Slashdot Mirror
Censorware Flaws Shown To COPA Commission
The reports themselves make for the most interesting reading; I'll just summarize them here:
FamilyClickThe following sites were blocked on the "18 or older" setting, in other words, the software thinks they were too violent, pornographic, hateful, etc. to be seen even by adults:
- AIDS Day 1997: China Responds to AIDS;
- Diccionario del VIH/SIDA (a dictionary of AIDS-related terms, in Spanish);
- Camp Sussex (a summer camp for low-income children);
- Triangles and Tribulations, an essay on the persecution of gay men and woman in Nazi Germany;
- "Homosexuality: Fact and Fiction", from the Christian Research Journal;
- genealogy of Alice Ficken (her last name means "fuck" in German).
and sodomy laws, pro-family protests of pornography, a defense of Wicca, etc.
Cyber SentinelThe software's PR blurb says: "At the core of the technology is an advanced recognition engine developed by Security Software Systems engineers (patent pending). This proprietary engine is very fast, very low overhead, and is very accurate."
Blocked sites include:
- CNN.com homepage (because of the story headline "Naples museum exposes public to ancient erotica");
- searches for the term "COPA" on CNet, Wired, Time, and USAToday (because each results page had at least one filthy headline, such as "Back to court for Net porn law");
- The American Family Association (the right-wing group pushing for censorware in libraries and schools, including those surrounding the Slashdot Geek Compound);
- biographies of COPA Commission members Stephen Balkam and Donna Rice Hughes - because they both graduated "magna cum laude" (think about it);
- and, my favorite, the list of papers presented at the COPA Commission!
This was a more interesting test; Peacefire took a sampling of 1,000 domains from the beginning of the .com zone file, and tested which ones that SurfWatch blocked. (Yours truly wrote the one-liner perl script to find sites that respond to ping; for that, Bennett almost named me co-author before I talked him down from his caffeine high.)
SurfWatch claims that it "adds over 400 new sites to the database every day, while also removing sites that no longer exist on the Internet or that have changed content. Our site database is the most accurate and reliable filtering you can find."
Of the 147 domains blocked, most (96) were clearly "under construction" and were ignored for the test. Of the remaining 51 blocked domains, 42 of them, or 82%, were erroneous blocks.
The 42 supposedly pornographic sites include:
- A-1 Dog Grooming and Kennels;
- American Builders;
- Waterbeds Online;
- A-1 Diamond Limousine;
- Poxy Coat;
- A-Antiques.com.
SurfWatch, for the record, is the software that the American Family Association (see above) and Family Research Council tried to force the Geek Compound's local library to install, earlier this year.
While I applaud Peacefire's (and Slashdot's) efforts to defeat censorware on a practical front, I'd like to (again) point out:
1) Even if the software could implement one person's definition of "obscene" 100% accurately, it couldn't do so for more than one person simultaneously.
2) Even if we all agreed that something was obscene, keeping someone (who is old enough) from looking at it is STILL WRONG.
We don't want to move the censorware battle to a place where they keep getting more accurate and we keep pointing out the remaining flaws. We want to start discussing where it is appropriate to target censorware, if anywhere. For instance, I am totally against any kind of filtering in a library or on all ISPs (that is, I don't mind of ChristSoft wants to implement a filter for their members, but I don't want ALL ISPs to start doing it).
Just imagine 5 years from now. FamilyClick is 100% accurate in filtering out those items they think are obscene. They come to Slashdot and say "happy now?" We say, "well, it's accurate---but we don't like it." Too late.
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Why people would think its anythign else is beyond me. Every time I read these articles I tend to shiver, and then sigh. Shiver because this stuff is popular, and sigh because most people are clueless about the true motives.
You don't want your kid looking at smut? Turn off MTV. You don't want your daughter becoming a devil worshiper? Try instilling a religion You don't want your son smoking pot? Teach him what it does to you.
Something is seriously wrong when you allow technology to be the parent. Nuff said.
Witty quotes suck.
Personally, I like the way the library in my town handles it. If you are below the age of 18 and you have a library card, on the back it specifies whether you are allowed to use the computers or not. Under that, it has two boxes that you can check off. One for censorware, and one for unrestricted access. This way, it is your parent's choice, and NOT Big Brother's choice whether you see the internet in its full glory. IIRC, most of the children have it enabled, so this shows you that most parents want it on anyway, for fear of their precious children seeing something naughty, like BREAST cancer.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
Happily reading Slashdot behind SurfWatch.
This practice of filtering sites though humourous for its out right hypocritical stance on human rights, is exteremely serious. When someone takes the time to create a program so that an individual can be sheltered from the "bad" things on the internet, an entirely new can of worms is opened. For instance who has the right to tell me what is offensive, I personally am offended by donald duck, he never wears pants, does this give me the right to ban donald duck from the internet? no so where do these filters get off telling me what I can look at online? I am appalled by the water-fowl nudity in disney films but i am not censoring your movie selection. dont stop me from getting to my geneology. thank you very much helga fricken
You wouldn't be advocating government sponsored censorship, would you?
James
Ah, but you see, the word "censorware" is really a misnomer. You see, although it can be used for censorship, it usually isn't. The primary market for these products is for parents to use in their homes, and for schools to use on their private computer systems. That's not really censorship, because the people using it are completely within their rights (Parents can decide what their kids see, same with the school system), and, more to the point, they're only controlling a certain computer or set of computers. It's no more censored than, say, a newspaper article that only gives one side of the story. Information may be missing, but you can always get to it.
Censorware is flawed, in that it doesn't work. I don't think it ever will, given that everyone's definition of inappropriate is different, but if someone decides a certain product is 'good enough,' then they might as well go for it -- it won't destroy your precious constitutional rights.
The thing I think we ought to watch out for is federally-mandated censorware. That's where the possibility of actual censorship comes up.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Unfortunately, it's not like there's a good base list out there that could be used as a seed.
Let me suggest (hopefully without getting flamed) Apple's iReview. They supposedly have teams of people working on listing decent sites. Of course, a list of "bad" sites would still have to be compiled somehow, but the iReview list is a start...
