 5,
Aug 18, Sep 11)
Yahoo: /Regional/Countries/Canada/Business and Economy/Shopping and
Services/Outdoors/Fishing/Fly Fishing/Lodges/
Google: /Regional/North America/Canada/Alberta/Recreation and
Sports/Fishing
Fly fishing in Alberta Canada on the world famous Bow River.

Now, what does censorware have against this site? Maybe it doesn't like too many 'Fly' references in one place? No, it turns out that this site has the misfortune to be virtually hosted and share an internet address with:

http://clubexoticx.com - Club Exoticx

There's a bunch of other completely innocuous sites suffering the same collective guilt of the censorware blacklist. I'd like people to go to N2H2's lookup, at http://database.n2h2.com/cgi-perl/catrpt.pl and *verify* this for themselves by testing the following sites:

http://albertaflyfish.com - Southern Alberta Fly Fishing Outfitters
http://alistairbrown.com - Alistair Brown Folksinger
http://eclothing.com - 'The Game Is On Sportswear Company Ltd.'
http://effectivemanagementsolutions.com - Effective Solutions
http://eligh.com - Springboard Consulting
http://eyepowered.com - E Y E P O W E R E D - 360 Degree Panoramas
http://friendlyfacesonline.com - Create personalized family cartoon
http://gear4pickups.com - Gear4Trucks: HitchHoist Portable Truck Crane,
http://informationonhold.com - Information On-Hold
http://letsmakewine.com - Let's Make Wine
http://planetregister.com - Planet Registe
http://ppt-slides.com - 35mm Slides from your computer file
http://proteach.net - Pro Teach Main Page - Baseball instruction
http://rosiedonovan.com - Rosie Donovan Photography
http://springboardtoinnovation.com - Springboard Consulting

Here, I'll make this easy. Just click these URLs:

You should get

The Site: [all sites above] is categorized by N2H2 as: Pornography

If there's some error-message text in a red font, that means the N2H2 program itself wasn't working, try again.

Now, since I've publicized this, I expect it'll be changed very rapidly for this one item. I have a saying: "Alacrity varies directly with publicity". But this is just one example in a HUGE blacklist. What else is lurking in there?

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

SC school internet connections (was: Re:SC Laws) by zztzed · 2001-09-03 03:03 · Score: 2, Informative · on South Carolina's On-Again, Off-Again Filtering

High-availability? High-speed? You've never actually USED an Internet connection at an SC school, have you? In the school district of Aiken County (which is -- I shit you not -- about the size of Rhode Island), school Internet connections are well-nigh useless because of the massive number of people using them (in the district, there's about 30,000 students, faculty and staff) at any given time. ALL HTTP traffic from every school in the Consolidated School District of Aiken County is filtered through a single proxy server (yes, just one) on a T1 running Bess (N2H2 claims that their "high capacity, clustered appliances" [translation: Linux boxes running a hacked version of Squid]scale to "tens of thousands of users", but as far as I can tell from my experience, they're full of shit). And of course there are enough people browsing the web at any given time that the T1 is almost completely saturated.

So while there is a statewide backbone that all schools can hook up to, as long as they all have to filter their traffic like this, it's pretty useless.

Re:Google... by kev-san · 2001-01-18 11:15 · Score: 3 · on Librarians To Sue Over Mandatory Censoring

Interestingly enough, the censorware program at my school [Pomona High School in Arvada, Colorado] blocks URLs in the address bar. Therefore, if the url shows up anywhere in the bar, as in

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:slashdot.org/ +slashdot&hl=en

the censorware proxy blocks it. Luckily, however, it doesn't block the ip address converting system proudly displayed in this season's issue of 2600. >:) Keep freedom of speech in schools alive. Please.

Re:Cached sites by kev-san · 2000-11-17 08:39 · Score: 2 · on SmartFilter's Greatest Evils

I understand that this post is a joke, and a funny one at that, but it's a real issue. I've attempted to do just that: get past my high school's proxy (BESS, to be precise) by using Google's cache for articles at Salon that were blocked by the censorware service to protect against "a constantly changing website which contains information that could be offensive to some of our viewers." Because the proxy blocks sites merely based on URLs typed into the address bar, Google's cache doesn't work. [The reason for this is that it includes the original site's URL in the CGI script which locates the site being cached]. But the IP masker that was mentioned in response to a previous jamie post about the subject [as well as an article in the recent 2600] works extremely well, due to the fact that N2H2 doesn't block 32-bit IPs. If this helps anyone block out the Farenheit 451esque blocking of informative sites that the establishment attempts to utilize, so be it. :)

Re:how can somebody tell what is blocked? by Liza · 2000-11-07 03:33 · Score: 1 · on Candidates' Websites Blocked by CyberPatrol, N2H2

I'd say your best bet is to email Bennett or Jamie and ask them. I'm only sort-of kidding.

