Slashdot Mirror
SmartFilter's Greatest Evils
Seth Finkelstein
has taken a look at what gets blocked by censorware
in the most categories.
What would you think there is on the web that qualifies as sex, drugs, crime, gambling, sports, news, religion, art, travel, hate, gross and fun and games? Oh, and some of these sites are useful in research too. Give up?
usenet was evil too. Apparently.
Art/Culture, ... Self Help, Travel
Maybe it should be called "Brute Force Filter".
-... ---
It is the only way they can have the least bit of assurance that people will stay where they put them. I imagine if any of us were tasked to do the same thing, a similar result would have occured.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
The only real difference I see is that the effectiveness of censorware could keep those in power from silencing muckrakers who would expose them. The social effects of censorship have already been witnessed.
-- Ken Kinder ken@_nospam_kenkinder.com http://kenkinder.com/
...is that it makes it legal to reverse engineer the encryption on censorship packages in order to determine which sites are being blocked. Hmm.... wonder if all the links to the DMCA will suddenly be mysteriously blocked..... =D
The filtering software isn't smart enough to detect whether a particular Babelfish translation is of www.acceptiblesite.com or www.sitetheywanttoblock.com, so it's simpler to just block all access to Babelfish.
Likewise for all the anonymizing sites and whatnot -- if a site makes it impossible to tell whether what you're looking at is something they want to block, they block that site.
Lame, yes, but so's the whole idea of censorware.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
At our place, we can't even get AltaVista most days, since it doesn't pass the filtering system.
Put it like this. You enter a public library. You could pick up various sex manuals, books that are considered homophobic, racist, or whatever. In fact, our school library contains such books. Why should the internet be any different? Responsable use is the key my friend. Didn't you notice how your early-teens lads drooled over various soft porn mags, only to get bored a few years later!
The internet is the same, and school users must be trusted to browse information as is needed.
DEW YEW KEEP A TROSHIN
censorship is bad enough.. but this sorted, automated process of censorship is just dumb.. things like this are subjective.. and such an objective outlook/process is ridiulious to even try.
Victoria Palmer - I brake for unix.boys, Windows just breaks. - http://www.escape.com/~juliet
I think this is crazy, why do people feel we need outside sources to censor our children all the time???
It should be up to the parents to watch what their children do not up the the rest of the world to watch what your children do. I remember a quote, something like "When I was younger, mothers used to spend their time worldproofing their children, now we spend our time childproofing the world.
Thats just my 2 cents because you can never censor everything thats bad while not censoring everything thats good.
I don't get it, what's the point in this article? It's very short.
Blocking anonymous proxies, if you're censoring why not? That can be a security risk. Or a workaround.
Translation services may get around censorware if they translate whole pages. However, a good product would allow URL exceptions so that even if you're blocking, say, everything, you could allow one domain or URL.
The blocked anonymization and translation services mentioned in the paper are blocked by the service because they can both be used to bypass the URL-based filtering scheme.
If you're running a filtering service, you don't really have any choice if you want to have any sort of efficacy.
And, of course, that's precisely why filters cost more than their benefits. It would have been nice had the author addressed that angle, rather than writing a propaganda piece that does little more than thinly alluding to some sort of censorship conspiracy.
DNA just wants to be free...
It would be a novel change if some of the censorware were honest and added the categories "They're mean to us", "Just 'cause", and "Your 10-year old is too clever by half".
I'd first like to question that this is a "paper"...calling it that might make it sound as if some serious academics have been pulled off, but it's no more than an observation. An attempt at "blowing the whistle" on someone, it seems.
Secondly...this is obvious. Hell, it's *smart* to block translation sites. If you're selling software to perform a certain service, it should perform that service well, should it not? Is it not elementary that a translation site would offer an easy way around the restrictions?
You can debate the merits of such software until you're blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that some people want this service, and companies are going to provide it. And as long as it isn't infringing the rights of adults in their homes, using private property, theres really nothing that can be done about it.
It's important not to become to rabid in our beliefs that we abandon common sense.
-- Merc "And you thought you were your own worst critic."
Who decides this anyway?
In a dank basement double-cubicle somewhere in Gotham:
"Freshmeat.org?"
"Definately sounds like porn. Probably kiddie stuff..."
"Ok. Let's check it out" [drool]
"Heh, it's our job!"[click, click, click]
"Ugh, how disappointing..."
"Disgusting."
"Filter?"
"Definately. Under self-help. Occult and militant, too."
"I'll do porn for good measure."