If we set up TLDs for porn sites, most sites would move right over -- after all, they love any kind of advertising they can get, and being able to say that their domain ends in .xxx will attract them. (there would have to be a rule that, say, the owner of a .xxx domain can't use the corresponding .com domain to redirect users, but that could be dealt with.)
The only sites you'll have left are the sites that spammers put up on geocities and them hope somebody gets to before they're taken down, and other similarily shady sites. I really don't know how prevalent they are (I get the emails and so forth constantly, but when I've tried the links they're already down.) so I don't know how much of a problem that is. Still, blocking the .xxx domains would give you a far greater accuracy rate than the censorware products available now.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
If you let people vote on sites, it's rather easy to screw sites over. Say I set up a site about my personal Pagan (Neo-Pagan if you so insist) beliefs, and a large group of fundamentalist [Insert Other Religion] decides that offends them and calls upon all their members to vote my site down?
:)
Otoh, I'd love to see Linux users vote www.microsoft.com down!
)O(
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
If I'm afraid that any potential kids/dependents of mine might see something online that I would consider inappropriate, relying on any flavour of RoboBlock is not the way I want to go. Instead, I'd rather set up a logging facility on my browser. I'd make it clear to them that "my computer, my rules." If I find that they spent a half hour on feelmytits.com (fictional example - I hope), they're going to be confronted about it. In other words, active parenting instead of relying on external morality.
When I worked security, locking the doors wasn't our main job; the employees could do that and it wouldn't prevent determined criminals. Our job was to detect intrusion, to deter it if possible, and to report it after the fact. Not a bad strategy in this situation either, I think.
I have some questions, though. Is there an application for home browser logging of this variety? In reference to other messages here suggesting a consensus-based rating system, do you think an ability to cross-reference a log with such a list (to spot those non-obvious domains) might be useful? And finally, any refinements of this strategy to suggest?
Thanks for your time.
-TBHiX- ;)
Have an amoral geek come down on your head like the Fist of God, all for the low low cost of one spam message!
Why the hell he suddenly got thousands of hits on his page...
-- My Weblog.
Very good points, and a good quote too, I think I'' copy them next time someone asks me about any of the above... Thanks Jainith
Time for another sneering article about how filterware blocks (doesn't block) some sites that Jamie and Michael feel it shouldn't (should) get. And decalrations that since it didn't work the way they think it should, such software obviously could never be of value.
Uh, yeah. I got a 404 error a few minutes ago -- clearly these so-called "web servers" are a waste of everyone's time. And those idiots in Congress want to spend money on giving schools Internet access!
Face it, what Peacefire and the YRO crew are opposed to is the possibility that anyone could sit down at any computer and be prevented from accessing anything. If that's what they think, fine. But say that instead of, "Look! A chicken breast recipe is blocked! What a bunch of morons!"
The fact is that filterware is going to be used. No matter how many (+5 insightful) posts we get declaring "When I have kids, I"ll let them view all the porn they want." there is simply no way that some schools and libraries (and parents) aren't going to use filters. And when those filters suck, and can't be configured to support what parents think is or isn't appropriate for their children, the tech community will have its own self-absorbtion and smugness to blame.
Of course the public proxy server would be the next thing blocked huh?
-- A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong!
The problem with making a .sex TLD is that you make it far too -easy- to regulate. Entire countries could just outlaw .sex without a blink. THe way legislation is passed in the US, we could have it effectively blocked, and upheld in the courts, as unprotected speech. Because it would encompass _ALL_ pornography, the courts wouldn't have to differentiate. Period.
As much as I don't necessarily dig porn, meshing it in with everything else on the net preserves its right to be a sought medium. If you set it as a .sex, you take away that right. And that, flat out is wrong. Whether you dig porn or not.
Witty quotes suck.
I think the point was raised that this would be a horrid mistake, as something like 3-4 companies run the majority of all the porn sites on the net. The namespace would be bought up so quickly that it would be useless after a few months, except to see the pages of a select few companies (i.e. those with money).
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I was thinking of posting a comment containing a few selected words that would cause /. to be censored by all of these sites -- but I decided not to. To those of you who want to do so, don't.
Why?
Because you can go much, much further.
In every online bulletin board you can find, add to you, add a few selected keywords and a link to a site explaining what the point of this is. That site, for whomever feels like putting it up, should contain a succinct description of what our plan is (put keywords into enough web pages that everything is blocked, showing the true usefulness of censorware) plus links to the EFF blue ribbon campaign, peacefire.org, censorware.org, and a brief description of why censorware is bad.
Don't bother with slashdot -- it's just one of those "hacker sites", after all. And I mean hacker the way the general public uses hacker. Hit the big sites. Hit ZDNet. If Disney has talkbacks, hit them hard. Everywhere you post, put that in your signature and watch the success rate of censorware plummet.
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Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Can we not implement a freenet type decentralized, community based voting mechanism for web sites. This way the majority of the net users would vote on how a site is classified rather than a corporation... C.
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Never let truth get in the way of marketing
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
despite what most trolls think, for the most part it does. If you give stories time to sort themselves out, and read at 1 (or 2) the moderation system seems to work fairly well, or at least MUCH better than the site would be without it.
Like any system it is quite abusable once you know the rules, and have a reason to do so.
--
+&x
--Mike--
I am putting together a web site on the plant genus Crinum (www.crinum.org) which will contain numerous documents my grandfather has written on the subject (which I am currently transcribing). I am certain that just about every censorware program would block it just because it goes into the genetics, and many of the terms (such as leaves being erect for one species and not for another). They'll also probably complain about the numerous latin terms encountered, plus the fact that it describes plant ovaries, among other plant anatomical descriptions.
Even though none of the documents could be considered even remotely pornographic, I would bet that the site would end up being blocked.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
some censorship is good (gasp). child porn for example is sick and degrading.
but banning ideas? thats wrong.
