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Censorware Blocking Methods Using Akamai
Snatch Freedom writes "Peacefire has discovered a way to block censorware using Akamai's servers. For example you can see Yahoo! using http://a1.g.akamaitech.net/6/6/6/6/www.yahoo.com/. C|Net had a story about. Censorware cannot block akamai; that will piss off all the advertising people. Akamai says (in the cnet story) that they are not in the filtering business and they won't block anything. The makers of ``Bess'' wan't Akamai to filter it but Akamai says no. "
-- Oh Well
I'm not sure Akamai's refusal to implement blocking is so much "saying no" as "lauging their asses off." As far as I can tell, any solution to this problem would require Akamai to 1) engage in performance-degrading communications to ensure there's no blocking software on the computer making a request or 2) set up blocking software itself. And even with 1) there's always proxying...
So I'm pretty sure N2H2 goes on the clueless buffoon list for this one. This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it. And it has about as much chance of... oh.
Well, as long as the government doesn't get involved, it's still stupid.
- Michael Cohn
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
I hope it works with other address, or the religious zealots are going to have a field day.
BTW For the humor impaired. This is a joke :-)
Translate from Polish to english, or some other permutation...
Gets mildly mangled, but beats the censorship remarkably well...
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
The internet should not be censored to "protect" anyone. If you don't like your kids seeing porn online, then you should stop them. Teachers should do the same. Review the history files afterwards also just in case, and let them know ahead of time you are going to check what sites the kids visited. I know that won't work against everyone but nothing is fullproof. Especially censorware.
It all goes down to our society not wanting to be responsible for anything. Parents want to blame video games, tv, the internet, music, etc. for how they fail to keep their own children in line. Smokers commit slow suicide by putting fire into their lungs, then sue tobacco companies because these people are too stupid to know better.
Sometimes I wish that some people would help us all out by killing themselves. If you feel that you can't be live up to any of your responsibilities and just want to cry how the world has done you wrong, jump off of a tall building...it should be great! You will leave your impression on the Earth, and we will all be thankful to have one less semi-hairless monkey jumping around and screaming about everyone offending and hurting them.
Ok, back on topic a bit more. I wonder how many other sites like this will prevent censorware from working. I was shown something yesterday that triggers censorware that is completely innocent:
This tip is sure to not work.
Various censoreware programs don't like it. Let's look at it again through their eyes:
This tiP IS Sure to not work.
It's pretty interesting...but shows how ineffective this type of software is.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Fink said N2H2 had devised its own fix to the problem. That patch would detect Web addresses included in Akamai URLs and filter based on those nested addresses. It will ship with the next version of Bess.
Woah... you mean, like, parse the rest of the URL? Dude, no wonder you're CTO.
Works nice, but it doesn't translate the links. Therefore all pictures are broken, and any link clicked will take you to the nice "access denied" screen of your favorite censorware.
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OK, so this is an egg-sucking lesson for all you Slashdot grannies out there....
Site-based filtering is broken . This is just yet another instance of it. Proxying the content through another unblocked site (like this Akamai example) will blow holes in it. Blocking Yahoo (and anything else sufficiently generic) because they also link to Scunthorpe.gov.uk, as well as to the Baptist Church Choir, will shut out large valuable parts of the Net -- you might as well burn your modem.
If you don't like the content on the web, then filter on the web content by all means. Let's see PICS rating more commonly used. If you really have an issue with wanting a government imposed central filtering scheme, then pass yourself a law in your country that makes rating schemes mandatory (or you'll be defaulted to XXX). The problem of "keeping the kiddies safe" then defers to browser operators (those who put browsers in the hands of the kids). Set your home browser however you like (they're your kids) and let local communities set the standards for locally-funded institutions like schools and libraries. If you don't like the library filters, because you live in a straight-laced town, then don't complain to the democratic group who paid for it and chose the settings, just buy your own web time.
Don't forget that PICS is a framework for rating systems, not a rating scheme itself. I'd like to see a PICS Hippy-Lovechild rating scheme where free-love and pot sites were rated OK, but accountancy was a major no-no. Build a Tennessee rating scheme if you want, where sex outside a married family is forbidden, but it's OK with your sister (or even yer dawg). Custom rating systems are a fine way to build an "Islamist web", where followers of one set of moral values are perfectly at liberty to define their own standards, implement them on their own set of relevant sites, and neither I nor they will offend each other with moral conflicts.
This might even be a way for eBay to get round the "not selling Nazi relics in France" problem.
Confusing content with location is just never going to work right.
This makes about as much sense as a parent going to congress and telling them the networks can't show sexual content because he's afraid his kid might see it.
this was the exact issue that popped in my mind as i read these articles. i don't want to sound like jon katz or get on a stump, but...
is it only me who recognizes that PARENTS today want to use technology to cover the gaps in their role as a parent? ultimately, any control placed to hamper web sites loading can be over come - save one: how about the parents take some responsiblity and turn off the PC?
yeah, yeah. i've heard it before. "we work." "we can't police our children 24/7." "society should set some acceptable norms for all to live by." etc. etc. etc.
look, if you have children, you made a CHOICE to propigate your family linage (and don't give me that bullshit about 'accidents.' there are no accidental births - what did you think the act of sex might result in? free beer?) it is your responsiblity to raise your child. if work gets in the way - well maybe you need to quit your job.