Seriously though, there are probably 100+ filters or filtered ISPs on the market. You can get a reasonable list from GetNetWise. But no one has a service that lets you test against multiple products. The COPA Commission recommended that a neutral independent testing authority be created to test these products; if such a thing is ever created, /.ers should let them know that URL testing is a feature we'd like to see.

It isn't too hard to check some of the big ones. SurfControl, which sells CyberPatrol and SurfWatch, and several corporate-oriented products, has links to two test-your-site pages from h ere .

NetNanny provides a list of filtered sites when you buy the program, that is human-readable, so you could buy it and look at it.

N2H2 has such a large share of the school, library & reseller market, and provides a free-download home product, that they are also worth a specific test, even though there isn't a URL test page available.

Liza

Re:I cannot believe this by kennylives · 2000-10-24 18:15 · Score: 1 · on Mandated Mediocrity

Some of the folks that I used to work with would go all glassy-eyed whenever the topic of conversation would shift to corporate ethics. If n2h2 can't be classified as evil, there's certainly a fucked-up sense of values going on here.

FWIW, the page is http://www.n2h2.com/sponsor/overview.h tml . I'm actually offended (a rare occurance) by the careless use of the words 'penetration' and 'exposure' in context with kids. Maybe they're trying to make sure that kids can't read their website (contains 'naughty' words on that page..), and discover the truth of what's happening; filter out the unprofitable, replace it with the highly profitable.

But what do we do about it? Harping about it on /. won't change their behaviour. Will writing my representatives in 'DC make a difference? N2H2 has so many 'strategic partners', that certainly one or more of those have my rep's in their pocket... Fat lot of good that'll do then. So what do we do? Campaign finance reform? Oh wait, N2H2 filters that out.. After a couple of generations or so, will anyone remember that things were ever different?

Irony by cube+farmer · 2000-10-24 06:04 · Score: 2 · on Mandated Mediocrity

It is particularly ironic that Bess is in such wide use in K-12 schools.

My former job was to manage this website for the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA). Clearly, ACSA is an organization devoted to the furtherance of public K-12 education, and one which is listened to and sponsored by the same people who make decisions about software filters on school networks.

I received a call one afternoon from one of my regular users, calling from his school district office. He said (I'm paraphrasing, here), "I can't get to your site. Bess is giving me an error message that your site is not on the approved list. Can you help me?"

Apparently, somebody at N2H2 had made the call that, by default, a website specifically for school administrators was inappropriate for use by schools.

If this is indicative of how Bess and other filters work in the real world (ignoring first amendment issues entirely), I can't imagine any justification for mandating that filters be used by public schools and libraries.

"Akamai says no" by laborit · 2000-08-22 19:37 · Score: 4 · on Censorware Blocking Methods Using Akamai

I'm not sure Akamai's refusal to implement blocking is so much "saying no" as "lauging their asses off." As far as I can tell, any solution to this problem would require Akamai to 1) engage in performance-degrading communications to ensure there's no blocking software on the computer making a request or 2) set up blocking software itself. And even with 1) there's always proxying...

So I'm pretty sure N2H2 goes on the clueless buffoon list for this one. This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it. And it has about as much chance of... oh.

Well, as long as the government doesn't get involved, it's still stupid.

- Michael Cohn

Re:Chopping the web into little peices by russiste · 2000-05-31 21:27 · Score: 1 · on Slashback: Juveniles, Sand, Trickery, MoBos

On most of the softwares' web sites, you have some sort of "test" section where you can enter an URL and check if it's blocked or not. For example...

SurfWatch's "Test a site" page

CyberPatrol's "CyberNOT Search Engine"

CyberNanny's "Check a site" page

WebSense's "site look up" page

SmartFilter's SmartFilterWhere (this one's pretty nasty as it asks you for some personal info (name, phone, etc.) but I'm not sure if it's absolutely required to fill out those fields).

By the way, I only checked the blocking software mentionned on this peacefire page so if there are others, you're on your own. :-) Oh yeah, and I didn't find any test page for N2H2's Bess.

Greg

Re:Chopping the web into little peices by russiste · 2000-05-31 21:27 · Score: 1 · on Slashback: Juveniles, Sand, Trickery, MoBos

On most of the softwares' web sites, you have some sort of "test" section where you can enter an URL and check if it's blocked or not. For example...

SurfWatch's "Test a site" page

CyberPatrol's "CyberNOT Search Engine"

CyberNanny's "Check a site" page

WebSense's "site look up" page

SmartFilter's SmartFilterWhere (this one's pretty nasty as it asks you for some personal info (name, phone, etc.) but I'm not sure if it's absolutely required to fill out those fields).