Upeo
It is hard to believe that so many slashdoters miss the point of censorware. Censorware was never intended to be used in public settings, such as libraries, but in private homes. Parents have every right to protect their children from that which they deem unacceptable; they should be given an effective tool that can facilitate this. One thing I find unfortunate is that no one mentions RSCAi ratings. This was a system of page ratings coded into the page. The browser (IE at least) then parsed out that line of code and determined if the page was permitted based on selections by the administrator to determine what was acceptable and what was not. It is truly a shame that this never caught on, it was a method of ratings that really worked.
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
Now you have a different problem. Lots of parents will choose a censorship package at home, which I also have no problem with so long as they do teir research, But I am not about to try to force them to. Then, they'll send their kids to school, and complain about the agreement because the school doesn't provide them with a way to block Live Goat Porn or whatever and still use this valuable research tool we call the net. I have been _required_ to use the net for many different research projects at school. The approach my high school takes is a fairly simple one: They log everything, make rules against innapropriate things, and use the logs to substantiate if needed. I believe there was only one discreet case last year where this was used. (Three people sending inappropriate email through the world's best anonymous mail service. I can't claim to agree with the practice, and I've voiced my objections, but there's not a whole lot I can do. It seems more reasonable than many schools.
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I took a look at Camp Sussex and other than the name of the camp itself, which you think would also cause problems for 1000's of British sites, the only thing I could find that possibly trigger a filter was in the source.
On the main page of the site, there is a picture of 3 girls at the camp, the filename for the picture is girls1.jpg this seems like pretty weak evidence to block the site on though.
There is also the possibility that the server hosting the camp's website also hosts a pr0n site and that the camp is blocked because of its IP address.
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I agree totally. I've said it once, I've said it a million times, the thought that a judge could do a better job of setting Internet policy than you or me is absurd.
Well, it's not like conception is a problem or anything.
Seriously.
One thing these family council people don't seem to realise is that most almost all of the people who sell porn are trying to sell it to people over age. Lets face it you really aren't going to get much money from selling to a 6 year old. Lolly money doesn't stretch that far.
A self monitoring rating system, such as a TLD, will not be perfect, however it will always be more accurate than ad blocking software. Dishonest people will always try to get around the block etc. This works as long as the system is not unduly forced. Everyone wants to trade with an honest person, so self monitoring your site should be more profitable.
I don't buy that. I think parents SHOULD have control over raising their children. Part of being human is living your life according to rules. Some of these rules are moral, some legal, etc. Without rules to govern our behavior, we are nothing more than animals.
My ideological problem is who controls by what rules we live--imho, government should control our legal behavior (I'll loosely define that as any behavior which directly adversely affects another individual--though it's much more complex that just that) and we should be responsible for our own moral control.
Scott
It is quite clearly dangerous, and to protect the rights of all Americans, it should be banned. Me dumb fisherman. Me not understand. You fight censorship by banning censorware? *shrug* Whatever lifts your skirt, I guess. It's a free internet. But your suggestion does seem a little, um, counterintuitive.
do you have a reference for that? I'd love to see it.
Porn sites that use normally innocent and innocuous words to describe their business, and therefore get all sites with those now naughty words banned...
"mom, why can't I get to www.disney.com?"
'Well hon, I guess its all the 'Mickey Mousing' going on there'
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
Let's face it, there are a billion ad-banner flooded porn sites out on the net. Practically all of these are just there to show you naked girls and grab your credit card number. Many of them do dirty tricks such as slightly-misspelled domain names.
.sex sites(paintings, etc), judge on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, the Venus De Milo isn't smut.
For god's sake let them have their own TLD like they were some sort of country.
And if there happens to be nudity on a few non
The TLD would not be a bad idea, since it would simplify the finding of sites for both those who wanted it, and those who want to block it.
BUT. The concept of voluntary ratings is a dangerous one, seeing that anyone could:
a.) Intentionally misrate their page.
b.) Refuse to use the rating system and
c.) Could be forced off their ISP/Forcibly shut down for either A or B.
Fun with languages!
Wah!
Two years ago I gave a talk to a bunch of two-year college marketing folks (NCMPR) and one of them asked me how to get their site unblocked from these services.
Their college's name? Middlesex Community College
I had a hard time believing (at the time) that they could have been blocked just cause the word "sex" is in their name. I figured there had to be something else (like a student's home page or something) doing this.
Now I have to worry about my own college, because we have a campus located in Sussex County, Delaware. Heaven's forbid if we put up a page that describes the location of the campus...
What I don't understand is the amount of people who get upset and threaten to sue about being on the RBL list, a list that every site is manually dealt with and has instructions for how to get off of it, yet there are no cries from both near and far about this censorware crap.
>>>>
For example, there are laws against fraud, rape, robbery, and murder. There is an implicit assumption involved that those things are made illegal because they are morally wrong. One can argue that the basis of these laws is that they constitute an aggression of one party onto someone else, but even this presumes that aggression against another is wrong.
<<<<
This boild down to your rights vs my rights, (the basic version) we both have rights to do pretty much whatever we please AS LONG AS it does not infringe others' rights to do whatever they please. Now raping someone sure as hell is infringing their rights, fraud is more complicated matter but can be equaled to stealing (in many cases) and you don't have right to take the property I own (it infringes my right to use my property).
Noted these are not simple issues but there is no inherent need to make them even more complicated.
Since the senators and ministers are so damn stupid, why not just hide "human proxies"; anti-geniuses that view and rate every web page fetched through the Lan. Set up some sort of load-balanced instant messaging system on the gateway that forwards each http request in a round-robin fashion to each of the losers' stations, where they browse the sites and images and either approve or deny the request depending on the requester's filter setting.
The fun thing would be to set the filter at its most strict level, then fire up testosterone-souring images of voluntary self-castration and whatnot.. then laugh as the reviewer's horrified shrieks resound within the library walls. Oh the cruelty! =)
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Why just sex? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a .kil TLD for violent content, a .big TLD for bigoted or racist content, an .evl for cruel and sadistic content? Unlike sex, these things at least seem to be objectionable human behaviours.
