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Folks,

Don't miss Peacefire's Bennett Haselton on CNN tonight. Everybody's favorite youth-rights advocate will be on around 10:30PM EST, live, arguing against this new policy.

-Waldo

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I met with Senator Emily Couric along with two other folks from the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council on June 6th. I posted a report to the peacefire-technical list afterwards. Here's what I wrote, verbatim:


From: Waldo L. Jaquith <waldo@waldo.net>
Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2000 3:59 PM
To: peacefire-technical@iain.com
Subject: Results of Meeting With Senator Emily Couric Re: UCITA

I thought you'd be interested to know how my meeting with VA Senator Emily Couric went. I sat down with her and Josh Chernila of the VPTC and Colin Learmonth from BNSI and talked for about an hour this afternoon.

Essentially, Emily was wholly unfamiliar with UCITA. This is not a criticism -- she has 3,000 bills put before her every year. This is a fairly esoteric one, although it obviously impacts all of us strongly.

She'd done her homework the previous night, and had a thick packet of pages she'd printed out from various UCITA-related websites. We explained to her some of UCITA's impacts, but tried to keep things simple. Our message was basic: UCITA makes digital contracts binding while offering no real limitations as to what the contents of that contract can be. It forces consumers to become attorneys. Almost everything else that UCITA does is a by-product of that portion of UCITA.

Another important message to get across is that UCITA is not an incentive for software companies to move to Virginia. They can take advantage of UCITA from any state, possible other countries, if they specify that in the contract.

Those two main points (bad for consumers and businesses, not beneficial to Virginia) were the ones worth driving home. Although you and I may live and breathe OS software, that's not a useful topic when talking to a senator. (In fact, it's confusing.)

Emily felt strongly, at the end of our meeting, that UCITA is bad for consumers. She suggested that we get more people to talk to their representatives, and suggested that we start some sort of an awareness campaign to get people in Central Virginia, and even beyond, to know more about what UCITA could do.

She's right: that would be the most effective path. It also happens to be the one that requires the most work. She promised to keep her eyes open for UCITA-related news and bills, and asked that we keep her informed. But her conclusion was telling: UCITA isn't going anywhere. No matter what we do, it's not going to go away. We need to assemble a list of amendments that can be introduced as a bill to modify the way that UCITA works. Complaining that we don't want to have our computer hijacked by Microsoft works on a publicity front, but it doesn't get far in the legal world.

I'm hoping that the VPTC will adopt this project, because I know that I don't have the energy or the time to make this happen. Now that the geeks of the world are opposed to UCITA, we have to get businesses and everyday Virginians. It'll be a lot of work, but I think that we can pull it off.

Best,
Waldo

-------------------

I checked this out from behind a firewall/netnanny (Microsoft most likely), and sure enough the Yahoo example (http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/ ) works fine. So the storey's true...right? Then again, try pasting another Web page name there. Even try the example on peacefire.org using "sex.com" and it fails from here at least. Is this just a bogus story based on a wierd link to Yahoo?

I'll leave your point about underage minors having access to adult material, since that's your opinion, but I will say that not all places put magazines behind the counter out of reach of children (I know for a fact that many 7-11s do not), and that (obviously) not all adult magazines are bagged. I was talking about a legal obligation in that case.

Now, as for blocking: in this case, IMHO, the damage done by blocking sites is far greater than that of just letting the internet through unfiltered. Unfiltered internet gives the possibility of accessing sites containing material of highly questionable taste, while filtered internet denies certain access to sites containing perfectly legitimate public material.

Visit Peacefire for details of why filtering is a very bad idea(tm).

We don't stop prosecuting crimes because we believe the possibility of an innocent being deemed guilty to be low. Very low, in fact. At least, we like to believe that. Based on that belief, we decided that the good that came of prosecuting far outweighted any bad. With internet filtering, IMHO, the rewards and the problems are not nearly so clear.

Lastly: this is a private business, and the owner does indeed have the right to filter and block the internet access any way he likes. I was responding, however, to the angle that the original quesation contained, regarding how to deal with the problem, since the laundromat is a semi-public facility.

--

"Protect" means different things to different people -- just look at this article from a few months back. Peacefire and censorware.org also have a great deal of discussion about the issues associated with web-filtering.

Remember Bait and Switch?

Companies have money, they have lots of highly paid lawyers. They have massive PR machines churning out propaganda ("We need to be allowed to inovate . . .")

Individuals are worthless. Heck, once you're in jail you can't even vote anymore in the US, so politicians don't have to worry about one, already insignificant vote, going to 'the other guy'.

