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Candidates' Websites Blocked by CyberPatrol, N2H2
Yet another topical censorware report by Bennett Haselton and myself. Is this getting repetitive? It turns out that politicians' websites are being blocked in schools and libraries as inappropriate for viewing by children (and, in many cases, adults). The report,
"Blind Ballots",
takes a look at two dozen candidates whose campaigns have been censored in our public schools and libraries. One of the products blocks pretty equally across the political spectrum; the other takes a big chunk out of Republicans, Libertarians and conservative third parties. One Republican candidate (so far) has changed his position on filters because of this report.
It may not be "sufficiently idealistic" to say:
If demonstrating this pragmatic fact to be true has the effect that the "dumb politicians" see the point that they can't censor, then it can have the required result.
What do we say "when their error rates become lower"?
It's not a problem because the error rates can only move from spectacularly horrible to being terribly bad.
The software won't ever do what it's "supposed" to, because there's no good fixed definition of what "should" be censored.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
The idea itself (filtering the net) is good,...
This does seem to be a popular assumption.
How does it sound when we change one word? Let's see: The idea itself (censoring the net) is good,...
It doesn't sound so innocuous anymore.
I have yet to see any studies that show that the viewing of violent or sexual images has a negative effect on the majority of the viewers. Of any age. (Just as some people are more susceptible to alcoholism it may be the case that a small segment of the population cannot safely view violent or sexual images, but the case is far from settled.)
I've heard quite a bit about protecting children from porn on the net, but I have seen no compelling reasons for doing so. We seem to take it for granted that sex = bad. This is certainly not the case elsewhere, I've seen X rated movies on the French equivelant of HBO, topless women in English newspapers, and similar elsewhere in Europe. What social problems are a result of children growing up in such an environment?
Yet both sides of the filtering debate take it as a given the children should not be exposed to sexual material. Seems to me that this assumption is flawed.
I think it was Frank Zappa (I don't have a the reference) who told congress that he wanted his children to be exposed to this stuff in the media, so that they would be inoculated against it in real life. That makes sense to me.
And despite the scape goating of the media over violent content, violent crime is down again this year. Perhaps video games serve as an outlet for violence and not a cause?
Censoring is wrong. Period. The internet doesn't change that.
SteveM
> [One has to wonder] what these politicians are putting on their sites to get blocked.
Well, "gore" would be blocked by a violence filter, and "bush" by a sex filter.
And of course, "nader" is an obscenity in any businessman's dictionary.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Nice troll, Chester.
If you think literature that exploits and objectifies women is OK, then that's fine, but don't foist your ire on religion.
The fact of the matter is, if people adhered to Christian morality regarding sex there would be no STD's, no out-of-wedlock pregnancies, AIDS would be extremely rare (or might have never gotten past a few isolated incidents), no women or children being enslaved to prositution, no sexual predators kidnapping children, no president Clinton and Monica in the Oval Office. The list goes on.
Furthermore, if those ancient fertility cults and Roman religions are so good, where are they now? The fact of the matter is Christianity and Judaism for thousands of years have had a logical, consistent, natural and workable morality of sex that, if followed, would eliminate a whole lot of suffering.
Gee, those are some pretty dangerous ideas.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
When both sides of an issue like this are very dedicated to their stances, you have to try to find ways that don't necessarily outright discredit the other view. If you just walk up to a pro-censorware person and shout, "Censorship is wrong!", they'll just say back "We have to protect our children's eyes!" And you'll have many merry hours of saying basically the same things to each other for as long as the both of you can put up with each other.
But, if you can give a censorware advocate firm examples of the failures of such products, you run a slight chance of putting a crack in their defenses on the subject. With enough examples, you may even be able to convince them that there is no current censorware solution that doesn't have these problems. Then you can work on convincing them that automated censorware that actually has a 100% success rate is probably never going to happen. Then you can get them to realize that the only blocking software you really need is heavy parental involvement in children's lives.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Recall that Richard "Dick" Armey's site is blocked by Netnanny, Surfwatch, Cybersitter, N2H2, and Wisechoice because of his nickname. Of course this is more than mildly funny only because Armey is one of the many conservatives who believes that Censorware is the solution to the country's problems.
More information is available at http://dfn.org/Alerts/contest.htm
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
What will be interesting to note is how the politicians respond to this. I see that one changed his mind about it.
The truth is, I highly doubt that anyone really wants students to have un-controlled access to ANYTHING on the net in school, provided by our money.
Its not like people advocate playboy (magazines) to high schools (no matter how educational it might be, grin)..
The idea itself (filtering the net) is good, its just the implementation that is, was, and will be (for a long time) crap.
At least, IMHO..
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
Can you imagine Orrin Hatch walking into a middle school and trying to show kids his web site on their computers, only to find himself BLOCKED!
