Domain: peacefire.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to peacefire.org.
Comments · 195
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Re:No brute-forcing murky... or clear?
As I pointed out in the article, "Bruce-force attacks" is also listed under things that they will pay out up to 250,000 air miles for: http://peacefire.org/united-bo...
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Haselton doesn't understand his own survey
one experiment which suggested that people who answered a math problem correctly were more likely to disagree with an attorney general's dubious legal argument
Here are the questions from that survey. The only math-related question is
In school, how would you describe your skill level at math (and related subjects like physics and chemistry):
That's not a "math problem", and it doesn't measure math skills. If somebody self-reports as a math genius it could just be an instance of Dunning-Kruger.
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Re:Silly.
By the way, who is this guy that gets to editorialize on Slashdot?
Bennett Hasselton did something to advance Internet freedom back in the late 1990s -- he was involved with, maybe founded, peacefire, a movement against Internet filtering software in schools and libraries.
I am still puzzled how he got from being a teenage free-speech activist to being an adult denier of the rights of the accused and an outspoken apologist for the police state.
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Re: gold standard for responsible mailing
I'm on this particular mailing list, so I can confirm that he makes unsubscribing quite easier. Easier than any other list I've ever been on in fact. Every email has the following text as the first paragraph:
[You are receiving this because you subscribed to the Circumventor distribution list.
To unsubscribe from this list, click here:
http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/cv-unsub.html
or reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject.] -
Re:5 second summary
At the top of the emails:
[You are receiving this because you subscribed to the Circumventor distribution list.
To unsubscribe from this list, click here:
http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/cv-unsub.html
or reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject.]Seems pretty easy to me...
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Re:You are a spammer
His behaviors are _similar_ to those of a spammer in number only. Having visited his site: http://www.peacefire.org/ it seems that he gets his email list from people subscribing to it on his site. If I understand it correctly, people who sign up for this list are looking for regular updates to proxies so that they can avoid censorship. As proxies are discovered by governments or certain companies , they are blacklisted, and new proxies must be created and sent out to the interested masses:
"Of course, employees of blocking software companies have gotten on this list as well, so they add our sites to their blocked-site database as soon as we mail them out, but in most places it takes 3-4 days for the blocked-site list to be updated. So the latest one that we mail out, should usually still work. "
Now it could be that there is a better way of doing this, but it seems to me that no matter how this game is played, constant updates to users should be the norm...
Now that I think of it, perhaps a Firefox extension could do the trick. Signed extensions can be updated automatically. The extension could have obfuscated URLs that are decrypted with something like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/domcrypt/ and then wired in to automatically select an available proxy from the current batch. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it solves the "spam" problem. Also, it maybe easier for users and harder for censors? Crap... now I'm not going to get any work done...
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Re:gold standard for responsible mailing
Here's the latest email I got from Mr Haselton (with the email addresses changed though).
It's apparently very easy to subscribe. (Though it's not one click as you do need to enter your email address if you use the webpage option.) Is that good enough for you?From: Bennett Haselton at Peacefire.org <webmaster@yahoo.com>
Reply-to: "Bennett Haselton at Peacefire.org" <webmaster@yahoo.com>
To: webmaster@hotmail.com
Subject: new Circumventor, in a new format
Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:00:02 -0500 (07/12/12 10:00:02)
Envelope-To: webmaster@hotmail.com[You are receiving this because you subscribed to the Circumventor distribution list.
To unsubscribe from this list, click here:
http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/cv-unsub.html
or reply with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject.]Happy Holidays everybody -- your early Christmas gift enclosed:
https://www.kitepuddle.com/smart/
This Circumventor site is in a different format but it should work as well as the others. You *must* access this one with 'https' at the beginning of the Web address; it won't work with 'http'.
You can attempt to access the "regular" Facebook through this one, for example, but it might not work correctly; the most reliable way is to enter http://m.facebook.com/ on this Circumventor site, which will take you to mobile Facebook. Unfortunately Youtube still isn't accessible yet but we're working on it.
Don't waste too much time on those school computers - Santa's watching!
