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Internet Filter Plan Hits Snag
Censorware in public institutions? Congress is pushing for it, but the current bill has a surprising opponent: at least one of the censorware makers. A major-brand corporate V.P. is quoted in a
recent AP story
as saying: "Things that mandate specific technologies probably aren't the best solution here. Let the free market decide...." But the interesting technical story here is
yet another statistical analysis
by Peacefire. They looked at five popular packages and showed that for every ten appropriately-blocked domain name, there were anywhere from four to forty domain names just randomly censored. Ouch.
Wouldn't it make sense to also consider the percentage of unblocked pornographic sites?
I asked Bennett Haselton (of Peacefire) the same question. He replied by mail (8/5/2000):
Bennett Haselton wrote:
The information is not intended to persuade people who support censorship because by that age people generally don't change their mind anyway. The information is to help people such as librarians who are embattled in their local community because they don't censor Internet access on their computers.
If we focus on the fact that blocking software doesn't block enough pornography, then we're betraying our cause because part of the point of what we're doing is that pornography is not harmful. Now, how do you persuade people to believe *that*, if they already have formed the belief that porn is harmful? I don't think you can, which is why we have the censorware-disabling instructions on our site; you can't reason with parents not to use the software, so we can at least give people a means to get around it...
-Bennett
In fact, judges typically decide court cases because of what is wrongfully blocked, rather than because not enough material was censored.
(PS: Sorry for posting private email, but I think that Bennett would approve)