Censoring pornography is done more for the comfort of the parent than the welfare of the child. Nobody really thinks seriously about how flawed it is to actively deny to a young child that sexuality, one of humanity's strongest impulses and most important aspects of soceity and culture, even exists. No attempt is made to distinguish between healthy expressions of sexuality and the truly sleazy or exploitative. It's much easier for the parent to pretend that it all doesn't exist and deny the child any exposure to sex until they're old enough to learn it from their friends.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
Hi.
It is quite clearly dangerous, and to protect the rights of all Americans, it should be banned.
Um. It's not just Americans that this applies to... Does anyone else think that labels such as 'American', 'English' (me), 'Indian' and so on have become somewhat redundant? I've always thought of myself as human (since it gives me fewer unconcious ways of thinking that others are less important). Let's start a movement for a country for netizens.
- It's a revolution! Programmers of the world, compile!
It's getting tougher to find an office or school who isn't wired to the net. But the way our society works, companies, with little exception, cannot afford to let people run around wild on the net.
If one guy's voting on the Tits of the Week (towview.com), he's creating a potentially "hostile" work environment for which the company can be responsible. And that means big bucks.
That's controlling corporate resources, nowhere near as bad as forcing a library to do what most have fought so strongly against.
I think most of us hate the idea of censorship.. but it's a reality we can't ignore.
No it's not. We hate it, and therefore we must fight it. Just giving in is the WORST thing you can do because it means you're willing to let yourself be CONTROLLED by those who think that THEY KNOW BEST FOR YOU.
I guess my point is to think about investing in some of these companies, like Websense (on the Nasdaq), even if their software is so shitty and it pisses you off.
NO. We should fight them to the point that they no longer have any business. We should not support them at all. One thing ethics tells you is that YOU DO NOT SUPPORT THOSE YOU DISLIKE. In my case, that's Rambus and any company that creates Censorware.
Instead, why not spend that money you'd waste on censorware companies, and help fund the ACLU and the EFF, the primary organizations that help protect our rights?
Her name was Donna, she was an author, / She's been on daytime TV, got a shiny B.Sc. / She wants to censor - all of the porno / But being the EiE VP, that was not enough for she / She had recieved a sign, to protect kids on-line / With a congressional appointment, who could ask - for - more - 'cause the COPA, ... (etc)
Wah!
Her name was Donna, she was an author, / She's been on daytime TV
I think when one of the people in charge of deciding what is proper material to be on the internet is an Internationally known adulteress, who has since been 'born again', that she wouldn't be citing the fact that she has appeared on so many news and talk shows.
I mean, how many of those appearances were either directly attributable to her affair with Gary Hart, or to her 'No Excuses' jeans ads. This woman was the Monica Lewinsky of 1988, and now she thinks that her morals are so superior that she has the right to impose them on the general public? Maybe if Hart had been browsing pr0n sites instead of doing the 'Monkey Business' with Donna, she never would have gotten her fifteen minutes of fame which she seems to have milked for all its worth.
Of course, that's assuming we can all agree on what does and does not constitute a porn site.
.sex TLD? Does it depend on how much nudity, or what kind is depicted? What about sites that are more suggestive than photographic? What about Cosmopolitan magazine? Playboy? Sex advice columns? Sites run by homosexual support groups?
.sex TLD would make it easy to write an anti-porn filter, but deciding which sites should be moved (exiled?) into the new .sex TLD would be a nightmare.
Sure, some of the sites are fairly obvious (to us) as porn sites, but what about the grey areas? Does the sexual content have to be "pornographic", or is mere nudity enough to require a
My point is that there are sites which you and I might not consider to be obscene, sexual or pornographic, but others would.
Basically, this shifts the filtering process from software and into the name registration system. Requiring all porn sites to use a
I would maintain that probably the best thing any parent could do is instill in their child a healthy attitude towards sex. Another thing would be to monitor their on-line activities until they are either responsible or of a certain age.
It amazes me that these people forget that the first line of defense starts out in the homes, with the parents. A kid who is aware of sex and what it is, but realizes that he is not ready for it will not go looking for porn and will stay away from sites dealing with it.
But for those who are for censorship online: You cannot force someone to be good. They must want to be good.
Ciao
nahtanoj
I think what everyone seems to be forgetting is that people have a right to censor. Everyone seems to think all censorware is bad, and that everyone on earth should be able to see anything anytime they want, but if I want to install SurfWatch on my computer at home, I have the right to do so. If someone wants to install Net Nanny on their computer so their kid doesn't look at porn, or hate groups, or whatever they don't agree with, they have that right. Businesses have a right to install it to keep the employees from surfing the web and not working. There are a lot of uses that you may not agree with, but are perfectly reasonable.
And, while they may not be 100% accurate (and depending on which ones you pick they are FAR less accurate) they do what they are supposed to do, which is help to keep kids (or whoever) away from things they shouldn't be looking at. I think they should have to reveal that they have 10% fake blocks (or whatever it is) but that doesn't mean they can't be used for anything. If they are used intelligently they could be a great tool (especially the one(s) with open block lists). There aren't evil anymore than DeCSS is evil because it can be used to do bad things. It's all in how you use it.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
The library isn't a pornography merchant, that's why they don't have Hustlers. The point is, the government should not, and can not make moral decisions for us. Hopefully parents should have raised kids well enough they know not to go looking for pr0n at the local library. Scott
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. I think sex is a wonderful thing and I think nudity is nothing filthy or obscene. But I also recognize that something like 95% of the US, if not more, doesn't want their children having access to pornography, and most of them are willing to vote in support of anything that achieves that end. So I want to find a solution that allows these people to "protect" their children, while having the least possible impact on other adults and legitimate material.
I saw Pho'Bich Nga while in Vancouver for 420 this year. I just thought the local consumables had broken my brain to the point distraction.
--
Gellor
"This boild down to your rights vs my rights, (the basic version) we both have rights to do pretty much whatever we please AS LONG AS it does not infringe others' rights to do whatever they please."
Very true. This still presumes that infringing on another's rights is wrong--and issues of right and wrong are otherwise known as moral issues. This is why I said that it is not a matter of whether government should legislate morality at all, but rather how much morality should be enforced by the legal system.
