Censorware Filters Cause College To Change Name

lee writes: "Beaver College voted to change their name because censorware filters prevent people from browsing to beaver.edu. Full story at http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/06/13/city/BEAVER13.htm. To add insult to injury, the same censorware filters would probably not let anyone view the story, either..." We mentioned this story previously; just following up with the actual decision.

Comments

What about Canada?

[Glytch]

Now that Beaver College is changing their name to "something else", does that mean that the new national mascot should become "something else" too?

Re:.edu in censorware?

[sholden]

But student pages tend to be under .edu.

They also tend to change often and contain material the censors would like to censor... like political views, rants about the evils of censorship, and of course the occasional pirated mp3 and even a picture of a naked person....

Re:Wouldn't this have been easier....

[SEWilco]

This college has been pointed out often to those companies. Obviously they did not fix it.

Or else the college is just using a censorware myth rather than facts.

Fortunately, the .edu domain is not crowded by domain speculators and businesses so it won't be overly difficult finding an available name. Unless they select an unfortunate abbreviation...

However, they'll have to create a home page with absolutely no mention of the old name. They'll have to hide an explanation of the history someplace down in an "About Us" or "About/History" page which will not be painful to have undisplayable. Or else display the name as an image...until someone's image sensing network gets trained to read letters in images.

Re:Libel

[titus-g]

If the University is willing to change it's name to bypass the filters then they must have some fairly good reason to believe that there is damage being caused by their being blocked.

The fact that they have contacted the Censorware companies (you'd hope so anyway), quite probably a number of times, could imply that as they are still blocked then it must be intentional.

If the companies involved don't have some easy way to respond to complaints like this, and make exceptions for sites that use words that could be seen as offensive in other contexts then there is something fundamentally wrong with them. As they are now (semi)legally required (not entirely sure about this) in some places then it is in the public interest that they also be open for external review. It's rather disturbing that they are actually willing to go to quite extreme lengths to avoid any public scrutiny (DeCSS), the innocent company has nothing to fear . . .

Wonder if this is the only reason they are changing the name anyway, given its connotations they probably already have problems with it, and are thankful for the excuse, and all the free publicity can't be doing any harm either.

Re:Libel

[titus-g]

Just for the record that doesn't say DeCSS in my post above. That would be silly DeCSS has nothing to do with Censorware. You are imagining things. Stop it.

Maybe you need to go out and get some fresh air? that would be nice huh? just laying there looking up at the clouds...

Re:.edu in censorware?

[prizog]

You mean other than .gov, .mil, and .int?
-Dave Turner.

Re:.edu in censorware?

[Twon]

Feh, yes. :) But those are kinda special-purpose (and ALSO shouldn't be included in censorware, for that matter.)

Too Far

[1DeepThought]

This just proves these things are going too far. This type of rubbish censorware must be stopped. If parents are worried about their children they should be parents and supervise them. Same with schools if they want to prevent their students looking at pornography then they should take some responcibility. If people are going to have children or become a professional who looks after them then they have to take the required responsibility. Be a good parent / carer and protect the children you are responsible for from thing you deem inappropriate. I am not even going to suggest what is an is not appropriate because I am sure nobody can agree.

Wouldn't this have been easier....

[luckykaa]

Asking Censorware to remove their site from the database. Its not like any subdomains are likely to contain anything too dodgy.

They've done some dispicable things in the past, but I'm sure they don't want it to be too unreliable.

Considering the number of uses for the word Beaver though (ounty, rodent.....) why did they choose this as a word suitable for censorship?

Re:Libel

[rifter]

Right but CPHack does, as it shows the list from Mattel's database and revealed some of the political chicanery they were involved in (blocking certain sites based on political rather than any sort of offensive content).

One other thing that needs to be considered, especially in the light of laws being passed to ensure that public schools, libraries, government offices, and possibly state universities be forced to install this software on all of their computers is that not only do these wares block political content while being an utter failure in blocking pronography, but it has been proven that they would for instance block a tripod site with the slightest email from a hotmail account regarding content it was carrying that happened to be on Dr. Laura Schlessinger's site as well, but the almighty Dr. Laura, an extreme advocate of this software, the legislation, and a prime spreader of FUD regarding the "evils" of safe sex advocacy, sex education, and homosexuality will NEVER be blocked for her hate speech.

Other sites with a similar bent, also advocates of the software, would be among those that carry content that should by all rights be blocked under the guidelines set forth by the software, but are not because they are rich, powerful, and again, advocates of the legislation that makes the software mandatory. Between Focus on the Family, Dr Laura, Jerry Falwell, etc. They are all cashing in on America's fears and destroying their political enemies simultaneously, and they are getting away with it because of the rampant ignorance in America which also happens to supply them with audiences.