Bennett
***
"When I was in high school these twins got mono. They got stereo." -Demetri Martin
Peacefire.org
14615 NE 30th PL #10D, Bellevue WA 98007/blockquote. -
Whay would anyone have sympathy for Cybersitter?
Has everyone forgotten that they are authoritarian, sue-happy jerks already?
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This guy is biased and this article is a troll
As someone living and working in China, I can tell you that Bennett Haselton's size http://peacefire.org/circumventor/ is currently unreachable in China.
Once I use my personal proxy to get to his site, we find a link to a "Circumventor" site, http://www.mousematrix.com/. But after clicking the MouseMatrix link, it redirects to http://www.stupidcensorship.com/, which has the following message:
This IP address range has been blocked from accessing our server due to abusive traffic.
If you are a human who has been using our website, then you personally are probably not the reason that this IP address range got banned, so please send an email to bennett (at) peacefire.org with the subject line 'allow access', and include your IP address: 221.220.52.152
Sorry for the inconvenience and hopefully we can restore your access soon!
Now THAT makes a lot of sense. Block Chinese IPs from using your proxy service.
I think this guy is just an ignorant hater. Who is he? He has no technical background, and his ego is hurt when someone with an actual working solution comes along. He claims that proxies work, but they don't, not even his own. You can put thousands out there, but there are tens of thousands of people in China working for the GFW that can block them all, and that is the status quo.
Please don't give this guy any more time and front page space.
LS
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Re:I'm 12 years old and what is this?
Assuming I'm not feeding a troll (yes, I noticed your 4chan meme), peacefire and public librarians are your friends, zill.
And I have to disagree with you on who child pornographers are. Most child porn these days is filmed by the kids themselves. They just don't typically mean for the films to be distributed/consumed by pedos.
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It's only a matter of time...
... before the Iranian government finds http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/ and starts adding those proxy servers to their blocked sites list?
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Peace Fire
Isn't this why http://www.peacefire.org/ exists? They are devoted to helping folks get around stupid internet filters, including those of nations, companies, schools, and parents.
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Re:Better idea
It's a mailing list of web proxies. Browser-based proxies are popular with clueless people who don't know better ways of circumnavigating web filtering.
--- Mr. DOS
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Re:Statistical significance in surveys
You may be on to something here. It's a paid survey so respondents selecting the first option seems plausible. 27 our of 127 respondents rating themselves as having excellent math skills... I'll take that to also support the respondents pick the first option theory.
But wait, the first option of the survey was yes the defendant violated the law. First option pickers would have the opposite effect.
Full disclosure: I don't think the defendant violated the statute. I consider myself predisposed to do well in mathematics.
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Re:How did you phrase the mechanical turk question
The survey was linked to in the original post. You can see it here.
He presented only the line from the statute, and the DA's 1-line argument, not his own interpretation. In my opinion, he actually provided too little context to make an informed decision, not too much. -
Re:Not very good blocking software
At my college, games.slashdot.org is blocked.
Or a quick way to find something blocked is to simply google the title of a blocked websense category.
Or this page is quite likely to be blocked on most configurations : http://www.peacefire.org/censorware/WebSENSE/
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Re:Simpler solutionI never said I considered children to be the same as adults.
I said that hitting children was domestic violence which is never acceptable, and I said that children should be able to watch porn if they want to.
As to work, children are legally not allowed to work are they... They are forced to go to school, a place which most of them find boring, the teachers are often useless, and the other pupils sometimes vicious.
I'll direct you to a great essay on the subject of what children should or not be allowed to do.
http://peacefire.org/info/why.shtmlYes, it's true that teenagers don't pay a lot of taxes and are usually freeloading off their parents. But that's not because teenagers are lazy or dumb, it's because they're forced to work all day in school for free. If you took a bus driver's license away and made him study Biology and American History for 10 hours a day, he'd have to move back in with his parents too.
As for hitting them to get the point across...
What point? That they shouldn't watch porn? Why shouldn't they watch porn? Because it is sinful? What is sin and why is it bad? Because the bible said so? Why should I pay any heed to a book that is full of contradictions? Because you told me to and you will hit me if I don't... Great way to get your point across Dad.