The primary market for these products is for parents to use in their homes, and for schools to use on their private computer systems. That's not really censorship, because the people using it are completely within their rights (Parents can decide what their kids see, same with the school system)
Uh, it may be within their rights, but it's still censorship. They are controlling other peoples access to information based on their own personal beliefs of what's appropriate, and that's censorship. You can argue that it's good, you can argue that they're right to do it, but you can't legitimately argue that it isn't censorship.
Furthermore, it may be within their legal rights, but many of us still consider it morally wrong to withhold information from others under any circumstances. If your kid gets at porn, don't deny it exists. Explain it to him. Tell him what sex is, explain what you think about it and why, but all suppressing his access to it is going to do is create an unhealthy interest in it which he has to go behind your back and lie to you about in order to satisfy, and make him as hung up on sex as the rest of this stupid country. If he gets at neo-nazi bullshit, explain to him why it's stupid. He won't have any defense against idiocy if he's never been exposed to it. If he starts talking to people online, make sure you know what he's telling them, and make sure he only meets them under your guidance and protection. Censorware is just another way for parents to abdicate their responsibility to educate, to spend time with, and to take an interest in their child.
Also, when we're talking schools, what gives YOU the right to determine what MY kid can't see? Don't I get to choose that he can see anything he wants? Are you going to say that the government should tell me how to raise my kid?
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There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
It seems there are other ways to stop that kind of behaviour. Company guidelines clearly defining what sites are unacceptable to visit are one way. That seems a lot less severe than blocking many useful sites. Also, in a public place, like a school or library, where access to information is the stated goal, this kind of software seems really out of place.
Like Frank Zappa once said about censorship, it's like chopping off your head to cure dandruff. There are better ways to solve this problem.
Don't forget that Friday is Hawaiian shirt day.
Roblimo better be careful with his limo service, then ;-)
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
My mental image of the whole thing is a library with controlled and uncontrolled (or minimally-controlled) terminals, where uncontrolled terminals were only available to adults and controlled terminals were available to children. Uncontrolled terminals could access pretty much anything; controlled terminals could access sites already in the database with a ranking (within an category) above a level set by the local staff. Unlisted sites being accessed from the controlled terminals would be bounced to someone else for approval (I'm imaginging this going to someone supervising the children's area of the library). Alternatively, children's terminals could be in one of two modes: private but limited to approved sites or monitored but allowed pretty much uncontrolled access. That way if little Johnny is looking at porn/bomb howtos/drug recipes/whatever, someone shadowing the terminal can see it and either shut down access to the site or go have a talk with Johnny.
On the moderation side, scoring would be a bit more complex than /.'s - moderators could be ranked, and moderators with higher ranks would have more influence on the scoring. Similarly, moderators with low ranks or moderators who abused the system could be given less influence and eventually dropped. By doing this, you could hopefully prevent "poisoning" of the system by people with agendas. Ranking could be handled by something similar to /.'s meta-moderation, but probably more automated. If librarian A puts a site in a category and librarians B, C, and D all disagree with that assesment, A's ranking (overall or within that category) goes down. There could even be a way for the general public to "nominate" sites for moderation with suggestions as to categories.
The biggest headache with the whole thing, I think, would be who does the moderating, particularly early on - it's not like most libraries have people sitting around doing nothing who could just take it on as an additional duty. Unfortunately, it's not like there's a good base list out there that could be used as a seed.
One interesting thing is that if such a system was developed it could have commercial potential as well - perhaps a version of it that did not include the ability to moderate, but which did allow the use of frequently-updated copies of the score files from libraries. By providing it to libraries for free, a company would both help libraries avoid community pushes for censorware with an agenda and gain access to a pool of site raters.
Overall, there are all sorts of potential approaches to the problem of protecting people from disagreeable information, the problems are that there are so many different ideas of what's considered disagreeable and there are so many different ideas of who needs to be protected. On one end, you have people who believe that what's appropriate is no restrictions at all; on the other you have people who believe that all access should be tightly controlled; in between you have the bulk of the populace. In the US the general tendency is probably toward less control, but the tight-control people are noisy. Assuming that somewhere in the middle (limited control) is where things are going to end up, the problem becomes one of ensuring that the controls that go into place are not too restrictive, and that's where I think approaches like this could come in.
Finally, before people jump all over this as advocating censorware, I lean toward the less-control end personally, but I think that there are some things that need to be discussed with children before they're exposed to them unsupervised. Children who think and parents who teach them to do so are the way to go, but in our current society I'm not sure how much we can depend on that.
fencepost
just a little off
You know, this reminds me.
I went to junior high with a Vietnamese kid named Phuc. I believe it was actually pronounced "puck," but...well, you can probably guess.
That poor kid. Back in the day, the worst thing he had to worry about was a substitute teacher slaughtering his name at roll call. Now he's probably 25 or 26, with a nice little personal website, and cursing the censorware companies. ^_^
This is a Chao. A Chao says "Mu."
Shouldn't filtering be set up by kids so that their parents don't suffer the trauma of stumbling across naughty bits on the net?
It's only parents that have trouble with alleged pornography. Under-age kids either don't understand what they're seeing, or they react with "Yuk!" or else they think it's hilarious (and you've got to admit, rubbing squishy bits together has to be the funniest thing on the planet), and older kids positively love it.
And since kids understand the technology far better than their parents anyway and can easily bypass any block they like, it's really they that ought to be doing the censoring to protect their parents.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
What bureaucrat(s) get to decide which companies are "porn" and which companies merely have "erotic" or "adult-themed" content? And if you find your site branded with the scarlet "S" and subsequently blocked, to whom may you appeal?
Will sites dealing with homosexual lifestyles, erotic fiction, transcripts of Supreme Court nominee hearings, or pro-life/pro-choice advocacy be labelled with ".sex" because of their "adult" content? Does an online gallery of the collected works of Robert Mapplethorpe or David Hamilton warrant the imposition of a .sex domain?
