Slashdot Mirror
SmartFilter: Way Too Extreme
His discussion of the legal risks of decrypting these blacklists is fascinating too, and (as he likes to say) "a topic in itself." He would like to open up the source to his SmartFilter-decryption tool but feels the legal risk is too high. How sad is that?
Here's Secure Computing's definition of the "extreme" category, and the examples they give ("Pixman's Vault of Porn Pix", "Bizarre & Maximum Perversion").
You can confirm Seth's findings using Secure Computing's own SmartFilterWhere. It asks for your name and phone number; you have my permission to make some up. As of December 7, at 9:45 PM EST, that CGI operates with a Control List updated on December 5 and confirms all of Seth's results that I tried. By the time you read this, they may have quickly fixed all the errors he published, loaded in an up-to-the-minute Control List, and proudly announced that their software is now perfect.
Until the next report.
it's great that they have all these sites linked in the story, but where are the links to the kidde porn and mutilated dead bodies?
I never understood why the filter blacklists are so wrong. Most of the people I know would be delighted to be payed to search the Internet for forbidden, naked, obscene, porn, sex, bizarre, hard-core, perverted and extreme stuff. If staffing isn't a problem, then what is the problem? I don't get it.
The thing to remember is that just about any particular person is likely to be offended by just about anything. And that's why these lists need to published (whether you agree with the filters or not) just to make sure that someone has put a bunch of wacky stuff in there that simply doesn't make sense, like blocking the sun-worshipping dog launchers website.
Shop Smart, Shop S-mart!
I mean, this software literally can't tell the Mona Lisa apart from the goatse.cx guy. It's just another tool of the bookburners.
But that said, I know of two things which are quite perfect for filtering Internet access and keeping kids away from inappropriate sites. Any revisions of Mom 1.0 and Dad 1.0 are shown to be 100% effective, when properly deployed. When they must be taken offline for short periods, Sitter 1.0 and Teacher 1.0 also work; they aren't quite as effective (in particular, Teacher 1.0 is designed for groups, and generally isn't as good at each individual child as a result) but should suffice for short periods of time.
The major problems with Mom 1.0 and Dad 1.0 is a bug in the built-in Sentience(tm) system. This causes some versions of these programs to trigger a mode which has been dubbed "lazy mode" (or alternately "selfish"), in which they refuse to fulfill their primary function (educating and raising children), and as a result lose all effectiveness. This is a problem that needs to be worked out, though the exact method of how to do this is up to debate.
----------
That's because there's no such word as "Bizaree", and probably no such website. Have you tried "Bizarre"?
I think you should get it through your thick skull that much of the outrage about overly restrictive filters isn't about home use, but use by companies, libraries, schools, and so forth. Do you think the principal, sysadmin, librarian, or whatever has the time to evaluate and unblock sites on a case-by-case basis? What if the institutions are required by law to run blocking software and the staff isn't legally authorized to unblock sites?
You 'tard.
In case you've missed the last 20 or 30 years of popular music culture, I'm here to tell you that Marilyn Manson is about as hard-core as Britney Spears or The Backstreet Boys. It's mass-market pop music!!
You want to hear something extreme? Fire up napster and grab some Anal Cunt tracks... classic.
-=Sam=-
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
If you don't have censorship people then have to think for themselves! Calm down, I know it's scary...
;)
Maybe someone on cnn will tell us what to think about this later.
MSNBC isn't biased to GE, just because they own it. Don't think censor software will try to block censor reviews...
heh
Re: PARENTING!!
From my original post...
Lets assume that I'm a conscientious parent with home computer set up in the full view of everyone.
There are still times when I'm not going to be able to be there while my kids are surfing, or at a mates place with decidedly less supervision. Even good kids do stupid things.
Being a good parent is earning enough money to buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood and send your kids to a decent school. Good parenting is letting your kids know right from wrong and steering them away from the wrong crowd. As a good parent, you don't live next door to a drug pusher... you have that option. You don't have that option on the Internet.... that's my FUCKING POINT.
You can be the best parent in the world, and you still cannot be secure in the knowledge that your kids are getting into some serious shit on the 'net.
Lets not joke around here... there is some seriously fucked up, sadistic shit on the 'net.