Then he'd have to circumvent an access protection device to access to his own web page, and we could lock him up for 10 years for breaking a law he sponsored!
Oh my dear god, i'm nearly creaming my pants thinking about it.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
I don't have the time, money, or computer systems to install, configure, and test urls with different filtering software. Is there some web site that I can go to, submit a url get a summary of what filtering software thinks of a web site?
Given that these filtering companies encrypt their lists, there probobly isn't an easy way to set up a site like this. Do the filtering companies maintain a query for their piece of software? If not, why not?
It seems to me that this is something that web masters are going to have to worry about from now on, just as they have to worry about placement in search engines now.
Thats right! We can protect our children by shielding them about the truths of our world. This will make them happier and healther children!
Please. If I understand this correctly the reason why canidate web pages are being blocked is that they want to discuss some tough moral and ethical issues. Canidates have stances on contraversal issues like abortion, violence in society (gun control, violence in entertainment), gambling, law enforcement and they want to tell people about them. Unfortunately, this puts them squarely behind the taboo mongers.
What good is it to hide this information away from our kids? What is wrong with letting our children know that there are unpretty moral and ethical issues at risk that will effect their lives now and in the future? It is very true that 10 year old children don't have the right to vote nor should they but blinding children to important issues isn't the answer especially since there is a lot of hoopla around this election.
This stuff presents the biggest problem with censorware. Kids have legit, non-vulgar questions but censorware doesn't have a clue so they stay unanswered. I just hope children are smart enough to keep asking questions and their parents and teachers are good enough to answer them fairly because censorware certainly is failing them.
I'm also unclear if it is justifiable to block canidate page at the workplace. Sure it constitutes visiting web pages that have nothing to do with work but civics shouldn't be automatically ignored once you step into your cubical.
Out of curiosity, what is the point of all these (admittedly redundant) articles about how bad censorware is at telling the difference between porn and non-porn? If one believes that censorship is a Bad Thing(tm), then attacking the efficacy of censorware is essentially a non-sequitor. By attacking the technical feasibility of censorware, you're implicitly saying that, if it worked properly, you'd be fine with it. Is that really the case? Or is this just a roundabout way of attacking censorship?
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Do some of these filers block by graphical content? One of the blocks sites I lokked had a lot soft focus imagery--the typical mom, apple pie & the American flag stuff. Now, I also know that a lot of pron and erotica stuff also use the soft focus effect. Can anyone comment on this?
...I want it banned from the classroom, and installed on my TV.
My mom is not a Karma whore!
I can just see it now... inside the filter...
...Ah, better, my job is done... what's this? Now the tykes are trying to look at a site about Bush? Naughty-naughty, they're too young to be looking at ladies' privates. ---CENSOR--- Hum. What's this "Nader", then? Sounds like a dirty word. ---CENSOR--- Ho hum... )
(... ho hum... another page... should I let the kiddies see it? Hmm... it seems to be about Gore. Violence and blood is a no-no and bad. Children shouldn't be seeing this... ---CENSOR---
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
It's titled Celebrating Pornography Awareness Week.
One political example is worth mentioning here. Dan's Data did a test of Pornsweeper, which is supposed to filter images. This picture of George and Laura Bush was blocked. Filthy porno indeed!
-- Diana Hsieh
-- Diana Hsieh
GeekPress: The Weirder Side of Tech News
Personal Computers for the library: $1,500 each
Internet access: $40/mo
Filtering software: $100
Republican politician's face when he sees his site has been censored: Priceless
Please note that the censorware which was blocking a bunch of conservative sites was doing so as a side effect of those sites being run off of free hosting services, which it blocked automatically. The writeup here on /. didn't make this clear - I recognize /. writeups need to be fairly short, but the impression I had (and which it appears other readers might have) is that this piece of censorware had gone out of its way to be prejudiced against conservatives.
If you mention all those things you want to put a stop to on your site, yeah, then I can imagine things being blocked out...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
what these politicians are putting on their sites to get blocked. While some of the recent political campaigns have degenerated to muck-racking (at best), you would think that the politicians (or someone on their staff) would make sure that their web sites were accessable from public libraries and schools. I know if I were to run for public office, I would make sure of that.
Eric Gearman
--
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
However, Websense is guilty of generalizing in their categorization. ESR's home page is categorized as "hacking." When I checked it later from another location, it appears that there is nothing even marginally illegal on ESR's page or linked to by it, but it does have the word "hacking" in there somewhere, albeit in the old-school context of "clever programming."
I have seen other generalizations in categorizing, including Freedom and Accuracy in Reporting, and ironically the Bill of Rights being blocked as "activism." This is a form of soft censorship, in that Websense dodges the accusation since the decision to block is on the part of the administrator, and the administrator dodging the blame because they did not make the categorization, and it's an all-or-none deal.