Defining pornography is pretty tricky. D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Allen Ginsburg, Henry Miller, and other notable 20th century writers all faced accusations of obscenity. I realize that you probably have a very clear idea of the kind of sites that should be given a .sex TLD, and I probably wouldn't disagree with any of your choices; but, unfortunately, I don't think we can depend on the same rational objectivity on the part of any board of de facto censors.
As another poster has observed, it will be all-too-convenient to enforce a blanket ban on anything with a .sex TLD, and certain lobbying groups will doubtless see to it that such a ban is enforced on campuses and in libraries, or required of local ISPs in small and not-so-small towns across the nation. After all, what elected official wants to be on record with such an "anti-family" position as supporting access to those dirty .sex domains?
Remember the rationale behind the NC-17 rating? The X rating wasn't intended to merely represent pornographic films. The Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy, for example, was rated X. Eventually, however, X came to signify hardcore, and porn merchants used XXX as another marketing tool. The MPAA eventually adopted the NC-17 rating, ostensibly to allow serious filmmakers to release adult-themed films without being saddled with the same rating as Debbie Does Dallas.
Unfortunately, NC-17 is the financial kiss of death. Why? "Family" newspapers mostly won't run advertisements for NC-17 movies. Most major theatre chains won't show them. Major studies routinely require R-rated films to be delivered (such as the case with Kubrick's last film).
The same thing has happened with "Parental Advisory" labels on rock and rap albums, to a degree, but I won't go into that here; I'm afraid I might have rambled on too long, as it is.
In a nutshell, requiring a new .sex domain opens an entirely familiar can of worms. Whether it's labeled Censorware, Parental Advisory labels, or the Hayes Commission, it's still the same can we've been opening since the Comstock Act.
I totally agree with this one.
I can move my personal web site to cantget.sex!
G.H.
ireally@cantget.sex
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
Maybe you'd be better off taking a bus trip instead?
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
I agree with what you're saying, but the bit about keeping someone (who is old enough) from looking at it is STILL WRONG is problematic.
Of course we can all agree that there is likely a definite "too young" for some materials, and that there is a definite "old enough" for those materials. But this is a very fuzzy issue.
'Old enough' is a slippery concept in and of itself. The appropriate age in OUR society is variable, depending on the materials to which the person is exposed. 16 is 'old enough' to drive, 18 is 'old enough' to vote, and 21 is 'old enough' to drink - and there are localized exceptions to each of these... And nevermind the fact that individuals mature at different ages..
How old is 'old enough' for hardcore porn? Should a law be passed saying that 16 is the magic number? How about 21? How about for soft porn? Or a steamy love-scene at a movie theater? It's rated R, but if you're under 17, you can come in with a guardian (pretty effective, that one is). If it's NC-17, you get carded at the door. Well, no need to tell anoyone that high-school kids have been side-stepping the ID check at the local packie for years...
To me the issue is unenforcible by the gummint. It's not their issue at all. It's a family matter - but then again, I must be privileged to think that a single mother can police her two teen boys 24/7...
I guess that the point is that an argitrary age at which something becomes "OK" is just that. Arbitrary. If enough people want the number to change, it does. Censorship, like most other violations of civil liberty (uh-oh...) should not be legislated; it (personal opinion about the desirability and value of information) should be educated into people, not outlawed.
If after being well informed about the nature of porn, a person still chooses to indulge in it, so be it. If a child shows curiosity, they should be educated, not suspended from school for bringing in Daddy's Playboy - isn't it the Father's fault that the kid found it? There is the obvious meta-issue here: Who defines the standards of 'properly educated'. If one parent doesn't share the view of another, there is a conflict. We always walk a fine line between tyranny and anarchy.
Kids will always be curious about things they do not know. They will always "play doctor", and watch "dirty movies" on Cinemax when the parents are away. This is the way they learn about the world - and keeping them ignorant is doing them a dis-service. It's hurting them in the long-run. It's making them repressed and causing them to feel guilty about being a human being once they become adults.
Sex is not a dirty thing from which kids must be protected at all costs. It is an integral part of life about which they must be educated, so that they could make their own, informed decisions. And we also have to remember to be respectful of children's curiosity. After all, many of us can relate to being punished for our curiosity - right you geeky hacker nerds?
The meta-issue returns though, and eventhough the average standard of society may be acceptablen to most - it will not be to some. There will always be extremes from which the standard derives. Teaching respect for others' lifestyles, modes of conduct and belief systems is crucial to a civil and tolerant society.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
...Censorware doesn't work! Oh, and government is corrupt, beer is intoxicating, and computer games are violent.
All facts we know to be true... it's just damned fun to prove them true to people who can't figure it out.
Last time I was in my local public library I don't recall seeing Hustler in the periodical section. Is this censorship? I don't think so
Is it just me, or is there a difference between "We won't spend money on buying Hustler" and "We'll spend money preventing you from getting Hustler?" The first is a refusal to accomodate your request. Tough shit, that's not censorship. The second is an active attempt to prevent access to information, and that *is* censorship, and a public library shouldn't be in the censorship business. Period.
Furthermore, you've got good odds that your library has a copy of Playboy. Is that porn?
There is a difference between a right and an entitlement. You can look at your own porn all you want; I am not required to provide it for you. What the F$%%# is wrong with a PUBLIC library trying to keep 12 year olds from viewing hard-core pornography??
No, you don't have to provide it, but you damn well don't have the right to prevent me or my kids seeing it. What's wrong is that it's not YOUR decision what MY kid sees. In addition, public libraries are used by adults as well, and if they want to look at porn, that's their business. Finally, I have moral objections to public libraries spending my tax dollars on censorware. Why are your moral objections to porn valid enough to deserve consideration as public policy, but my equally heartfelt moral objections to censorware aren't? Why are your morals more important than mine?
Obviously the methods being used for this are imperfect. OK, then we can work to improve them; but to claim that this is censorship is missing the point, and degrading to those who are fighting real censorship in places like China and North Korea.