Its not enough to just be a good parent... I'm talking about 6-14 year olds here BTW - kids who don't need to be sitting in a #pokemon chat room with Mr. Stinky posing as another kid.
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
I _love_ when websites, stores (radio shack), etc. ask for a phone number. I always give them 250.828.3000 which used to be my local police station. For you Americans out there how about 202.456.1414 or 202.324.3000 which are the whitehouse and the FBI.
Stupid Opera can't seem to deal with the concept of logging in to slashdot. Didn't mean to post AC.
-lx
If you're reading this forum, you're probably already open-minded enough (OK, maybe with a few exceptions) for that conversation not to be a problem. Now imagine the same conversation occurring in rural Kansas, or in Utah... (no offense to the many non-homophobic Kansans and Utahians (?) reading, but you have to admit you don't live in the most cosmopolitan areas of the country).
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
so chumbawumba are out are they?
oh well Anarchy and politics are as bad as hard core porn is it. Funny that isnt it...
"sometimes I wish I was blind I thought I saw a whole lot more than this"
If you were real evil you'd use abuse@aol.com.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I checked a couple of the sites:
InsaneClownPosse.com
gcsextreme.com
extreme-offroad.com
are no longer listed. So at least they take action quickly... is this such a bad thing?
Actually this is from the University of Cape Town, a South African university.
With the limited bandwidth they have (~2-4 Mbps last count), and the limited space in the various labs, it doesn't take much porn-surfing and mp3-downloading for everything to start working pretty slowly. Some of the labs already had time-limited access for non-UCT sites (ie no access during work hours). Of course, not all of the labs have 24hr access.
Specifically filtering the site because it is a porn site seems a bit rash, especially given that other sites can chew up much more bandwidth (mp3s, mpgs/DivX, etc). And there is the issue of UCT now having taken it upon themselves to filter the network content: They could now be responsible if any illegal content is found (this argument has been put forward on /. before).
There is more information available at the URL mentioned above.
Of course, there is also the whole definition of "public universities". Attending UCT is not free. They do, however, receive certain government funding. I do not if this could force them to suspend the filtering. They do classify the traffic according to academic relevance, sorta.
- Al
Why not bring this to Dick Smith Electronics and get them to sue the filtering company into oblivion?
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
I try to speak and write in a manner that's compatible ("7th of December" and "7 Dec" are unambiguous).
Amazing how many Americanisms have turned into peeves in the 18 months I've been away from the US.
When I talk to my brother on the phone, he sounds so... stereotypically American, even though we're from Massachusetts. (R becomes the most impoRtant letteR in the alphabet.) At least my parents don't sound talk with that othewise nonexistant Midwestsouthern accent that politicians use.
I blame it on his going to college in DC (my parents still speak normally), and still being a Republican -- although I'm pretty confident he'll grow out of that within a year or two -- I did when I was about his age.
But really, who am I kidding? It's not the Midwestsouthern accents that really bother me -- it's the people who speak using them.
--
You're a suburbanite.
-Working to get his karma back since 12-7-00
Is that the 12th of July or the 7th of December?
--
You're a suburbanite.
Safeweb, AskJesus, Babelfish, etc.
These are all examples of a fairly simple web application that pretty much destroy all hopes of this filtering methodology every flying. Are all these applications to be blacklisted as "obcene", "occult", or "too useful"?
Just like the porn, they'll never get em all.
The resolution: Just have a coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
Instead of filtering, parents can monitor their children's web surfing using a software package like Disk Tracy.
This package logs every website visited, and (claims) the log can't be tampered with.
tupac is dead good, stop dissing him
They currently don't block votenader, but the do block buchanan2000.com (listed as Politics/Religion). I think that they really just don't want any views at all.
Like you, you nasty little troll.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
On the other hand, you are correct that the people who think everything they don't like should be filtered and banned are enemies of the human species.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Female Prison Rape in NY
(I presume one of those lefts was a right?:) AFAIK Chumbawamba are not anti-democratic, which should be the deciding factor. (Racist => anti-democratic, if you think about it).
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Heh .. these guys are the shit.. I highly recommend them to any and all geeks out there; Those with an especially bitter and jaded outlook on life will find their lyrics +1 insightful or at least, +1, interesting. Ok, well, they're worth at least a napster download hehe:).