Individual privacy is, unfortunately, not expressly guaranteed in the US (except in some state constitutions). Only relatively recently has any privacy been afforded by (weak) laws against corporations.

Then again, back when we were a bunch of agrarian farmers, nobody really had the ability to amass large databases of your daily actions. Good thing the Constitution is a living document . . . too bad government is stuck playing catch-up.

--

I think this is one of the down-falls of the way many businesses are conducting themselves on the internet. This is obviously a company that was able to drive up the hype on their product. Now they are able to keep saying, "we're working on it" and most people will say 'OK' and not really hold the company responsible. Imagine if a company that made a real physical object tried this. Cars that crashed or drove the wrong direction 90% of the time. Or a kitchen disposal that ground up your hand in addition to the kitchen waste. Consumers wouldn't allow this product to remain. Its time we do the same for e-companies. Especially ones that proclaim to help children. None of these products work well. Just check out Peacefire.org. Get the lowdown.

--

--

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

Based on the obvious double standard shown in the Peacefire bait and switch experiment - how can someone determine if their own websites have been blocked by these products, without using the products?

I know PopeAlien.com has been placed on a List of potentially offensive webcomics based on the domain name.. (funny 'cause it's so innoffensive) How can I tell if filters are blocking any of my sites? -especially with 'closed list' filters like Mattels?

-

Suspicious, I consulted my friendly install of StarOffice on my Linux machine. He didn't answer back, which is what I woudl have expected from M$ Office, and StarOffice continued to happily to my word processing without bother or error.

Moving back over to my Windows machine with M$ Office... that little MechWarrior like droid was not at all happy! He threatened to allow the 'I love you' worm to work its way through my machine via its evil powers of VB scripting.

Flustered... I then remembered who should be in control of the computer in the first place... ME! I promtly played my own ace-in-the-hole against that evil little M$ droid, named "F1", and hit the power button on the computer.

With F1 no longer being a concern, and no virus or VB script security problems on my Linux machine... I moved back over to the screen with the Gnome footprint eagerly waiting to do what I request without problem or crash.

I donned my red hat and rode off in into the lovely sunset with my StarOffice at my side.

Whitehouse.gov page about Bill, Hilary, Al and Tipper because it was named "couples.html"

Tons of pages about STDs

Tons of pages about gay rights

Tripod's "Ask the Doctor" pages about health and sexuality

Facts about sexual assault

Surfwatch also claimed *they* were the reason the CDA was overturned.

Google is a great place to look for Linux info. But let's now contemplate what kinds of stuff are going to be blocked based on Surfwatch's "everything about sex" stance.

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/editors/se x.html - the Simple editor for Debian package description.

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/base/libc6 .html - it is linked to from the above page

http://www.debian.org/Packages/stable/x11/xlib6g .html - it too is linked to from the above page

And those examples are from link number 4 when I did a search for "linux sex". There are 39,093 other possible pages.

If Google is trying to keep the search engine spammers out, then give me a reporting address or a reporting web page where I can plop a url in so they can do what *should* be done in the first place - block the search engine spammers from ever being there again.

And no, what I am saying has nothing to do with me wanting to censor. It has everything to do with wanting good results back that don't waste my time.

Unfortunately, I don't think Google is going to win if they implement this totally idiotic idea. I for one will never use them again if they do.

Just read the article, and the stego reference reminded me of another paper on the Peacefire site. Another good read for ideas on covert internet activity.

Just read the article, and the stego reference reminded me of another paper on the Peacefire site. Another good read for ideas on covert internet activity.

From the ZDNet article:
Bennett Haselton, Webmaster for Peacefire.org, said the flaw involves sending a user an e-mail with an HTML attachment. When the user clicks on the attachment, the file sends a copy of the user?s cookie to the hacker.
Once that cookie is received, the hacker can insert it manually into the Netscape cookies.txt file and use that authentication key to log in to Hotmail as the user. Click here for a description of the trick.
<snip>
Not a 'trivial bug'
Since the cookie does not contain the user's password, the hacker can only access the account when the user is logged on and as long as the authentication code is valid. But Haselton said that five minutes would be long enough for a hacker with a prepared script to download all of a user's e-mail messages.

Best I could see, theres no email floating around doing this - its just an idea at this point. And for it to propagate(sp?) like luvbug or melissa, it'd need a script to use the hotmail address book. As it sits right now, it'd just come from one guy who knew lots of hotmail addresses. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this, tho :)

-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...