QUIT MY JOB! yeah, wtf do you think is more important - work or family (god, i hate asking that question to some people....)
and before you ask me my wherewithall to rant on this subject - my wife and i chose NOT to have children b/c we have other things we want to accomplish. we made that decsion based on NOT wanting to be part-time parents and full time employees. and also, my 13 year old sis recently got into some adult level chats with some questionable people. the result? no unsupervised PC usage (yeah, my mom actually sits there as she does homework research) and some stearn talk about the world, people, and growing up.
look, sorrry for the rant, but i am sooooo tired of people thinking technology has morals. people have morals. technology is just a means to an end.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Wouldn't this be covered under libel? They are claiming a site is obscene, contains hate speech, etc. when it does not!
Two points.
1: the world is a complicated place, the internet even more so. If there is a tool that will help me do my job of parenting, I will consider using it. My children are too young yet to surf the web. When they get older, I lean more towards the "show them the squid logs" method than the censorware, but censorware is more appropriate for some parents.
2. Communities have a responsibilty to their collective children, too. By all means, have a porn store, I'd just rather it wasn't next to the ice cream stand. Rather more strongly, I don't have a problem with people selling crack, but I definitely don't want them doing it outside the school gates (or in the classroom).
I don't want to childproof the world, or TV, or the internet. My children are only allowed to watch TV channels that we have approved (this means PBS, in practice). Not that we don''t get other channels, the children are just told what they can watch. I want tools to do the same with the internet, and so do many other parents.
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E_NOSIG
"Although it is a challenge to keep up with hackers who attempt to undermine filtering software, the result in the long run is a better product," SurfControl vice president Kelly Haggerty said in a statement. "We will investigate this and other hacking claims as they arise."
Those damn Hackers just won't stop Hacking and Pirating Copyright Protected Intellectual Property that Endangers the Safety of America's Children(tm). For God sake, you could poke your eye out!
I swear these PR people carry around a Buzzword Bible.
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Scott Brady
Which is to say "Hackers help us improve our product."
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I dislike proposed censorware laws as much as the next guy, but I also believe they have every right to sell their product to people who wish to filter their own PC's (parents). I also find 'stupid filter tricks' as amusing as the next guy, but in this case it's Akamai's problem and not the filtering companies.
I must point out that this is no deliberate desicion by Akamai to stop those 'evil censors'. The truth of the matter is that they never wrote any security into their network to prevent any website from being 'akamized'. I also have it on good authority that it's alot of work to purge content from an akamai server. Thus in reality, akamai's service is the web-equivalent of an open email relay!
This time you all laugh because it's the filtering companies getting the short end of the stick. Next time this bug will affect you. How long do you think it'll take spammers to use this bug to put their 'get rich quick' webpages into akamai and use those links when they send out spam? ISP's right now can eliminate websites near-realtime when they are used to sell products advertised in spam, which discourages spammers from even trying as their page is taken down almost immediately. If the spammers can be relatively sure their pages would be up for days on end (as they could with akamai) then it encourages them to send more spam, that ends up in your inbox.
So what they are really saying when they say 'we will not commit to filtering' is 'we do not see fixing this security hole as enhancing profits and therefore cannot justify commiting programmers to close it'. I'll repeat for emphasis: This is an akamai security hole. This is the web-equivalent of an open email relay.
-- Greg
PS: I've reported this bug in the past, and they claimed it was a non-issue. Does someone have to write a 2600 howto article on getting service from akamai before it's fixed?
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
Hmm.. maybe some day a newer version of Babelfish will translate the pictures into German too.
Go to an American pr0n page and there's a nude woman with big tits. Access the same page through babelfish, translated into German, and it's the same nude woman, but one of her tits is covered up by the big mug of beer that she's holding out in front of her, seductively offering it to the viewer. It's cold and frosty, and real dark tasty beer, not CoorsLightPisswaterBeer. Oh yeah, baby, come to Sloppy...
People would have to type one-handed while visiting such sites. (The other hand is holding a beverage, of course.)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Really? Are you going to show them the picture of a man shitting in a woman's mouth and say "There's nothing to be ashamed of"? Are you going to point out the ads for underaged asian girls and say "There's nothing wrong with it"? How old will your children be when you point them out the pictures of bondage and S&M with no context or explinations of consensual ways to do those things in real life and say "don't be ashamed of looking at this, why add worry to an overstressed world?"
Could we please stop pretending that there is one porn site on the internet and it contains artistic nudes, loving sexual scenes and some content slightly raunchier than PlayBoy? Its a long way from saying "we shouldn't hide sex" to giving kids access to representations of sexual violence, degradation and coercion and no ethical guidance on what real people are like.
As a mature, sexually active adult, I have come across things on line (yes, you can find porn accidentally) that made me feel mildly sick, or confused, or in some cases threatened. For a child that does not yet have any healthy sexual expereince to draw on, who may not be able to understand the levels of consensuality and pleasure in, say, BDSM, I could see such images being damaging to their development of a healthy sexuality. And even in the most perfect family, no child is going to be able to come to a parent and say "I saw a picture of a pretty woman being whipped and then I dreamed last night about whipping someone and got a woody, and it makes me feel gross that I liked that thought." They will bottle it up, and if they're lucky, sort it all out when they get older.
There is a emotionally healthy rate at which children learn about sexuality. Don't call people names because they want to preserve that learning curve instead of throwing truely adult sexual content at their 8 year old.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...