..don't panic
Very appropriate sig for your comment.
Spencer Ogden
It seems that every time a report come out on 'censorware', jamie posts it on the front page of slashdot. They all say the exact same thing, and every time jamie has the same commentary. I do not like them any more than the average slashdot user, but I really think jamie is trying to push an agenda, and I think he should post it in a more approprate place, like the yro section.
To keep this on topic, an effective system to provide both the freedom to those that want it, and to protect the children would be to have a system where a child would use his card to use the library computers, and the parent would have control over the content catagories.
Uhmmm... search engines tell me. If I search for something on google, and is says there's something related at foo.com, then I know I'm missing something.
treke
I have the feeling your subject didn't get quite enough attention.
Censorship fulfills a purpose: It keeps our "impressionable children" from viewing things they "shouldn't see". It also keeps employees from looking at porn while supposedly working on their latest paperwork.
If our children are _so_ impressionable, why does the trend not exist to impression them with self-disgretion? If they are taught to choose between looking at porn or watching the Barney Lobotomy TV show, and they can think and act on their own, this censorship for the ignorant and incapable will be limited to a small few.
This same idea of placing responsibility at the individual also works well in proper business. If you are hiring the type of employees that prefer to look at porn all day instead of doing their work, you are hiring employees with a very poor work ethic (or your work environment really sucks). Get a better interviewing policy and hire better workers.
American culture has been leading the charge of dissipating responsibility for reality since the end of World War II. We have lawyers suiing lawyers because they didn't play nice in court. We have people suing fast food restaurants for them spilling coffee on themselves. We have grown children dying because they ride a bicycle into traffic, and the manufacturer is somehow held responsible. It is very rare that we have a valid situation (such as the Firestone Tire fiasco) where responsibility needs to be corrected by a lawsuit.
Instead of turning off the TV, we censor the TV shows. Instead of closing the browser window (or going to a different site), we censor the content. We find a problem, and we try to edit the result, like applying a `|sed -e "...."` to a program's output, rather than just fixing the program (the root of the problem) in the first place!
I certainly hope I am not the only person who sees this cultural syndrome and actively disowns it.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
comp.lang.basic.visual - Criminal skills !!
Smartfilter blocked every website and blocked the internet! Then Smartfilter conquered the world and no one could access the internet! Arghh matee!
Of course not. If he ordered a 'hit' in rhyming couplets would that make him any less murderous?
However, I suspect it would be perfectly legal to describe in detail the encryption scheme, and perhaps to describe an algorithm for decryting it.
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
...that purchasers of filtering software don't even know what it is they are getting.
And this is true of hundreds of other kinds of products that don't have anything to do with censorship.
Foods and over-the-counter drugs (at least in the US) are required to have the list of ingredients and their nutrition information printed on their packaging. This is a good thing because it permits consumers to be aware of what they're getting in exchange for their money.
If everything else (electronics, computers, cars, filterware, crayons) were held to the same standard of openness, we wouldn't have a problem here. There would actually be accountability, if you can imagine that!
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
It has been alleged by certain people (most notably Lloyd Kaufmann, head of Troma Studios) that the MPAA doles out ratings in an incredibly biased manner, from studio to studio. (I don't have any evidence to back this up, since I'm at work right now. When I get home tonight, I'll try to post something a little more relevant.) So I wouldn't accept your statement as canon, yet.
RRiiiiiiggggghhhhhhttttttttt.....
*you smile and nod, I'll fetch the men in the white coats*
-Shane
thank you, I was unaware of that.
in my system (Windows 95 B with USB Support) it is in "c:\windows\hosts.sam" Here is the text from the default file (Notice the Chicago referance? I love them calling it by the development name!)
# Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Chicago
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#
102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
Yes.
You: moron.
Nope. Promise Keepers are considered anti-Christian by many Fundamentalist groups, because they believe it puts the importance of relations between men and discussion of sin before the Bible. And there are lots of detractors on USENET. I'm surprised the whole of USENET isn't just blocked, but that _wouldn't_ seem evenhanded. The bible discussion groups draw lots more detractors than any forum dedicated to the detractors, so they might encourage honest discussion and thought about one's religious beliefs.