Contrary to the reporting on /., the most recent Hotmail hole is in no way related to a VBS script. What's so alarming about the hole is that it is acutally an HTML file which contains the exploit. More specifically:

The folks over at Hotmail were smart enough to filter out JavaScript from HTML formatted messages sent to Hotmail recipients. They did not, however, think that it would be necessary to filter HTML attachments, either. As a result, a clever individual was able to construct an HTML page containing JavaScript which forwards HotMail authorization cookies to a third party.

Ironically, this information is largely reproduced from the article on Peacefire cited in the original post. No mention of VBS files anywhere.

But some Feds have recently been getting sneaky - they're going to the people who made these arguments, and asking them things like "So this censorware stuff you said was less restrictive isn't working, and isn't usable in public libraries? Would you be interested in testifying in court as an expert witness?". It looks like they may be trying to overthrow the least-restrictive-means argument, by contending that filters aren't that much less restrictive, and trying to Catch-22 us into letting them censor the net like they tried to before.

Peacefire is the group that was sued for revealing Cyberpatrol's blacklist, but also for publishing the password-cracker that lets you get around Cyberpatrol's restrictions. The EFF archives on filtering are at this link on eff.org, but they're a bit out of date (unless you believe the year is "19100" :-). The Censorware Project is more recent.

A reasonable fraction of the many blatant errors in Cyberpatrol's agenda need to be "explained by incompetence rather than attributed to malice"; classifying everything on the net is an impossibly large job, much of the gruntwork gets done by bots with only minimal accuracy, and there's certainly not enough time for real human attention to most of it. That doesn't excuse their lack of fixing problems they've been notified about, or the biases that do appear to be in that product and in many others. "Hackers" - oh, nooo! keep your kids away from them!

The referenced article has its mistakes as well - the Libertarian Party may occasionally be accused of being Republicans who smoke dope, and some of its members are, but that's pretty much a mischaracterization :-) It'd be much more accurate to classify most of the members as computer geeks who don't do real politics because that involves talking to non-geeky people in a way that's interesting to them and doing a lot of plain boring time-consuming hard work like precinct-walking.

Short answer, yes.

There are 12 categories the administrator can toggle on and off. There are 2 categories which cannot be disabled. Any site blocked in the latter categories are always blocked. In earlier versions peacefire was blocked for all 12 - "Violence / Profanity, Partial Nudity, Full Nudity, Sexual Acts / Text, Gross Depictions / Text, Intolerance, Satanic or Cult, Drugs / Drug Culture, Militant / Extremist, Sex Education, Questionable / Illegal & Gambling, Alcohol & Tobacco" however it was apparently not on one of the reserved lists, so it would be possible to access it by turning off all administrator changeable settings - but it would not be accessible using the settings any user is actually going to use - if a parent (or other administrator) sets the program to block any of the categories it is listed under (and who would buy the thing if they didn't want to block at least one of those?) then peacefire would be blocked.

I have heard (but cannot confirm for sure at this point) that after this latest brouha they have finally been added to the reserved (not toggleable) list as well.

The reserved list certainly contains some strange choices. http://133.205.62.133/~coga/ for instance, and http://202.26.1.170/~t2m-n/ don't seem to have any objectionable material I can see.

The whole logic of having a "reserved" list is questionable, what exactly is this software supposed to block outside of the 12 user selectable settings? And why do political sites wind up listed under many if not all of those 12 categories, when most are clearly innappropiate? Sexual acts, violence, nudity, gambling satanism and drugs on peacefire?

Of course, if you had read the essay you would have known this already. Better grab it quick, before the Uni turns yellow and orders the prof to take it down.

At this rate, how long will it be before Cyber Patrol blocks the poage for Net Nanny, and they retaliate by blocking Mattel for extremist/hate (or, perhaps accuratly, for providing inappropriate role models).

Peacefire, which is an anti-censorship group run by teens, has been blocked for being extremist. And this was only after they had run-ins with the companies that made the blocking software.


=================================

Additionally, the anarchists among us are often keen to abolish copyright and patents, while progressives in particular usually want to reform them to "restore a balance".

Progressives and libertarians are also strongly divided over Internet taxation, as well as taxes used to fund or subsidize Internet access.

Some geeks (seemingly independent of other issues?) have strong disagreements about private-sector censorship and invasion of privacy -- especially when practiced by parents rather than corporations. :-)

There are also some socially conservative geeks out there somewhere, including a few on slashdot. Professional corporate IT is very conservative, but contains a much smaller percentage of computer enthusiasts and computer hobbyists.