Parents who use violence against kids are lazy parents and bad parents. They are lazy because they don't want to explain to their children why they should or shouldn't do something. They are bad parents because they are in effect teaching their children that violence is an acceptable substitute for rational dialogue.
Well, violence is not an acceptable substitute for rational and logical discussion, and it should not be a way of enforcing values and morals on children. -
Why blacklisting is a bad ideaThere seem to be similarities between the Wikipedia cabal blocking all edits from a particular IP range and spam blacklist services that recommend blocking mail from a particular range. As Jef Poskanzer wrote:
Well, I don't know why, but in practice every single DNS-RBL eventually comes under the control of power-hungry weenies. They start listing sites unreliably, and if you complain you find yourself listed. And there's usually no way to get off the list.
Sound familiar? From TFA, it appears that Wikipedia blocked an IP range not because of abuse on Wikipedia, but because someone expressed his own views on his own private website. Similarly spam blacklists have been known to block people for 'promoting spam' by hosting web pages, even when those actions are not correlated with sending messages you'd want to block. Web filtering programs often block pages which are critical of web filtering, just for expressing an opinion the filtering company doesn't like, not for hosting obscene material.
Is there any way around the 'power-hungry weenie' problem? I think some explicit policy on blocking could help. If any IP address is blocked from Wikipedia, there must be a link to an archived copy of the Wikipedia vandalism that was responsible for the blocking, and this evidence should be verifiable by anyone. -
Re:2 things
He also sends those nice Circumventor emails that let people behind blocking proxy servers (like me) gain access to websites that I want to visit.
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Re:May I be the first...
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Re:Obviously, the article is from a spammerIf you think Bennett Hazelton is a spammer, then you are obviously without clue. Look at http://peacefire.org/ if you actually want to know who he is and what he does.
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This again?
- Bonded mail isn't just a Hotmail idea as you appear to paint it, AOL (for example) use it too, yet you're content to simply use this as an excuse to lambaste Microsoft.
- You complain that SpamCop allows false reports; this may well be true, but you don't tell us how many reports are needed. Nor why your email may be reported; what are you doing to make subscribers complain, or make them assume the mail is spam.
- Your assertion that if you switch to RSS then Microsoft will block your RSS feed is utter nonsense. How exactly is this going to work? Some hook into the TCP-IP stack? Does Microsoft control the RSS reader? Even the one built into IE doesn't work like this.
- Is it legal to block email marked as spam until you pay? You know the answer to this. Their servers their rules. Adding a whitelist into the mix changes nothing and that mode of "attack" sounds like the old "free speech" argument employed by rather a lot of spammers.
- Mislabelling your mail is libel? So are you going to sue spam assassin as well? Your nonsense of reporting someone as a felon again seems like the escalation in arguments that spammers use. Marking someone as a felon has real world consequences, marking a mail as spam doesn't. You're attempting to compare someone thing me saying "Bennett Haselton wets his bed" with "Bennett Haselton molests small children".
You've had problems with Hotmail and MAPS before when you hosted in the same IP range as spammers. You had been offered solutions before (moving IP) but didn't want to. You've sued spammers and have been promoting your anti-spam idea & thoughts for years, but never bothered to implement them.
So frankly this comes off as sour grapes again on your part. The idea that you have some god given right to use space on hotmails (or anyone else's) servers, without ever addressing what causes reporters to think your mail is spam in the first place.
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What are Bennett Hazelton's credentials here?A bit of an irony here, since we're talking about authorities on a particular subject. My quick Google search turns up Hazelton as a twenty-something computer programmer who runs the Peacefire web site about filtering software and how to circumvent it.
That's all fine and good, but I'm not seeing how that qualifies him for an editorial on the Slashdot site. Or is he just a friend of an editor?
Not trying to troll here, honestly. I'm just curious why he was given the soap box to stand upon.
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Re:Starting at the desktop
Check Peacefire. Every week or so on the mailing list they announce a new web-based proxy. The current one is StupidCensorship.com. The code is available so you can run your own "proxy."