"Um...no. That file doubles as our "Adult Site Finder" for the guys upstairs."
"Oh, yeah..."
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Does it also filter first posts?
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I for one, as I'm sure many people on this site, am against censorship in any fashion. Censorship discourages freedom. Hell, it's practically the exact opposite of freedom.
That aside, I'd like to know the rationale behind some of the things that are on this censored list. Just what is so offensive about www.freedom.net? According to SmartFilter, freedom.net is a sex-filled, illegally drugged, criminal teaching, worthless, sports-related occult site that gambles. How on earth did this site get into all of these ridiculous categories? I've looked at the site and it definitely does not call into any of those categories.
And what's the deal with the beloved babelfish being censored? Could somebody possibly explain that to me in a sensible, logical kind of way? I guess not only censoring web sites is enough, they actually have to censor languages or something.
All universal moral principles are idle fantasies, indeed. But what the hell is so immoral or wrong about poor babelfish?
J
With NH2H, I can't visit any website that has games. Or, deals with chat. Hell, I can't visit http://www.mirc.co.uk because of it. Anyone know of any anonyomiser software that could be run on my home webserver (Apache, PHP) to avoid that mess?
Now, as for the anonymizer sites and the proxies, I don't think there is anything that can be done about them. Their main purpose it to be setup to bypass "censorware" so they must be blocked. It's a losing battle of course.. kind of like playing whack-a-mole. Once you kill one another pops up right away. I'm sure there are thousands out there that people have just setup that aren't on the list. You just have to take decent precautions against flagrant abuse and hope the rest of the people aren't abusing your resources. The only other way to fix it is to have strenuous reviewing of the logs, authenticating to the proxy for tracking purposes, etc. We don't have the time to do #1 and the users would scream bloody murder if we did #2.
It's so patently obvious how to shut down pornography on the 'net and yet it seems there's no effort being made.
Establish immunity from credit card charges for sites classified as obscene.
All that is needed is a few weeks of people not paying the charges applied to their credit card for visiting porn sites. The porn customers would go hog wild at the opportunity. But the porn site operators would go bankrupt. Adult sights can't sustain themselves on banner advertising.
It's not restraint of trade to prevent people selling illegal materials from collecting their revenue.
Great, but you forgot "Refused/Dropped Our Banner Ads".
--
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The gravitational constant of protein has changed. - Turbine
I would guess that censorware would actually block it's own homepage.
Ie the homepage claims the product blocks pages about sex, gambling, violence etc
The censorware sees all the bad keywords in a row and blocks out the page.
The alternative? Write a search engine that doesn't return any XXX results, use that on school computer homepage. If you're paranoid check the log files. Yet we all know this anyway so I'll stop writing now.
It's turtles all the way down.
They block the babel fish and yet I see no kharma whores rushing to defend the fish - what gives ?
Seriously though what did that researcher expect...Censorware blocks sites that allow anynmous surfing. Its unfair but surely not much of a surprise.
Hey we'll allow anonymous surfing and let the scropt kiddies get their daily dose of porn at uni.... Censorware obviously thought otherwise
The bit that foxed me though...why block the fish ? Did they think people would use it to find porn on foreign webpages ?
2600 had an article about getting around blocking software....take the ip of the site, convert it into hex, and enter that as the URL: ie:
198.217.28.12 would be: C6D91C0C
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I don't understand why this is supposed to shock us. They're just committing software overkill by adding one site to all the subjects, just call it an extra precautionary measure to make SURE the site gets blocked. I don't support censorware, but why is their so much discussion on its blacklist?
This guy hits it right on the head. It's not about protecting the children; it's all about burning books. That;s what the people who make this are after, and it's even more true of their target market.
Maybe you'll convince me otherwise when Cyber Patrol stops blocking Google and starts blocking goatse.cx (and yes, it's true; CP blocks Google intermittently, but lets goatse.cx through without even a warning).
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I have been thinking about this for a while because my old high school used to filter out special websites for no reason. My own website on my own server was blocked for some reason, and they blocked anonymizer, etc....If you just put up your own perl/whatever script somewhere to just get webpages, you're home free, untill the evil sysadmin blocks the entire domain :(. I'm not saying this is some revolutionary idea(Wow a perl script that can fetch webpages!) but it's food for thought.
I'm not just talking about whether censorware is technologically effective (and numerous studies have proven it's not). I'm saying it's not socially effective in deterring people from looking at stuff they want to see.