Too true. I tried to check my blackmetal.com order status from work, only to run up against this bullshit (Blackmetal.com: extreme: occult). It's not occult, it's fucking music, and I'm pretty sure Billy Graham's "Are You Ready to Meet God?" cult isn't being blocked.
-Legion
This has been around for years now. PICS not only provides a rating scheme (such as RSAC or SafeSurf), but it allows anyone (including the site's own publishers) to invent their own rating schemes and allow users to install them in PICS capable browsers. If you want a rating scheme that excludes Evolutionary Science and favours Creationism, then you're quite at liberty to use one.
The same rating scheme can even be applied to sites publishing their metadata to search engines. It's practical, useful and an interesting development area to use this technology to state, "I'm a member of the Good Museums Guild, and when I say this page shows pictures of pandas and is especially suitable for children, then you can trust me."
Insightful ? Get a clue, moderators....
A question - what if he wrote a poem... That just happened to describe how to right a program to circumvent SmartFilter's encryption? Wouldn't that fall under the same "speech is protected" laws that let PGP export their program?
-RickHunter
Murder is against the law, though. He would be telling someone to commit murder, which is a crime. However, as pointed out elsewheres, apparently writing (apologies for the typo in my original post) a program to break an "access control measure" isn't illegal - just distributing it. So since he really isn't distributing it....
What's in your second paragraph was basically what I was suggesting... Although I used the example of a poem to make the "speach" angle clear.
-RickHunter
Are you sure, that this helps you not being logged? I mean, the http://slashdot.org/ will be requested anyway and will be logged.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Wisely, SmartFilter realized that Chumbawamba were the biggest fucking sellouts to ever come from punk. Their horrible rationalization for why they should be on a major label was merely a cover to go for the money.
I hope Crass re-unites as a skinhead Oi! band with the sole goal of stomping the shit out of Chumbawamba.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
I'd much rather my daughter see mutilated dead bodies on the web than listen to Chumbawumba.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Filters block more 'safe' sites then they restrict access to unsafe sites. Even when it blocks a site there are plenty of ways to get around... ie simple cgi script on your webserver to download the page then convert filtered words, ie cun7 etc.
A quick Q&A session.
Will parents install it? yes.
Is it a parents right to install it? Yes, they paid for the computer/net access.
Would your local library install it? Yes.
Is it your library's right to censor content? No, your tax dollars pay for the library and frankly, this kind of thing fails to actually catch abuses, i.e. cheapo porn sites without a PICS label
BTW, killing a parrot will get you animal crultey charges in most states
Read my plan to save the Bengals
AND use info@evilprivacyinvadingcompany.com for the email..
Make them call themselves to try to sell their stuff
you know, pne that filters IN all this stuff and all that boring kids stuff out
:-)
.oO0Oo.
now that would sell
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
http://www.goatse.cx isnt blocked. They cant even get one of the most disgusting things ever blocked.
/*
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
Ooh! Yes!! Trash a fundie and rake in the karma! Substitute "Jew" for "Christian", however, and this same post would be floundering down at -1 Troll.
Apparently, some people need a demon to help them make sense of the world, and since the "evil empire" has exited stage right, Christian fundamentalists seem to be the most convenient target. After all, nobody I know actually knows any of "them", so where's the harm?
Sometimes the /. mentality is truly frightening. The fact that moderators actually REWARD such blatant racism only further blackens Slashdot's eye. Any moderator who +1-ed this tripe ought to hang his head in shame.
Note: IAMACF (I Am Not A Christian Fundamentalist). But sometimes I can really sympathize with them.
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
> news:soc.religion.christian - "Christianity and related topics." blacklisted Cult/Occult, etc.
This sounds like a good opportunity: let the big Christian organizations know and use their clout to give the filter software companies a hard time. >:o)
A few days back slashdot was blocked by smartfilter, and right now this comment page is blocked. Good thing I have a java telnet app :) stupid school proxy is really pissg me off of late.
:wq! DOH!
Roy Miller
--Roy
Spasemunki writes: "Chumbawumba espouse anarchist philosophy, not of itself harmful but maybe not what six year olds are ready for."
