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.

Comments

At least it's a start

[Christopher B. Brown]

It may not get at the crucial points, but if this sort of thing demonstrates, in a way that "gores their oxen," that there is something of a problem with web filtering, this at least represents a step in the right direction.

It may not be "sufficiently idealistic" to say:

Filtering can't work, no matter how hard you try!

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.

Re:Hmm.

[SteveM]

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

Re:What's the point of this?

[JatTDB]

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.

how can somebody tell what is blocked?

[DeadSea]

If political websites are blocked, there is a better than good chance that some piece of filtering software is blocking one of the web sites for which I am responsible.

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.

What's the point of this?

[AlphaHelix]

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 *

Re:Hmm.

[mangu]

BECAUSE CHILDREN *ARE* DIFFERENT THAN ADULTS.

Well, yes and no. They are smaller in size, and they have less experience. Otherwise they are exactly the same. Indeed, by growing up and gaining experience, children do turn into adults.

The instinct to protect children is correct, it's what guarantees the survival of the species. The big question is, from what are we protecting our children? Seeing an adult woman's nipples? Why should the act of seeing a woman's nipples be so bad for children, while they can freely see men's nipples at any beach? And why should a larger body size protect a person from the harmful effects of seeing a woman's nipples?

Different cultures have different ritual prohibitions. In some countries it's against the law for a woman to show her hair in public. In other places, they can even show their pubic hair if they wish.

Those rules have no rational reason for being, other than letting the rulers wield their power. The priests, judges, elders, shamans, whatever, must have some way of demonstrating their power, and they must have some alleged reason for that power, or the people would simply do away with them, and tell them to find some useful task to perform.

note why conservative sites blocked

[Cermain]

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.

One has to wonder...

[EFGearman]

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
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