Think of the difference between groups like CIEC, VTW, Peacefire, CPSR, EFF, the LP, and then Nader's CPT. All of these organizations "oppose censorship" in some form; do they meaningfully agree on any fundamentals of political philosophy? CIEC included conservative Republicans; the LP's got anarchocapitalists; VTW was chock-full of progressive Democrats; CPSR and the CPT speak for social democrats and even a couple of revolutionary Communists...

First of, there is nothing new in censorware malfunctioning like this. There is nothing new that censorware block sites they shouldn't. Take a look at peacefire.org for lots of examples.

beaver.com should pursue every maker of censorware that blocks their pages. They block legitimate pages, legitimate universities .. and so forth.

Furthermore, I read that the inquerier article "promoted" cybersitter from solid oak software. Well, take a look at the aforementioned peacefire site. Solid Oak software don't want criticism. They block every page that critizises their software. Like www.spectacle.org which has delivered quite a lot of criticism.

Not to mention. I wrote to solid oak once, and told them my opinion about them blocking peacefire, and that I would NOT buy any form of product from them, as long as they had that kind of attitude. You know what the jerks did? Heck, they mailed my abuse@department. The funny thing is .. I *am* my abuse department. When I answered to their complaint that they were being childish, and that they should stop sending *fake* abuse-messages (complaining about SPAM? When I send them opinions and feedback?). The freaking head of solidoak answered that they had sent the case to the "FPI" for investigation (I have a feeling that the nutcase have some problems with writing "fbi" or something ;)

Ohwell. Enough ranting.


--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet

I decided not to mod this comment down, but rather post this comment . . . . otherwise, nobody would understand.

This is propaganda. There is no basis, no links, no hard evidience. Punch the CDA and McCain through your favorite search engine and see what it finds.

In FACT, McCain was reported to say any new measure that resembled the Communications Decency Act probably would not survive his committee, which oversees telecommunications. Furthermore, he's quoted as saying:

"I'm the father of small children, they all are far more computer literate than I am, and I've seen some of the stuff that they see and it disturbs me terribly. But I didn't know how you would implement that [law]. I didn't know who would decide what's decent."

McCain did endorse a bill that required schools and libraries with federally funded internet access, which I won't debate here. A bit more info on that bill is located here

In reality, the original sponsor behind the 1996 CDA was Senator Pressler. More information on authors of specific portions of the CDA are here.
McCain did add a lot of amendments to the bill, but so did everyone in the Senate. How else did the thing pass?? I'm not sure exactly what his changes entailed, but you can find out here.

Somebody mod the parent comment down into the flamebait category. It's nothing more than a sweeping piece political propaganda without backing at all.

It's hard to know where to start with this post since it is so wrong in so many ways. And the debate is nearting its end for the day, so I don't want to waste too much time saying things that are already available elsewhere.

Here are a few selected examples.

No, it is not infinite. That is not the same as possible. Think about the size of usenet for a moment, and its rate of growth. All the search engines there are cannot maintain a complete index. If AltaVista and Yahoo can't keep up with the size of the web and usenet, how can any individual or small organisation?

Also, you say all blocking strategies fail. Based on what criteria? Simple: they let through explicit pornongraphy and they ban innocuous sites.

I believe the common consensus is that although they do have their faults, they do in fact work rather well And your references are? I have found no evidence of this "consensus" and plenty in the other direction. Which many other people in this discussion have cited

"Some claim to have their black lists reviewed by humans. They lie. " And you would know this how... Because a) they don't have the company size required (considerably larger that Yahoo, remember) and b) they ban innocuous sites. Hence impossiblity. They do claim to do the impossible, hence the lie.

Here is SurfWatch claiming to do the impossible: http://www1.surfwatch.com/about/body-filter.html

Here are some sites they blocked (Source here):

• Filtering Facts -- a site recommending SurfWatch and other blocking programs for libraries
• World Power Systems, an electrical engineering company
• A Common Bond and Support Group for Ex-Jehovah's Witnesses -- two sites criticizing the Jehovah's Witnesses' position against homosexuality.
• Jay Earley's home page, a Web site maintained by a Ph.D. psychologist
• Automation 2000 -- another site about the Y2K problem
• Surrogate Mothers Online, a site whose "purpose is to provide information and support to individuals who are interested in pursuing a surrogacy arrangement"
• Belarus Internet Java Users Group
• WorldSocialism.org -- The "World Socialist Movement". While some more conservative school districts (and parents) may want this type of site blocked, it still does not fall under any of SurfWatch's criteria (sexual explicitness, drugs, gambling, violence and hate speech).

Yes, it's all one big conspiracy, isn't it. As even the author of the article admitted, as soon as the makers of SurfWatch become aware of sites that have been blocked that didn't need to be, they unblock those sites and release it in a free update to the program. I would hardly call this a secret.