Still, your employer probably keeps logs. If you really must visit sites that you don't want your employer to know about (ie, jobsearch), do it sparingly or just wait until you get home. You could also set up OpenVPN and run that over a proxy server and browse from your home network. -
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.The irony if that happens is that they would be blocking their competitors websites!
Read about the non-filtering proxy filter on internetfilter.com at peacefire's blog:
--jeffk++
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Re:Shrug
Good call... sort of....
I happen to attend Lee university in Cleveland, Tennesee. It is located on the orrigional campus of Bob Jones University. In some ways -- though not as rabidly -- Lee has maintained some of the "conservative" nature that was -- and still is -- Bob Jones U. To that effect, they use a product called iPrism by St. Bernard technologies. It censors what they would considder offensive content such as adult entertainment sites, but it also blocks thigs such as the nmap site (http://insecure.org/nmap/) or http://peacefire.org/ incorrectly as "anonymizer" and blocks many pieces of OSS as "hacking tools." In some ways, the way people here view technology are frighteningly simmilar to: http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.4 2056.2147.html . Also, as of late, they have implimented a new security device that requires Windows users to install a product called "Cisco Clean Access" in order to gain access to the school's network. "Clean Access" forces users to install and use AV software and ever single Windows Update within a short period of its releas -- sooner than any normal power user would normally dare to install an update for fear of breaking something -- in order to validate the machine for access. It is intended in the near future to require Mac and Linux users to run some sort of AV software as well -- even though Macs have no viruses and Linux users tend to practice "safe computing." At the moment, the system is already performing Nessus scans on machines on the network with little warning of this.
To conclude, the use of internet censorware is problematic and generally a bad idea regardless of the intent unless there is only a specific selection of networked content that needs be available -- such as is the case of networked cashregisters at FYE where they only have access to parts of the FYE web site. -
Re:Such hypocrisy
Read around on http://www.peacefire.org/. Again, think about it.
Sorry, can't. That page is blocked by the filters here at my high school. -
Such hypocrisy
For years, I've found it astounding the amount of discrimination modern kids face. At school, their civil rights are limited; High school students are subject to what, if placed in any other context, would be blatantly illegal search and seizure. Federal law required that internet access at public high schools (and, for that matter, at public libraries) to be filtered for inappropriate content.
This is really no different. Many Americans were furious to discover that the NSA had recently obtained their cell phone records, yet how many EFF members will raise a complaint against this system? None. Why? Because it's OK to discriminate against kids & students.
Think about it. Afraid your kids will be negatively influenced by some content on the internet? Were you warped by exposure to foul language, racism, and pornography when you were in high school? I bet I know the answer to both of those questions, and I bet they're not the same.
Read around on http://www.peacefire.org/. Again, think about it.
Disclaimer: For what it's worth, I'm 20. It's been years since I endured any discimination because of my age.
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They have no right.
Public schools should not use in school punishments for actions one takes outside of school. However, American school boards don't care much for the constitution. Administration views anyone who fights censorship and helps kids learn freely as more threatening then any violent offender. Your fried is lucky he wasn't expelled for running a proxy like I was. People concerned with these issues should get involved with peacefire.
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Re:One more key point - lack of security"Javascript has never had the issues of being able to install files on the local machine, or anything similar, that's all done via activeX which is why the mozilla family of browsers is safe from this vector. So far, the worse JS security issues is that it can popup a billion windows and kill a machine."
No, with all due respect, you are very much mistaken. Javascript has had horrible security issues, which keep popping up (pun intended). Not quite as bad as MS Windows, but certainly a contender.
"Show me an attack vector that works with just javascript."
Ok, since you didn't qualify your statement, here are a few from a quick google search, since I'm lazy. Note the email-related ones. Study the issues around javascript (including its architecture) if you want more information.
http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9704
/ 0016.html
http://www.peacefire.org/security/hmattach/
http://esj.com/security/article.asp?EditorialsID=8 95
http://www.opera.com/support/search/supsearch.dml? index=781"but for the adverage person, remote is better"
I've already mentioned that what most people do leaves them open. Most people don't understand security. And most people really don't care. Your original question was directed towards myself. Anyone calling themselves a security expert who blindly lives by depending on remote maintainence is one who is an easy target. Knowledgeable users know how to protect themselves. And the best actually do, since the loss of reputation capital is significant (see how Kevin Mitnick got taken down the last time).