Mate, this IS real censorship. It may not be preventing access to information we take for granted here, but it's still preventing people access to information they want, and whether or not you like it, that's censorship. The only thing degrading to the people fighting to get censorship removed in China and North Korea is moral bigots like you trying to get it introduced in a "free" country like the US.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
If they ever made one that was perfect that would scare me more than these attempts at it. Especially since in everyone's mind different material is offensive. It also depends on the context as shown by many of these links. I was wasting time at my local library, where they said the didn't but I found they have Surfwatch happily installed. My roommate and myself got into an argument at work about some irelevant point with Hitler so I went to look up Hitler and try and find info. (I dont remember what I was looking for exactly) But the only sites I could get to were useless. Most of them just history about how the allies won the war. All the sites that mentioned his beliefs were blocked. I finally cliked on a neonazi page that was strict hatred and very insulting and it allowed that. I found it so amusing that I called the librarian over to show her and she took offence and asked me to leave if I was going to look at information like that. I told her my situation and she said I was looking wrong and she would find it. She quickly ran into the same problem, and gave me this solution. Well if it is important you should get it out of a book, the internet is usually wrong anyway. I left think of sour grapes. Just my ramblings.
I am 31337 or something.
For example, there are laws against fraud, rape, robbery, and murder. There is an implicit assumption involved that those things are made illegal because they are morally wrong. One can argue that the basis of these laws is that they constitute an aggression of one party onto someone else, but even this presumes that aggression against another is wrong.
The difference is, that enough people agree that causing harm to another is wrong that we consider people who disagree insane. There's not even close to that kind of agreement on pornography.
In my opinion, laws banning something should only be enacted if:
1) There's sufficient agreement that it's wrong that someone who disagrees can be reasonably classified as insane (IE, 99.99999% of the world agrees) or
2) It can be objectively demonstrated that the cost of allowing the thing to be legal is greater than the cost of making it illegal.
Porn doesn't fit either of those categories, so laws censoring it are wrong. That includes laws requiring filtering in public places.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
All censorware is inherently flawed, in that it "censors". The writers of the constitution knew that if censorship of ANY level was allowed, then it would allow a gradual creeping of more and more censorship until any oposing opinion was banned. Dispite the best of intentions, this type of software could push us towards this state of affairs.
It is quite clearly dangerous, and to protect the rights of all Americans, it should be banned. At the moment, only some sites are restricted, but what if the next version "protects" people from sites that advocate other "dangerous" ideas like free software. Somehow, I don't think the people who write these programs would worry too much if people can't access sites about Linix.
The responsiblity for access control to "adult" content should lie with the businesses providing it. Adult video and book stores have to card people, just like bars, and held liable in minors are illegally allowed inside. Why, then, are web sites exempt from any kind of reasonable authentication requirements?
There's a simple reason, really: all those horny geeks out there want their porn quickly, anonymously, and effortlessly, and adult verification systems would just get in the way. Therefore, control is limited to credit card verification, which proves nothing except knowing how to steal some plastic.
So, to all you adults who think that censorware is intrusive or wrong, and that individuals (or their parents) should be able to choose what they can or cannot see online: support secure but authenticated transaction systems. Help develop them, promote the good ones, whatever; just don't let your desire to see digitally enhanced pseudo-porn override your sense of social responsibility.
Was that sarcasm?
I've had that tune stuck in my head for the last few days. Ever since
My head is going nuts!!!
This
We're talking about absolute control here. Right now, the Internet is not as important as TV, but it will be much more important in the near future, and if there's a single company (or an oligarchy of companies) that's in control of what children can see, without public scrutiny, they can do whatever they want. And they will probably get away with it.
That's why the censorware issue is so extremely important, and that's why Mattel went after the guys who cracked the Cyber Petrol filter list. It's not because of accidental overblocking, it's because of the power of intentional censorship by conservative organizations. In schools and libraries, imagine that!
--
COPA's purpose is to evaluate software for use in public situations.
Troy
Last time I was in my local public library I don't recall seeing Hustler in the periodical section. Is this censorship? I don't think so.
There is a difference between a right and an entitlement. You can look at your own porn all you want; I am not required to provide it for you. What the F$%%# is wrong with a PUBLIC library trying to keep 12 year olds from viewing hard-core pornography??
Obviously the methods being used for this are imperfect. OK, then we can work to improve them; but to claim that this is censorship is missing the point, and degrading to those who are fighting real censorship in places like China and North Korea.
I'm sure they would reply that the problem isn't *just* the people sitting at the computer terminals, but the people walking by that might get a glance at something horrific.
The place I used to work explained that they had to strictly monitor every site you went to, not because you might look at something inappropriate, but because some passerby might and could then sue for sexual harrassment.
-----
Let all users rate sites. Let the set of all users be U. Now when a user A, who has already rated a bunch of sites R, goes to a new site W: take the subset S of U containing users who have rated a subset of R with the same ratings as A, and have also rated W. now, average S's rating of W, and bingo! - censorship that A most probably finds accurate :)
now, ignoring the ludicrous amount of processing power required to efficiently do this for millions of sites plus hundreds of millions of users, I think I'm onto a winner. anyone wanna pay me to implement it?
hmm I'll be the biggest dotcom of them all.. I'm gonna be rich.. I hope these fascist fuckwits don't suddenly all decide to stop "protecting" the world at large from every little thing that doesn't fit into their narrow world view.
Software patents delenda est.
I'll admit that Phuc is not a good name to have. There is also a particular Indian name that can cause problems. For instance this guy gets a Ph.D, but look at the HTML Title tag for this web page.
Censorship, the government declaring that you can't publish or read information on $SUBJECT, is bad. Adults have the inherent right and responsibility to make their own determinations on what information to expose themselves to.
Filtering software is ENTIRELY different. As a parent, I want some assurance that my tax dollars aren't supplying my children with porn through the library or public school system. You are not being censored! If you want to download porn, go ahead. Just don't think the government, through schools and libraries, has any obligation to assist.
It also seems that you have a choice. One of the following will happen:
- Filtering in all forms will fail and those who don't want to be exposed or shouldn't be will withdraw from the internet.
- Filtering will succeed somehow as software technology improves to make it possible.
- A reactionary legislature will make it illegal.
The first isn't bloody likely with our ludicrous demand that every school be wired. (WHY?)Most here are arguing vehemently against the second.