So if they are reviewing them all, how did they get blocked in the first place? Hmmmm?

As a final little amusement, have a play with this site: http://www.prairie-dog.net/filtering.htm and best of all, check this link for collateral damage for sites that would get censored. Unfortunately the author doesn't say the source for the word list. I've seen it before; it is one of the popular censorware products, but I have no time to look it up now - I'm runnning late...

That was a small list to illustrate the point.

The author did not claim it was a complete list. It would be impossible to generate a complete list, for the same reason that it is impossible to develop a blocking strategy that works. There is just too much out there.

Check out the censorware site in the article for reviews of the major blocking software. It all fails. Some claim to have their black lists reviewed by humans. They lie. In fact, the number of sites wrongfully blocked is incredibly large, and kept secret.

Arguably the worst way that censorware fails is that it lets an enormous amount of porn right through. So it induces a false sense of security in those who would rather not take the trouble to mind their own children.

An excellent further reference is PeaceFire

Check their "blocked site of the day" link. Today it is "The Blind Children's Center of Los Angeles". Dangerous stuff...

They also have links to reviews of most blocking software products.

Regarding the letter to the Family Research Council--I honestly wish you the best of luck there.

I also think you will probably have better luck having an in-depth conversation on the merits of Red Hat versus Slackware with the walls of your home than convince the Family Research Council of the fact the software is flawed and even blocks partisan material.

This is largely because the Family Research Council would consider this a feature and not a bug. :P

For those who aren't aware--the Family Research Council is, essentially, the lobbying arm of a group called Focus on the Family. FoF is probably the largest Religious Reich organisation in the US now (yes, even bigger than the Christian Coalition) and basically split off Family Research Council some years back in order to preserve their tax-exempt status. (As an aside, often state FoF branches will operate under different names to hide their affiliation with FoF.)

To be perfectly blunt, FoF and its affiliates have an agenda--to basically get as many raving fundamentalists in office as possible and to get the fundamentalist vote out, in hopes of getting enough people in office to essentially turn the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy. If you want to get a good idea about the "face" politics they support, just look at the political platform of (recently dropped out) presidential candidate Gary Bauer--this is the guy who founded Family Research Council when it was split off of FoF.

To these folks, pushing censorware is just another way of them "saving" us--whether or not we particularly want to be "saved" or not--and making the US into a "nice Christian nation again". (Many of these folks, by the way, also subscribe to "Christian Reconstructionism"--that is, the canard that the Founding Fathers actually meant the US to be a theocracy.) This is also why they tend to run "stealth" candidates (candidates who do not reveal their links to Religious Reich groups until elected) specifically to things like school boards--they want to get them young so they can indoctrinate them young, because they know that if they're gotten young they likely won't walk away. (This is also why they push homeschooling a lot, by the way, as well as vouchers for private schools--it's been the actual stated goal of many Religious Reich groups to get the school system totally dismantled so that kids are forced to go to sectarian schools.)

FoF's president, Bob Dobson, also makes a rather lucrative career selling books on "disciplining your kids"--usually involving a mix of censorship, forcing God down their throats, and liberal amounts of spanking the kids (part of the reason corporal punishment is NOT illegal in the US--or, for that matter, why the US is the only nation besides Somalia which has still not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child--is because fundamentalist groups like FRC lobby heavily against such laws, claiming that it'll take away their right to "spare the rod and spoil the child" or to "raise their kids as they see fit". In some cases where it has crossed the line into child abuse, some fundies have even argued in court that the state prohibiting them from beating the living hell out of their kids is a violation of their First Amendment rights to religion and that beating the hell out of their kids is actually a duty of their religion).

I happen to be a walkaway from what may be described as a "bible-based cult", and I can say that a fair percentage of the harder-core membership of many (if not most) Religious Reich groups in the US happen to be from churches that use coercive tactics on their membership. In other words, the ones who are doing the lobbying are more than likely brainwashed, they have probably already mentally defined anyone who isn't on their side and who dares to tell them about "flaws" in the software is directly in league with Satan (most Religious Reich groups, and most bible-based cults, DO have a very "us-versus-them" attitude--many Bible-based cults even go to the point of "deliverance ministry" (even your doubts are caused by demons, and the only cure is to "pray them out" or get an exorcism...rather like some of the nastier mind-control techniques in Scientology, actually)...). It is going to take a considerably larger clue-by-four than that to make them change their minds.