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Bennett Haselton?
The same Bennett Haselton of peacefire.org? The same Bennett Haselton with which I've exchanged email after email trying to get him to understand that, while it is his right to provide proxies to get around web filters, it was also my right to block what *I* want on *MY* connection? The very same Bennett Haselton who REMOVED me from the stupidcensorship mailing list (the one email account I was using anyway) so I would no longer receive notifications of new proxy web pages?
That Bennett Haselton?
Too bad for him that I'm signed up to that list with so many email addresses that he'd have to completely shut the list down to be 100% sure I'm not on it any longer.
If this is the same Bennett Haselton, well, I couldn't give two-shits less about *anything* he's got to say. As far as I'm concerned, he can kiss my shiny metal ass. -
Re:not censored
1. Very likely. All the lists are flawed. We use it as a covering system. 'At least we tried!' type thing.
2. Not as likely. Our base requires the signoff of the commander of the requester's unit as well as the comm squadron commander to open a site.
3. Oh, I agree here, just checkout Peacefire.
Like I said, I once was one of the admins for the filtering. For the USAF not the marines, but it's much the same. -
Breaking Through
If anyone is still looking for a way to let someone skirt the blocks:
This looks like a typical proxy method, but NPR was running a story this morning on Circumventor - a way to gain access to blocked content by using an outside proxy.
I wish this were a "solution" but it's just another bathtub distillery. -
They already have a program that does this
and its available at http://www.peacefire.org/
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Re:Hardly surprising from this end
I worked at a company where WOXY had been blocked as "pornography". Perhaps a song by the New Pornographers had been on the playlist when the company crawled the site. Or perhaps the filters are clueless and easily flummoxed.
... does anybody else remember when censorware was a big deal? What happened? -
Anti-Spam Blocking
"Prior to December 2000, it was a little-known fact that some large Internet companies were blocking their customers from accessing spammers' Web sites. In fact, the two biggest companies which engaged in this practice, AboveNet and TeleGlobe, were blocking sites on a secret "blacklist" that included not only spammers, but sites selling spam software or doing business with spammers. (The Internet Billing Company, or IBill, was blacklisted once because some of their clients were spammers, even though IBill was not connected to the spam.) AboveNet stopped blocking Web sites immediately after Slashdot ran a story about their practice, but TeleGlobe is still blocking Web sites on the boycott list. These are not like ISPs that sell "family friendly Internet access" to customers who sign up to request Web sites to be blocked; these companies are selling high-end Internet connections to businesses and third-party resellers, without disclosing that Web sites on the "boycott list" are being blocked. When a downstream user tries to access a blocked Web site, they simply get an error message from their browser saying "This site is not responding", so they never find out that any blocking is being done."
source
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Surprised nobody has mentioned this
http://www.peacefire.org/ has a couple ways to get around chinese blocking too.
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restrictive blocking software
its never very good and theres usually a way round it, quick googling throws up this
http://peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumven tor-instructions.html
cant remember the names but im sure ive ran across various other software that does similar things -
plenty of (mostly) free proxies out there
Anonymouse surfing: http://www.anonymization.net/ http://www.anonymizer.com/ http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/ians/ http://www.guardster.com/ http://www.antiproxy.com/ http://www.attackcensorship.com/ http://proxify.com/ http://www.anonymous.as/ http://www.mezzy.com/s-index.php http://anonymouse.ws/anonwww.html http://unipeak.com/ http://www.urlencoded.com/ http://www.behidden.com/ Full system proxy systems: http://tor.eff.org/ http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ http://internet.flashback.se/ http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html http://www.privoxy.org/ http://www.silentsurf.com/ http://www.peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circ
u mventor-instructions.html Ordinary proxies: http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/firewall/cou ntry.aspx/Sweden-se http://www.proxy4free.com/page1.html http://www.publicproxyservers.com/page1.html http://www.proxz.com/ http://www.digitalcybersoft.com/ProxyList/ http://www.freeproxy.ru/ http://www.samair.ru/proxy/ http://www.multiproxy.org/anon_proxy.htm http://www.rrdb.org/ http://www.free-proxy-servers.com/ http://www.proxylists.net/ http://www.proxywhois.com/anonymous-proxy-list.htm http://www.openproxies.com/ Plenty, as said. -
Re:How to Help?