Take your MPAA example, which you misstate. R and X ratings are quite effective, and the MPAA very much does pay attention, but not for the purpose of deterring people (even minors) from seeing violence or sex in theaters. R and X ratings encourage viewership, since they assure hormonally empowered youths to see a movie which they might otherwise pass by. Whenever a movie is produced, much time is spent determining which audience it's intended at, and much time is spent in postproduction inserting or excising breasts to give the film the precise rating the coporate underwriters intend. Every ounce of human flesh, every "pussy shot", every rape scene, every domestic violence incident, every shame borne by the family of a starving soaps actress (or by herself in her later years, when she realizes what has become of her childhood pride) is meticulously planned and placed by the bearded man with the megaphone.
It's the same with internet censorware. When censorware becomes an unfortunate universal reality among consumers (either by installing it themselves or through AOL proxy servers, etc.), you'll see web authors inserting or excising breasts to give their webpages the precise rating their own corporate underwriters intend. Censorware ratings can work both ways, blocking or informing the user which sites have the ratings he (and it's predominantly 'he's) wishes to view. Instead of having sites vying to stack search engines with their smut, you'll see them stack the censorware stats.
But getting back to my original point, censorware isn't effective because it tells the user: "Aha, this site contains something naughty". The user, his interest piqued, will wonder what he's missing and will do whatever it takes to see what he's forbidden to see. Film censors are effective precisely because they prevent the viewer from ever knowing what he's missing (since consumers don't have access to insider knowledge about what is and what is not allowed to go to production). Censorware cannot ever be as effective, because even when it succeeds in blocking a site, the consumer is inevitably told what is happening.
-- Anne Marie
What I think is annoying everyone (but isn't mentioned outright yet) is that these (and many other) sites are blocked without a clear explanation of why they were blocked beyond a category heading. These category markings are not always accurate. An anonymizer is not a sex site, etc., (although it could be used to proxy one).
What censorware makers need to do is give a one or two sentance discription of what a site is/does *and* why they chose to block a site beyond the few bits needed to denote categories. In order to do this, they must have their teams revisit every site and have *real people* write these comments.
If they this, their databases likely would more than double in size. But at least consumers would know exactly why a site was blocked besides someone being checkbox happy...
If you want interesting censorware, try Antivirus! That's right - Antivirus comapanies sometimes decide to block sites using their Internet scanners. For instance, McAfee Antivirus' Internet scanner has two web sites blocked by IP address and name - one of which is Digicrime (Harmless, but will show you holes in your web browser!). Dr. Solomon's will say that the opening JAVA on this site is a virus, but it isn't (depending on your web browser, it might actually run *before* Dr. Solomon catches it). Norton AV ignores Digicrime entirely.
This just raises the question -- how do *you* really know what's on a web site? Could "censorware" be changing it? A major company could make their Internet software refuse to access their competitor's site, claiming to be protecting you. Or it might just change the content to something you never would imagine was wrong...
I really see no need for this to be posted on the slashdot main page. Yes 'censorware' is something that most of us dislike, but it seems that every time a few hundred words are put together about the 'evils' or it, jamie posts it to the main page of slashdot. I honestly believe that it would be far more fitting to just put this into yro.
To keep this post on topic, i think that the major backlash against content filtering will actually come from the teachers in the schools who actually do the overriding. They are the ones who constantly see the failing, and will eventually make it known.
Anyways please don't moderate me down or 'censor' me just because you don't agree with me.
I beg to differ, there are many females reading and posting on /. We make comments only where we have something interesting to contribute to the discussion. Because our comments are fewer, it appears that we are non-existant, but assuredly, we exist and will rule. Or maybe we just all post AC to drive everyone crazy.
well, yes... netscape blows rather oversized chunks and does so in stupendous technicolor fashion... but /. is the Katz pajammers! (groan... please don't shoot me, i'm old and will die soon anyway)
Hmmm. As I recall, the filtering software at my old school ( WebSENSE , I think it was called) filtered domains (e.g. http://www.pcgamer.com ) but not their IP addresses (e.g. 209.246.21.46 ). All one would have to do to get around this would be to write a script to output the IP address of a domain given to it and write a utility to replace all outgoing TCP/IP requests for domains with IP addresses stored in a database on the user's computer. Is this typical of filtering software, or do most companies have blocked domains also block their IP addresses?
Suppose I set up a CGI script at my personal homepage that I feed it an url, and then the script goes out and fetches the page, and makes it appear that it and all associated images came from my ISP?
t e.com
So that
www.myISP.net/~myhome/redirect.cgi?www.bannedsi
would fetch bannedsite, and change all hyperlinks in bannedsite to point back to the script
Any programming gurus care to comment?