At any rate, keeping our kids from being able to find information on Beaver U, and preventing their lucrative t-shirt sales :) is the least of our fears, and only the beginning of the problems with this software.

Incidentally, if yo really want to stop porn from coming on your desktop, you should install a filter that filters PORN (wow what a concept!). Maximum PC reviewed an excellent piece of software that reviews images for skin content and blocks the image based on a ratio. They tested it out, and it was fairly effective at stopping your kids from seeing anything they would not see normally on TV or in your lingerie catalogues anyway (ah Victoria). The software is called Eyeguard, and the shootout occurred in the back of the March 2000 issue.

Granted this does not stop pornographic stories, but if you are worried about that, well, Brother Falwell, I could direct you to turn in your Bible to some choice juicy passages. (I won't subject /. to that!)

Why is it that this is not the kind of software that is being foisted on our schools and such? Well it is very elementary in fact. The censorware that is being used has the ability to block whatever site for whatever reason. As usual, the advocates are crying "Pornography!" and "Save the Children!" but practicing the same kind of censorship they decry in other countries. It is outrageous, and only very resourceful free thinking individuals will be able to stop them.

Re:I would like to see a lawsuit on this!

[SidVicious]

I would too. But I doubt it is likely to happen. Being MOST filter's are in place by choice. Majority of public places do not have such things in place. And what would they sue off of? I chose to use the filter; now I can't access beaver.edu?

More censorware cock ups

[grahamsz]

The same problem arose in the UK quite a few years ago. Local schools in the district of Middlesex in england found themselves unable to view their own websites.

And we've got Essex (to be fair girls from those parts probably get enough jokes made to justify censoring them). There's Wessex, there's sussex, and don't even get me started on Scunthorpe.

Of course those are just simple misunderstandings... if they ever get round to localising it for say finland then they have to sort out places like Vitunlahti (which does literally mean "bay of cunt").

Oh well - good luck to them.

I wonder if this post would get cancelled too?

Filters should have...

[The Evil Beaver]

• A way of allowing access to a site on the filter's blacklist, and
• The blacklist open to the public, so that people can see what sites are and aren't blocked off. And it should be searchable by url, page titles, keywords and description <meta> tags, and words in the pages.

Of course, with evil faceless corporations that care only about money, do you think we will ever see this?
People wonder why I hate the system so much. Things like this are just part of the reason.
Say NO to capitalism.

Re:Libel

[grammar nazi]

IANAL, but the censorware companies couldn't be sued for libel. Beaver University would have to prove that 1) the libel damaged the university and 2) the libel was intentional.

It seems like it would be common decency for the companies to build an exception into there filters for Beaver University, but that's probably asking a bit much.

Doesn't it seem a bit drastic to change a whole university's name over a domain name filtering problem? I guess since they physically moved the university in 1962, it's not as big a problem to change the name either.

Censorware

[dagoalieman]

Being a college student, I sure as hell don't use censorware, so I don't know how much of what I say below about it is correct.

It would seem to me that the censorware is set up to block sites containing certain words, not really concepts. Think of the poor high school student having to do a report on this not-so-tasty roadkill... he'd never get it done. So why haven't the censowares set something up that says block these words, but always trust these domains? For example, block anything containing beaver, but if the site is found on beaver.edu or britannica.com or something like that, go ahead and pass it through the filter?

Also, what poor kid is looking at colleges at such an age that he needs censorware? If he's looking at colleges, I sure as heck hope he's ready to deal with such jokes, cause I guarentee he'll hear them at college!

And finally, does anyone know of a reason to even have the censorware block any .edu sites?? Since most colleges don't allow their students to run pr0n sites, I can't figure out a reason..

My $.02. After taxes, that's $.001. Round down.

Re:Censorware

[AndrewD]

The reason why this sort of thing is never going to get off the ground (absent, say, open-source free censorware*) is that the censors are in it to make money.

Brief digression on subject of making money: money in less money out equals money made.

Back to the thread. Coding additional filters, heuristic routines, human eyes over a database of sites: all these things (and all equivalent measures) cost money, money that we have to add to the "money out" side of the "making money" equation.

So we are almost certain never to see intelligent censorware.

*Not meant entirely in jest.

Libel

[gavinhall]

Posted by 11223:

I know this has come up before (prob. on previous discussion) but could the censorware company be sued for libel because of this?