If you have a connection that's always on and Win2k or XP, you could run a proxy. See here for instructions on that.
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Use the Circumventor.
PeaceFire distributes a free program called the Circumventor which can be used (by running it on a server in a free country) to safely and securely proxy out of a firewalled nation like China.
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Speaking Of Domain Hijacking....How would you feel if your webmaster maliciously took your web-site offline, then, when you demanded its return, put up a site attacking your company at your old URL? It happened to a group I was involved in, the Censorware Project, currently at http://www.censorware.net [censorware.net]. The purpose of this essay is to put the behavior on record, and to give you some impressions and inferences about it.
The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein [sethf.com], Bennett Haselton [peacefire.org], Jamie McCarthy [mccarthy.vg], Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time -- around two years as I recall -- we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other censorware products.
Even though two of us were attorneys -- Jim and myself -- we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along. Mike also served as webmaster of the censorware.org site and did substantial work [sethf.com] for the group, including writing contributions to several of the reports and lead authorship of at least one. Seth was the source [sethf.com] of our decrypted censorware blacklists [sethf.com] and managed many technical tasks, but later felt he had to leave the group because of the increasing prospects of a lawsuit [chillingeffects.org], particularly under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued.
Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer of 2000, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight from Jim Tyre was to take the site down for a week. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is now closed." [sethf.com] I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.
After Seth created a partial, text, mirror, Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.
I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about a five week period, I wrote Sims several more emails asking him to delete my name from the site if he wasn't going to transfer the domain. Again, I received no reply.
In November 2000, Sims took the Censorware Project site offline again, with a message saying "Due to demands from some of the people who cont
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Total Hypocrisy, MichaelWow, total irony here
Do you realize how hypocritical that Michael is posting this story when Michael himself hijacked censorware.org from the people it belonged to? I reproduce the story here (you can read the original here:
h2>Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalency by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.netHow would you feel if your webmaster maliciously took your web-site offline, then, when you demanded its return, put up a site attacking your company at your old URL? It happened to a group I was involved in, the Censorware Project, currently at http://www.censorware.net. The purpose of this essay is to put the behavior on record, and to give you some impressions and inferences about it.
The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein, Bennett Haselton, Jamie McCarthy, Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time -- around two years as I recall -- we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other censorware products.
Even though two of us were attorneys -- Jim and myself -- we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along. Mike also served as webmaster of the censorware.org site and did substantial work for the group, including writing contributions to several of the reports and lead authorship of at least one. Seth was the source of our decrypted censorware blacklists and managed many technical tasks, but later felt he had to leave the group because of the increasing prospects of a lawsuit, particularly under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued.
Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer of 2000, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight from Jim Tyre was to take the site down for a week. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is now closed." I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.
After Seth created a partial, text, mirror, Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.
I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about
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Michael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral EquivalenMichael Sims, Domain Hijacking and Moral Equivalency by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
How would you feel if your webmaster maliciously took your web-site offline, then, when you demanded its return, put up a site attacking your company at your old URL? It happened to a group I was involved in, the Censorware Project, currently at http://www.censorware.net. The purpose of this essay is to put the behavior on record, and to give you some impressions and inferences about it.
The Censorware Project was originally an informal collective of six people who collaborated online to fight censorware: Seth Finkelstein, Bennett Haselton, Jamie McCarthy, Mike Sims, Jim Tyre and myself. Several of us had never met or even spoken on the phone, yet for some time -- around two years as I recall -- we had a remarkably easy collaboration. There was no funding, no hierarchy, no titles, not even project managers. Someone would suggest a project and take the responsibility for a part of it, others would sign up for other elements, and proceeding this way we got a remarkable amount of work done, including reports on X-Stop, Cyberpatrol, Bess and other censorware products.
