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

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