Surely this is damaging the reputation of the school. Maybe we'll just sue the censorware companies until they go out of business (which would be nice).

Re:Libel

[AndrewD]

IANAUSQL, but intent is not a part of the tort of libel.

What follows is the UK version, with the little I understand of US Libel law:

To prove libel you have to show that the offending material was published, defamatory, and not true. This is a simplification, and here in the UK the defendant has to prove that the libel was true, rather than the burden of proof being on the Claimant.

Publication seems to be a no-brainer here, since the censorware - I've never seen one of these things running, but I imagine they return a message saying "inappropriate content" - is distributed to anyone prepared to pay.

Defamation is a simple issue: anything that tends to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking members of the public as represented by the jury. Not a problem here. The suggestion that a college is a porn site is clearly a nasty thing to say.

The falsehood of the statement isn't hard to deal with either.

The trick then is showing whether there's some or no justification for the libel. In the US, there's a "public figure" defence, which covers a libeller for all but outright barefaced malicious lying. There's also a possibility of some sort of "public interest" defence, in that the ware has to be absolutely guaranteed not to let little Johnny see anything inappropriate (although it has to be said that the only effective protection for children from porn is to teach them to be as disgusted by it as they ought to be) although I doubt the argument that it wouldn't be cost-effective to make the software smarter would wash in court.

That's as may be, but assuming the censorwaremongers don't get out on that score, they would have to pay general, special and possibly punitive damages. General damages is the sum the jury thinks adequately compensates the plaintiff, in so far as money can do it, for the harm suffered where that harm isn't just loss of money. Special damages are the sums that the plaintiff has had to spend or has lost as a result of the harmful act. Punitive damages are there to punish the tortfeasor, and while I can rattle off the criteria for English Law, the various US jurisdictions seem to operate on entirely different principles.

Censorware not solely to blame

[carlos_benj]

Previous articles put more emphasis on the embarrasment of alumni and crude jokes with censorware being the catalyst for the current discussions about a name change. In fact, prior articles seemed to downplay the effect censorware has had on the college and the enrollment numbers in this story seem to indicate the same. Reading between the lines I can see how the cesorware issue might have been used by the pro-name-change faction to convince other board menbers that blocking the name might have a negative effect on enrollment.

carlos

Re:I would like to see a lawsuit on this!

[www.sorehands.com]

Most libraries have filters and public schools have filters now.

The issue would not be either fraud or libel.

Fraud would be for selling a product that claims to filter porn/violence, etc. and filtering much more. In Mass. it could even be under a 93A, which is a consumer protection act.

Libel would be for saying that beaver.edu is in appropriate content.

Don't you love irony?

If it was CyberPatrol it would be more ironic since they filed a baseless libel claim against me. It was so baseless, when the judge (in a summary judgment motion hearing) asked what was libelous, they moved to dismiss.

I would like to see a lawsuit on this!

[www.sorehands.com]

This might make a nice lawsuit against some of the filter companies. Especially against filter companies that file lawsuits against people who crack the product so that people can see the list.

Animals

[Benwick]

Imagine that... all of those biology/science teachers in grade school were actually teaching us smut! If only we'd known.

Actually maybe there is something to the Censorware results. After all a beaver is an animal which finds a straight, stiff object, puts part of it's mouth around it, and isn't content until it falls down.

We wouldn't want kids to learn to think metaphorically...

.edu in censorware?

[Twon]

I find it surprising that the .edu TLD is included in censorware at all, given that it's the only one actively restricted to its original purpose. Thoughts?

Common Thread

[LoonXTall]

There seems to be a common thread running through censorware: it doesn't work.

Look at the recent /. story on image filtering. Now this. There have probably been plenty in the past, too.

If any of these companies had been watching the fall of others, they would know they need to add the following things to their algorithms:

• Better heuristcs, perhaps including context. The average 5-year-old isn't going to think of censored material when you say "beaver", so the word on a page or in a domain shouldn't be auto-censored. Since "wood" is likely to be part of a legit description, beaver+wood shouldn't be auto-censored either. But if the page also contains lots of (he || she || his || her || him || other censorwords), then it's safe to stop. This system does necessitate the censorware sitting between the network and the browser, but it's far more accurate. Since some caching software sits there already, this isn't impossible.
• Phrase recognition. "You must be 18 years old to enter this site" for example. Might already be there.
• Force access of "/" before subdirectories. As a consequence of the above; then you can make sure the 18-to-enter message isn't bypassed. A minor inconvenience to get into a geocities site, but worthwhile.
• You cannot censor a URL. They're too inaccurate (cinderella.com).

-- LoonXTall