I can tell from your post that you don't spend much time in the US.
You clearly came from someplace where parents are involved in their children's lives, values are important and personal liberty and freedom has meaning. That is NOT the United States of America.
The USA is a nation of lazy couch potatoes who want everything fixed in a minute. Family conflict MUST be resolved in the sticom time frame of 22 minutes, or a daytime drama hour if it's really serious. Dinner should all but prepare itself (More than three steps and it doesn't sell) and children should be self raising.
No one wants the responsibility for anything. Parents don't want to raise their kids. They want the baseball trophies and class photos, but they don't want any of the heavy emotional messiness of a daughter's first period or explaining sex, violence and drugs to Little Jo. They want the schools and TV to raise the kids, and if something is wrong with the child they want a pill to make it go away by evening or they'll sue the doctors for incompetence.
Everyone is too busy with their empty, meaningless jobs to maintain relationships or family ties, children blame all their mistakes on poor parenting and spoiled baby boomers call their parents all sorts of terrible things just because they never smoked pot or dropped acid.
America has reached the state of lazy, degenerate opulence that Rome had shortly before it fell. Too lazy to do anything constructive, weekend extreme sports are considered somehow fulfilling, focusing on someone other than yourself is pathetic and whoever has fewer toys than you is pathetic and not worth the air they breathe.
Americans no longer understand real suffering or oppression, so the slow leaching of rights and liberties goes unnoticed. As long as the latest episode of Friends airs on time everything will be fine.
Of course Americans are allowing, even demanding Censorware into schools and libraries. Thinking is hard, and actually dealing with what's out there and teaching children values and ethics is too much to bother with, besides, talking to little Jessica about all the evil things on the Internet would mean you'd miss tonight's episode of Law and Order.
Only the young and the beautiful matter. Hollywood tells you so. Hollywood is the Church. More Americans believe in little Gray aliens kidnapping us and shoving probes up our arses than in any kind of a God. People are more worried about the new movie with the biggest special effects than in World Events.
How many Americans can name three world leaders? Two? One World Leader??? Many Americans don't even know who their own President is! From the reactions I've heard only 10% of the total population even knew the Electoral College even existed!
Americans don't care if Censorware blocks the important things. Just as long as the responsibility for raising the children is taken off their shoulders.
Yes, I am an American. There was a time I was proud of that. Of course that was when my age was still expressed with a single digit.
Censorship, oppression, loss of freedom, these are the things America is about. Fahrenheit 451 was not science fiction. It was a clear and detailed picture of what lies ahead. Get used to it.
www.matthewmiller.net"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
That's his conclusion? Awfully sloppy reasoning and just plain wrong: it is not a requirement of censorware at all to block either anonymity or translation. A censoring proxy could (does?) actually provide anonymity itself, and they could provide translations too, if they wanted to.
I definitely support the feelings surrounding the paper, I just wish the author had thought about it a little bit more. I am entirely against such filtering - in my opinion, pornography should be blocked from high schools and elementary schools, and only a little bit more is up for debate. My high school had awful restrictions - including all mail services (free services and even mailstart.com, which lets you check pop3s), as well as many educational sites - researching mushrooms for a biology report couldn't be done from school computers.
On the other hand, the paper is misleading. I am particularly concerned about the author bashing the blocking of translation sites, implying that they are blocked BECAUSE they are educational and useful. Let's be honest here - the filtering software is not DESIGNED to block good sites, even though many are surely blocked inadvertently. It's quite clear to me, and probably to most slashdot readers, that translation sites are not blocked because they provide useful translation services, but because they could be used to beat the system and "unblock" pages. Of course, this represents poor and inadaquate software, but nonetheless, a safety precaution to make sure that 7th grade boys aren't viewing pornography websites translated from English to German.
So yes, these censoring programs are evil, overprotective, and poorly programmed, but in some cases, the intent has been lost. They're not intentionally trying to screw over their customers - their job is to make absolutely sure that no user of their software can access inappropriate material. They do a good job at that, even though there are unpleasant side effects.
Whatever package my school system uses, It blocks freshmeat.net -LW
This is probably a tad off-topic (sorry).
My firm was contracted to set up a server and 30 computers for a christian private school. They wanted internet access, but also some censor ware (and damn if I cannot remember the name of the CW, probably not one of the more noted ones)
anyway, things went fine until one day we got a call from them, the CW was blocking sports sites, and the teacher wanted her students to write about thier favorite sports team, and could I come down and fix this.