The FRC has a rather long record of lobbying not just for censorship, but for the entire Religious Reich platform. On occasion, this has even gone to slandering folks who speak against them...don't be surprised if you find possibly much of the town turned against you (I've read in previous reports that the town in general is quite conservative and beholden to the Religious Reich).

Some links so that the curious may learn more (and educate themselves thereby):

Religious Reich Database F section--also info on FoF

Extended coverage of FRC from above site

ACLU's open letter to FRC

People for the American Way speaks out against FRC campaign against hate-crimes laws that would protect gay/les/bi/trans folks

PFAW's "Who's Who on the Religious Right"--FRC section

here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and even here very recently, you can see what the FRC and the rest of the Religious Reich have to say to their own members

QRD's info on FRC--this also has a lot of quotes of the FRC in their own words to their supporters

Info on the FRC from the Matthew Shephard website--more FRC "in their own words" and at their worst

EFF's "Know Your Enemies--includes info on FRC

Walk Away--a good resource not only for those walking away from "bible-based cults" but also gives you a glimpse of the mindset these groups have--important in debating them. (The head of Institute for First Amendment Studies is himself a walkaway from a bible-based cult.)

And since I don't want to just talk about them without providing some way to fight the Religious Reich (otherwise I wouldn't have posted the damn warning about the FRC's agenda ;):

Arguing Against Faith--basically, how to debate fundies

A whole big mess of resources on how to fight the Religious Reich

Another mess of good links

and still another mess of good links

Skipp Porteous (walkaway and head of IFAS) writes on how to win against the Religious Reich

A really good expose of the Religious Reich, including info on the "code words" they use with their members

Defending Yourself Against The Religious Right

11 Things You Can Do To Fight The Religious Right--this is good for regular folks too. (As an aside--Domino's is no longer owned by fundies, but Coors Brewery is)

Major groups fighting the right wing:

EFF (as if you didn't need any more reasons to send that donation in ;)--they fight censorware initiatives)

Peacefire--the source for info on censorware, including how most censorware has just a wee bit of a fundamentalist agenda

Institute for First Amendment Studies--highly recommended. Includes info on the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Reich) including membership lists. Head of group is walkaway from a fundamentalist "Bible-based cult".

People for the American Way. Highly recommended is their "Right Wing Watch Online" section.

ACLU

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

The Interfaith Alliance--progressive religious groups united for tolerance

Rock Out Censorship--naturally concentrates on music censorship, but has really good info on other school-related issues, including filtering. (I'm a wee bit biased on this one, much as I am with IFAS--I have done volunteer work for ROC before. They're a damned good group, though.)

In any case, I wish y'all the best of luck in fighting them...I'm not sure you realised just what the hell you were getting into, but if there's anything we can do to help here on Slashdot, let us know.

... but these kinds of conversations are impossible here, short-circuited by angry kids often with anonymous pseuds

But then when I saw this series entering its third installment, I lost the faith. This doesn't read link an article anymore, it reads like a whinge (whinge n. Incessant or repetitive complaint)

This would have been better handled with a page on a private Katz webpage with a story something like:

For some time now, John Katz has been a controversial correspondent on SlashDot, regularly flamed by attention-seeking idiots. He has written an interesting series of articles about flame and his experiences in the furnace which you can find here, here and here.

Short point about filtering: Filters (sufficiently powerful ones, and definitely not ones where the list of filtered content is not available to you) let YOU decide what you want the net to contain. YOU are the ultimate censor, YOU can deny anyone access to your screenspace. YOU are in control. The internet can be whatever YOU want it to be, and if that means all references to the word FUCK are replaced with ":)", or if you don't want Microsoft to exist on the net (as far as you can tell) then that's YOUR choice, YOU can do it!

1. make their banlists open source
2. make their banlists accessible to the installers
3. don't contain some kind of agenda above and beyond blocking pornography

Those who check out www.peacefire.org may find that some decidedly odd sites are blocked, including:

• the National Organization for Women
• the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank)
• various gay/lesbian/bi support groups
• and, in one case, a newspaper that wrote an article critical of a particular internet filtering package.

The biggest problem with this is that, in the effort to "protect children" by purchasing blocking software, libraries have to submit to the censorship of a company... one whose ownership might have an axe to grind or a particular agenda to advance.

Hopefully a state judge can declare the filtering software violates the "open meetings law" that is passed in most states, as there is no public input to determine the sites to be blocked.

Meanwhile, wake up the neighbors, sound the alarms, and man the barricades!

This is more than mildly worrying- I have no objections iff censorware is applied by parents to their own computer- I see that comes under free choice- but if it is enforced as a knee jerk reaction, it can only increase the need for such sites as peacefire www.peacefire.org.