Even though two of us were attorneys -- Jim and myself -- we never incorporated the group or wrote a charter or any contracts among ourselves. Mike Sims was obliging enough to register the domain, just as other members paid for press releases and the other incidental expenses which came along. Mike also served as webmaster of the censorware.org site and did substantial work for the group, including writing contributions to several of the reports and lead authorship of at least one. Seth was the source of our decrypted censorware blacklists and managed many technical tasks, but later felt he had to leave the group because of the increasing prospects of a lawsuit, particularly under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). After Seth left the group, the remaining five continued.
Robert Frost said that "nothing gold can stay," and the Censorware Project was no exception. Over the summer of 2000, Mike Sims' reaction to a perceived slight from Jim Tyre was to take the site down for a week. He sent us mail at the time saying something like "The Censorware Project is now closed." I replied to him that, given that the group was a collective and we all had an interest in its work product, the domain, and the goodwill it had achieved, the decision was not his to make. Sims did not reply.
After Seth created a partial, text, mirror, Mike put the site back up a week later without explaining, let alone apologizing for, his actions. Given his continuing failure to answer any email from me (and I think from others) and the overall signs that Sims thought the group was exclusively his, I wrote him several emails requesting that he turn the domain over to Jamie or Bennett, as I felt we could no longer trust him to administer it. We also found out during that time that important email from people trying to contact us, including members of the press, was not being answered by Sims, nor being forwarded to other members.
I ultimately became exasperated that my name was listed as a principal on what had now become a "rogue" site I had no control over. Over about a five week period, I wrote Sims several more emails asking him to delete my name from the site if he wasn't going to transfer the domain. Again, I received no reply.
In November 2000, Sims took the Censorware Project site offline again, with a message saying "Due to demands from some of the peo
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Re:Can someone repost?
Try a CGI Proxy w/ SSL. Very few companies block SSL, as it is required for banking and online shopping.
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Re:I'll tell you what government
Q: What site took away their power to do this?
A: http://peacefire.org/ -
Moderate yourself
Superglue + Ethernet port = No shit happens
But to be completely honest, I am a student myself, and I get completely pissed off by all the security measures at my school. Sure, it stopped/made it harder to do things such as what your trying to stop, but ultimately if you try hard enough, anythings possible. Ever heard of Mandrake Move?
At my school they disabled right clicking. It seriously impares one of my classes (digital design), which slows down the class because the teacher has to explain how to copy and paste without right click (yeah, we have got some retards in my class).
Anyway, ultimately, its your problem. You can try whatever you want, but there are so many proxies and there are many other ways to get around it anyway. One day, your students will find a way around it.
Good luck anyway, and I hope you decide to just more closely watch your students.
The only fool proof way to stop the internet is to disconnect.... -
M$ gave 'em to InfoSpace
Micro$oft shared Hotmail addresses with InfoSpace.com, where these were available for "harvesting" (that sounds sooo quaint!). Somehow these addresses ended up getting spam- even if they were never used. Source
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Most of us are against Censorship but..
If Google has censored some content
,it must be for a good reason. I don't think google would/could be bullied into censoring something.
All of you guys interested in anti-censorship should check out peacefire -
Where's the follow up with Symantec?
I'd certainly like to see the official line on this one. Probably a bit like Cisco - "Hey, anything to make a buck, right? We don't have no scruples." Similar issues appeared with web censorware which were illuminated by the organization, PeaceFire a few years back. Not only were the censorware lists blocking "legitimate" websites but also blocked sites that could (without imagination) be construed as agendas beyond the scope of "protecting children" against sex. Outsourcing your software increases the risk of being subjugated by others. It is unfortunate that we need so dearly the protection that antivirus software provides - but we're putting our trust in corporations that do not hold honor over profit (few do, nothing special about this one.) The same struggle with subjugation appears in the Digital Rights Manglement issues, where Microsoft chooses what you do with your computer. Fortunately as we've seen with the adware war, Freegate and friends will continue to evolve. Let us hope that the antivirus vendors have as much trouble blocking Freegate as they do catching legitimate malware! Bill