By the way, I only checked the blocking software mentionned on this peacefire page so if there are others, you're on your own. :-) Oh yeah, and I didn't find any test page for N2H2's Bess.

Greg

Re:Add me to the log by waldoj · 2000-03-16 01:03 · Score: 2 · on Mattel Dislikes Being Embarrassed (UPDATED)

I think that web sites against censorware should find a way to detect a censorware product and display a banner, instead of the requested page, indicating that the site does not support censorware and the website can not be viewed if you're using a censorware filter. Then perhaps parents may be forced to (re)consider the product.

On one of my sites, Curfew.Org, I've done something close to this. Curfew.Org is all about how to fight youth curfews of a legal nature. 99% of the people looking at my site are from .edus or or from .k12.state.us. Of them, 25% of them are behind censorware proxies. So I put up a little message that lets them know that they're being censored.

I wrote mine in PHP. As you can see, it's grossly simple:

$remotehostname = gethostbyaddr($REMOTE_ADDR);
if (ereg ("bess-proxy", $remotehostname)) {
echo("You're being censored!");
}

This only works for proxies, and this is just the Bess section. You could insert this, and add other proxy names, and put a more useful message up. (I took out the full paragraph for brevity.)

Anyhow, steal this highly-advanced code and use it on your own site!

Re:Is this a serious comment? by Anonymous Coward · 2000-02-09 01:48 · Score: 0 · on Filtering Internet in Public Libraries

I support any product that filters slasdot.

To the best of my knowledge, that would be N2H2.

AC

Re:Hooray for filters at work! by Fudge.Org · 2000-01-04 10:22 · Score: 2 · on Playboy And...Linux?

Yeah, this very fear has prevented many people from going to my URL listing. ;)

People are really uptight. I can understand why it has come to this. It's just one person's humor is another persons offense.

I wonder what it is like working for some place like N2H2 where you update no-no URLs regularly.

It seems like one way to harvest naughty URLs would be to just leave your email address laying all over the place in Usenet postings and on home pages. The email address could be a dropbox that parses incoming URLs for smutty, naughty, racy, and other -y word like contents.

I just always wondered what it would be to work for a place that provides filters. Its like you could resell the listings as xml feed to search engine providers to allow for a "safe internet search". Perhaps this already exists? Half the time people put things like "HOT POODLE SEX" into Meta tags expecting a non-intelligent web robot to index it and go its merry way.

I know this is offtopic to Linux in Playboy but it is ontopic in that a lot of filtering packages do in fact run on Linux boxes as proxy filters. :)
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/

thin line between censorship and moderation... by dermond · 1999-07-28 04:42 · Score: 1 · on Passing Porn, Banning the Bible

first i have to say that i oppose censorship as much as all people here and i really do not want to play the devils advocate but there are some things to consider.

but first let me tell you my experience with that n2h2 people: i have a site on the net that is critical towards a right wing fundamentalist sect. (http://www.mond.at/opus.dei but please do not slashdot my old 486.. :-) ) one day when i read the refer-logs i noticed that someone from n2h2 has visited my site. i was curious to find out if my site would be blocked by them.. (one page contains the words: "Draw up her skirts, tear down her panties and give it to her in the ass!! In the Ass!" which is a quote from the founder of the sect (who has been beatified by the pope!!). i did not find a way to check if my site would be blocked but i would not have been surprised, since i suspect that people who run censorship sits are a bit right wing as well.. anyway: i wrote to the n2h2 people and they assured me that my site would not be blocked.. then i read a bit in their rules and this decision was consistent with their policy. political text, medical and scientific works, historical quotes etc.. will not be blocked even if they contains some "dirty" words..

now i do not want to advocate their censorship but i think it is the legitim right of this people to rate and classify web pages according to what ever criterion they may have. in the end: how is that different from what the slashdot moderation does? (BTW: i have my treshhold on -1 for that reason.. i want to decide for myself what i want to read and and what not.. one post i did a while ago as AC was moderated to -1 because obviously the moderator did not understand the humor/sarcasm there..). as for the people who set up n2h2 based filters they are able to decided if they only allow sites that have been reviewed by the n2h2 people and there they can select from different categories or if they allow everything except things that have been rated bad by the n2h2 censors..

see: http://www.n2h2.com/categories/

so while i do not want to advocate censorship i would say that people should not blame it on the n2h2 company but on administrators who set up the filtering policy. filtering hard core porn for children below a certain age might make some sense.. thought i think the potential dangers of censorship still outweighs the benefits.. children who have experienced censorship in their youth might advocate that when they are grown up...and then maybe not just for porn but for political context as well..and we know where that could leed too.. then on the other hand: where do we draw the line between moderation and censorship?

greetings

mond.

Slashdot Mirror

Domain: n2h2.com

Comments · 45