He who is prepared to give up liberty for security shall loose both, and deserves neither
Johnson

--You say it best when you say nothing at all
-Ronan Keating--
--Only the intellectually lost ever argue-

All that is needed to stop this censorware craze is for a library to install the software (as it seems one has already done), and a kid (I'm sure there would be pleanty of volenteers) to try to research something, say breast cancer (maybe one of her friend's mothers has it). She gets blocked

This happens already, with fair frequency. These incidents are the source of a lot of the anecdotes about censorware programs blocking the ACLU or the LPF (under "militant", I am not kidding) or gay-rights sites, not to mention sites with non-entertainment sexual content such as medical info. Some of these are on the Censorware Project and Peacefire.

However, no one seems to much care. It's not as though there aren't plenty of examples of people being blocked - there are lists on the above sites, neatly categorized for the benefit of any Crusading Journalist - but they're mostly ignored, spun by the censorware companies as "minor imperfections". My guess is that if a student did manage to get an egregious problem looked at by the official media, it would be presented as "Teen sues software manufacturer over porno access on Internet".

It's too bad you missed out on interviewing Bennett Haselton of Peacefire.

Peacefire is a very unique organization in that it is the only organization fighting online censorship that I know of that is run by and for youth themselves.

The Peacefire web site gives some great information on why government censorship and censorware programs are bad, in a very youth-friendly way. It also gives out info on how to grab the list of sites blocked by much of the censorware and info on how to disable most censorware products.

Bennett, on behalf of all Peacefire members, was also one of the plaintiffs against the original CDA.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has released "Filters & Freedom: Free Speech Perspectives on Internet Content Controls". The report is a collection of articles from anti-censorship organizations such as Peacefire, the ACLU, and the Internet Free Expression Alliance. The report is available from Amazon.

This article barely touches on the problems of censorware. The author seems to be under the illusion that if you make a "clean" server, as in one free of adult content, it won't get censored.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. Every censorware program that I know of simply blocks any website that their creators find objectionable -- and their creators are mostly right-wing Christians. Sites on homosexuality, Wicca, safe sex, and even the websites of prominent feminist organizations like NOW are all blocked by most censorware programs, as are any websites that criticize censorship, especially if they criticize whichever piece of censorware you're using.

Frankly, I would be more pissed off at your ISP if they DID create a "clean" server to avoid it getting blocked. Being Pagan myself, I would be pretty offended by the idea that I couldn't create a homepage that made reference to my religion on the "clean" server, but a Christian could. That would simply be wrong. In fact, your ISP could probably get sued for discrimination if they did that.

I don't see how any supporter of free speech can justify bowing down to censorware. That's giving them power over you, allowing them to dictate not only what people who choose to use their services see, but also allowing them to dictate what YOU put on the Web because you're afraid of being censored.

I say fuck censorship. Put the seven dirty words on your website, and say they're there just so you'll be banned by censorware. Then get all your friends to do the same thing. And monitor the ban lists of products like NetNanny and CyberPatrol. Once your site's banned, you can put a banner up: "This site banned by (censorware product)." Banners that say such things are available for download, though I don't recall where from.

See http://www.peacefire.org/ for more info.

1. Kids can't see movies they have permission to see
2. Kids can't see movies they don't have permission to see
3. Adults can't see movies they have permission to see
4. Parents, movie theaters, and governments feud over which of them gets to decide whether kids have permission to see movies (some parents have standards that are more restrictive than governments or theaters, and a few have standards that are less restrictive; in both cases, they get mad at their "usurped authority").

1. Government, or "voluntary" associations that are afraid of government regulation
2. Parents
3. The kids themselves

There are always more issues than the obvious few, and it's always worthwhile to try to point out what they are.

They've been doing this sort of thing for a while now; it's nothing new. See this CyberWire Dispatch from 1996 for the start of it all, in Brock Meeks's inimitable style.

Later, in 1997, someone mentioned the Cyber Patrol search engine in a USENET thread I was reading (since the Boston Public Library was planning to install it). Naturally, being a curious type, I checked out my homepage--blocked! I checked other pages on the site--blocked! I checked a web page set up by an 11 year old about teddy bears--blocked!

At that time, Pathfinder had a database dump they'd managed to acquire, complete with categorizations. Apparently every page on the site with the same three-character prefix was blocked. All user homepages were in the same subdirectory, so all user homepages were "eeevil porn".