You're left with the third, which is what you're going to get. Real censorship, not the voluntary filtering which is being offered now. Be careful what you wish for. You *WILL* get it.
--
You are a fucking moron.
It's getting tougher to find an office or school who isn't wired to the net. But the way our society works, companies, with little exception, cannot afford to let people run around wild on the net.
If one guy's voting on the Tits of the Week (towview.com), he's creating a potentially "hostile" work environment for which the company can be responsible. And that means big bucks.
I think most of us hate the idea of censorship.. but it's a reality we can't ignore. I guess my point is to think about investing in some of these companies, like Websense (on the Nasdaq), even if their software is so shitty and it pisses you off.
True.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
I still like the solution of creating a .sex (or whatever you want to call it) and requiring any porn companies in the US to house their domain there.
It doesn't stop pages from companies in other countries, or illegal pages, but any veteran computer user can tell you that you can't really reliably censor the net. As soon as you make a smarter filter, they'll make craftier pages.
The TLD provides a simple, cheap, effective solution for all law-abiding sites.
I'm very very strongly against government censorship. However, I do believe it's a parent's right to control what kind of material their children get access to (or at least try). This control doesn't extend to schools and libraries. Libraries and schools I do not think should be censored ever. Make parents sign agreements before letting their kids use public internet if liability is the problem.
This censorship software is clearly ridiculous, and seems like it has barely improved since the first versions were released. This only adds to the ridiculousness of the demands to censor public access.
On an somewhat sad sidenote, the network administrator of my high school system is also totally against censorship and tracking of websites, but when upgrading servers last year had software installed which COULD do both (but didn't). Apparently he felt that given the attitude in the school system, it was only a matter of time before mandatory censorship and tracking would be the status quo.
Scott
I wanted to research a Trip to Thailand but the damn library keeps blocking any info about it!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It is time for the owners of the blocked sites to sue. They should demand that their sites be reinstated immediately. They should demand a guarantee that their sites will never be blocked in the future.
I feel certain that it will remain possible to trick the censorware in both directions for the foreseeable future. There will continue to be false negatives and false positives. The problem is that the image these companies are selling doesn't match with the fine print about the product reliability. And the actual performance has been proven to be even worse than that several times for some of them.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
nt = no text
Wah!
"The point is, the government should not, and can not make moral decisions for us."
There is quite a bit of truth in the maxim "You can't legislate morality," but the issue gets a bit more complicated. For example, there are laws against fraud, rape, robbery, and murder. There is an implicit assumption involved that those things are made illegal because they are morally wrong. One can argue that the basis of these laws is that they constitute an aggression of one party onto someone else, but even this presumes that aggression against another is wrong. The question really isn't "Should government legislate morality?" but rather "What parts of morality should be legislated, and what should be left to free choice?"
The best argument against censorship is that government cannot be fully trusted, and that giving government the power to censor means giving it the power to cover up and quash dissenting opinions that could expose failure and/or wrongdoing on the part of the government. This argument has little to do with not legislating morality, but rather it presumes that power corrupts, and that government would use the power to censor for immoral purposes.
Poxy Coat => A COX TYPO
Dog Grooming => I'D GO GOG NORM (or DIG GOGO NORM)
Wate rbeds Online => A BED EEL ISN'T WORN
Diamond Limo => I LAID NOMDOM (or MAIM ODD LOIN)
How can you blame them?
You may not find Huster in the library, but unless you live in some backward xtian controlled town, you probably will find that Madonna book (what was it called?). That would be considered "porn" by these censorware programs.
The problem with libraries trying to keep 12 year olds from viewing porn is that it isn't their place. If parents don't want their kids to see it, its their responsibility, not society's
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I would still like to propose the creation of both .XXX and .SEX domains;
.XXX TLD category - at no additional fee for transfer.
.SEX domains then, can become open to areas of discussion on sexual
.com pages.
but I disagree that any sites should be required to house thier domains there.
Instead, the clearly pornographic sites (those that deem themselves to be
of an sexual nature that would normally be subject to screening
only by adults over the age of 18) should be encouraged to migrate their
domains into the
This will act both to allow the domain change without oversight by some
faceless bureaucrat(s); and will give the porn-meisters a better way of
focusing their marketing efforts to an audience that is both interested
and able to pay for thier services. In addition AFAIK, the XXX can be
internationally identified with a specific level of adult activity
(aside from those who still count with Roman Numerals), whereas SEX
is more ambiguous between different cultures, social groups,
and educational levels.
The
health and education that may not in themselves be seen (by some groups)
as pornographic. PlannedParenthood.sex, STD.sex, and even DrRuth.sex
could become respected alternatives which can provide more in-depth advice
for adults, while still allowing for both parental discretion, and providing
an educational resource thru the standard
I realize there will still be opportunites for abuse, but I'd think that
most web-promoters would be more likely to follow the path of least
resistance to continuing success, than to try and buck a trend.
This is a perfectly good example of why it is a Good Thing that there are more protocols on the Net than just HTTP. If you want to find porn, check Usenet. If you want protected free speech, use encrypted email lists, or run a Freenet node.
Also, is there any reason that Gopher, IRC, MUDs, authenticated FTP, or any number of other common, easy-to-use tools couldn't carry a lot of the traffic that's on the Web right now? Especially since that would immediately remove a sizeable fraction of the clueless people who bump around in IE until they get themselves into trouble...
If a hacker was so inclined to be really sadistic, instead of physically blemishing a site, they could instead insert a few lines of html into home pages that include "offending" language. These censorware prog's would pick up on 'em, and block the user from getting into the site. Sounds like fun. Good thing I'm not a hacker. ;)
- I'm making a page dedicated to procrastinators! I'll let you know when I get started.
air and light and time and space
Could someone check whether or not Slashdot (or more specifically this story) are also being banned? From the words and discussions, I would be surprised if it wasn't. But then again these companies do tend to surprise.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
at the COPA, COPA will ban ya, the software's a lot like Net Nanna. Oh the COPA, COPA will ban ya, porno and nazis will always get block-ied at the COPA, COPA will ban ya.