Well sure, no problem, I just set the CW to not block sports-related sites.
To test this (and with a group of kids, christian kids mind you, surrounding me) I went to the NFL home page.
What's on the front site but a full page story about the drug charge/rape/murder investigation of one of the NFL's star athletes.
Whoops....
The filter went back on instantly.
-- Don't you love a world where they give paranoid sociopaths guns, and tell them to shoot traitors and subversives?
all the staff in filtering companies are PAID to look for PORN and other illegal stuff all day, I wonder if public opinion about them would be changed?
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Not like it matters to me, I just use lynx over SSH since I don't care for their fucking network.
For three years, we had to contend with extremely stupid and non-sensical rules. At times, the school even censored of services like Hotmail to require users to use "in-house" email, regardless of how long people had external accounts. Eventually the system was abandoned because sites people needed to do research from were blocked, and it became increasingly difficult for admins to remove single sites with ~'s in them.
-MR
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
None of us should be the tiniest bit surprised that censorware routinely blocks organizations that promote free inquiry, free speech, and free access to knowledge. Of course it blocks sites like that. The values inherent in those sites are anathema to the values of people who write censorware. You couldn't conceivably code, sell, or even lick stamps for a censorware company if you didn't support the values behind censorware and despise the values we happen to cherish.
Are you shocked that censorware blocks sites of people who hate censors and censorware? Don't be. The people who run censorware companies hate them (you) right back.
Nor should we be surprised at the seeming stupidity of censorware. Dullness, to a censor, is a virtue. What is a person who deliberately shuts out massive portions of life and thought (and strives to make others the same) but dull?
Here on /., the consensus seems to be that parents should control what their minor children see and that adults (however you define it for your own situation) should be mildly shielded from going to sites they'll find annoying or disturbing. Opinions are divided on whether libraries and corporations should have similar control over their employees, but I believe nearly unanimous that censorware, if it has to be used, should be free from gross stupidities.
Which is why I think a few of us ought to get together to cut the censorware companies off at the knees by developing Free Software censorware that embodies our values: intelligence and choice.
Want to shield your kids or yourself from corporate music sites? No problem. It's an option. Want to block out banner ads? Ditto. WebWasher just hasn't gone far enough.
What's more, Free Software censorware would almost certainly be higher quality than what's out there now.
And it would surely go toward our real karma if we could take away from people like that the two things they prize the most: money and control over other people.
Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
It's pretty obvious that SmartFilter is aimed at businesses NOT home users, libraries or schools. Just take a look at the list. It blocks way too many useful, honest to goodness web sites. HOWEVER, if I wanted to seriously curb non-work related surfing, SmartFilter looks pretty good to me. It blocks the types of sites that most surfers hit at work... travel related, ecommerce, entertainment, etc.
I look at our usage logs every single day and sites like those are where most of the traffic is going.
I'm not defending censorship... I hate the thought as much as most of us do. But I think that this particular product is being taken out of context. It's being marketed towards businesses. That's clear from the product page. Can it be used for other reasons, sure. But, sorry, businesses have every right to restrict what is done on their hardware and over their lines.
An earlier poster made a comment about "worldproofing the child, not childproofing the world."
I grew up on a farm in the North-West of Scotland. For those among you who have never spent any time in such an environment it's *full* of dangerous stuff. There are very big heavy animals (sheep may look cute and cuddly but they weigh about 150 pounds, and can knock over an adult of similar weight - I know from experience), huge machines, workshops full of horrendously dangerous equipment ("Dad, can I use the Stihl saw?") and big pits full of water.
The practical upshot is I, and my friends, grew up knowing that there was dangerous stuff out there, and were smart enough to know what we could handle and what we couldn't.
Children don't need protected from the world, they need protected from "quick-fix" parents.
Often, several web sites are hosted off one IP in "name-based virtual hosting." IP-based virtual hosting is not an option, as the powers that be are not giving out IPs for that anymore.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Suppose I set up a CGI script at my personal homepage that I feed it an url, and then the script goes out and fetches the page, and makes it appear that it and all associated images came from my ISP?
You'd be providing an anonymizer service (especially if you used https), and you'd be the first to be banned.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just one URL: www.beaver.edu
I think that if I ran one of those translation services, I'd be suing the filter foundry for slander/libel for every miscategorisation of my service. Especially if "Worthless" was one of them!