After complaining, they removed the block "at the wrong directory", but wouldn't tell me which page below that had been blocked when I asked. Further complaints on USENET eventually resulted in an email response (which contained a forward of one of my USENET posts and a comment to the effect "tell him why it was blocked originally so he'll stop posting that we won't tell him") giving the one URL which had been blocked "in error" (and had finally been unblocked)--a song parody that contained the word "netsex".

Yup, that human checking that they tout as a feature really worked well in that case. Of course, this is the same software that was blocking the Electronic Frontier Foundation's web site at one point. See Peacefire's Cyber Patrol page for more details on the history of this program.

To really get around it, you'll want to find out which product you're up against, and then visit PeaceFire. They have instructions to get around a variety of different products, possibly including yours.

Jamie McCarthy

• The Evening Standard article on this says `E-mail messages can be read or sent using a personal password via BT's own e-mail service..'. How difficult would it have been to have a simple, generic POP3 client on the thing?

• Also from ES: `The Internet is searchable in the usual way, although screened to exclude sites that BT coyly calls "unsuitable".' Great: random acts of censorship by software, which is a Good Thing, honest. I wonder if competitors' webmail services are suitable viewing or not. Don't forget this is the company that searched subscribers' 'phone bills for calls to ISPs and then called them to flog their own internet service.

• Video e-mail - users can take a photo of themselves at the terminal and attach it to an e-mail. Yum. Does it also come with a built in, daemon controlled mallet I can use to LART anyone who tries to mail me one of those?

I had this letter published in my local newspaper two years ago, but it's just as relevant today. Thoughts, anyone?

(Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA, July 29, 1997, p. 6A)
Censorship is no remedy

Re: "Internet is uncensored in Q-C libraries," July 21

This front-page story suggests that Internet censorship is a panacea that protects children from the millions of pornographic web sites and other ailments of the Internet. This incorrect view is based on a public moral panic, created by an alarmist media. Blocking tools may block indecent web sites, but they also blacklist websites based on ideology alone.

Current blocking software blocks web sites from the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression, to Nizkor (a Holocaust remembrance page), to Pathfinder (Time-Warner's news and entertainment site), to the National Organization for Women. These web sites are blocked purely because they contradict the conservative ideology of the software developers. In fact, developers of the popular CyberSitter software are so paranoid that their software blocks access to Peacefire ( http://www.peacefire.org), an anti-censorship alliance tha thas publicly criticized the extent of CyberSitter's filters.

Because of the overreach of filtering software, the American Library Association ( http://www.ala.org) adopted a resolution on July 2. It stated that "the use of filtering software by libraries to block access to constitutionally protected speech violates the Library Bill of Rights (a 1948 ALA document affirming that libraries are forums for the free exchange of information and ideas)." The policies of the public libraries in the area fully comply with the ALA's resolution. In light of these facts, local libraries should be praised, not criticized, for their choice to implement full Internet access.

Ryan A. Park

Apparently, you don't trust your kids to be able to think for themselves, and form their own beliefs.

Sure, I respect your right to protect them from physical harm, and to have some control over what they do under your roof. But it's far from that and to supporting filtering software that impose a certain set of morals both on your kids and everyone else. It's also foolish to assume that the filtering software will only block "objectionable" material. You have no direct control over what they block.

Will you complain when someone decide to block gay rights sites?

What about womens rights?

Or atheist sites?

Or what about sites that try to inform you about the extent of the filtering? Such as Peacefire.

Lots of the filtering software already block all of the above.

What if they start blocking sites about non-christian religions?

Maybe you'd prefer it if they started burning books again?

• http://www.censorware.org
• http://www.peacefire.org

These sites present cases that the problem with censoring software isn't that they block porno sites, but that that they have a tendency to be overbroad and block lots of non-porno sites, for a variety of reasons.

... that, once this all turns out to be unworkable by normal means (and it will!), Aussie ISPs and/or the government don't decide, say, to just install CyberSITTER and be done with it.

Especially not that particular program. Of course, just before the filters go up, everyone could go access PeaceFire first, which apparently breaks their software. *smirk*

So I'm just going to be direct. Kids: if your parents are censoring your Internet access, go to http://www.peacefire.org/. Go there, or have a friend with uncensored access go there, and you can learn how to get around censorware. Most important, learn everything you can about computers, and then you can figure out how to do this for yourself. Then, use the information you get this way to think for yourself and learn everything you can about the world.

Don't forget:

Peacefire. They're into the anti-censorware, too, but the catch is that it's primarily run and operated by the people directly involved: high-school aged kids. ((And really intelligent and dedicated ones, not script kiddies and IRC weenies.)

Check it out. Lots of good stuff there.