Why not ban the website of the Young Democrats or Young Republicans? I'm sure that 6-year-olds aren't ready for a terrorist organization either.
It's a real shame that some of you ignorant geeks take filtering so casually. My website Infoshop.org has been filtered by numerous censorware products. You should see some of the e-mails I get from teens who had to figure out how to disable the censorware just to see my website. Seth's report also mentions that TAO Communications is blocked. This is a clear act of political censorship. TAO provides hundreds of activist lists and e-mail accounts. My main e-mail is provided by TAO.
You won't be snickering about Marilyn Manson and Chumbawamba when the religious right sticks you in a concentration camp for not listening to Christian metal. ;-)
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Marylin Manson fan, but what you just wrote is pretty rediculous.
Are you seriously suggesting that Manson is in some way related to photos of dead bodies, and pornography? He's a pop star, for christs sake!
It's better than that. I'm stuck behind StupidFilter at work, and it WAS blocked until a few months ago. Probably got complaints about too many false error reports from all the damn troll links.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
--
Actually, if you look at the HTML spec, there IS a way of rating a page. It's under the META tag, and the rating system is fairly similar to the movie rating scheme.
-- Humans, because the hardware IS the software.
Wasn't that an episode of star trek?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
If you have the time to unblock sites, then why not just pop by your kid's door every once and a while to check that things are OK and save the $$$ on the software?
I don't have kids so I don't have an answer. I didn't grow up with censorware (it didn't even exist then, except for movie ratings) and I think I'm normal [what a useless diagnosis, I know]. It'd be nice to hear someone's reasoning for choosing the cesorware approach -- I've heard enough opinions for the other side of the debate.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
You see, they can't see such things untill they've done got lerned all their polyticks in school. Then they'll have a nice barrier against non-mainstream ideas in place.
As much as I'd like to see Marilyn Manson's mutilated dead body, none of these things are to be found on the site. In general, it's a nightmare of slow-to-download Flash. :/
fuck, now my karma is -3!! this sucks. fuck. i hope that this doesn't hurt my karma any more. shit.
SethF said: ...
Your kid comes to you, and says, "Dad, I want to read news:soc.support.youth.gay-lesbian-bi because I think I might be gay", and you say
--
Sure go ahead son...
what's your problem?? homophobe??
--
Sic Itur Ad Astra
www.gatrell.org
foo
Out of curiosity I typed "Bizaree & Maximum Perversum" in Google and got 10 hits - 10 filter control lists for 10 different companies. So the site itself is either a myth or no longer exists, but seems to be passed around from one filter to another.
What if the institutions are required by law to run blocking software and the staff isn't legally authorized to unblock sites?
What if the government gets taken over by Nazis and they suspend the constitution?
You can construct silly "what if" scenerios all day, but the fact of the matter is that libraries WILL unlock the software if you have a legitimate purpose, which does not include teenage boys leaving pictures of women having sex with animals on a public Internet terminal as a "joke".
If you find libraries that refuse to unlock Internet terminals for adults as a policy, then fight on that front. But it's silly and stupid to say that because there might be 1 librarian who refuses to unlock an Internet terminal, then all filtering is automatically bad.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A filter is just a tool, like any other. I don't expect my hammer to drive nails absolutely perfectly every time, because you have to use the tool properly.
My kid comes to me, and says "Dad, I want to get on gcsextreme.com, so I can order a part I'm looking for.". I say, "OK, let me unlock it for you."
What's the problem? I wish the Slashdot crew would get it through their thick skulls that filters don't have to be perfect to be useful. They're supposed to be too restrictive! Too restrictive is better than not restrictive enough because the parent can always override a block!
Unfortunately, this is too simple and logical when teenagers are being oppressed. Oh no!
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Wow. How STUPID can this filter be? I went to use babel.altavista.com to translate some German to English for work.... and it REJECTED ME!!!! I think it didn't like "babe" in "babel" How do you like that one????? Yet, I be I could surf to StileProject without so much as an eyeblink from the thing.
Do it yourself, be around when needed. Take your own responsiblility, software just can't do that now.
imho filtering sucks, but it is important. i wouldn't want my kids looking at hardcore pr0n.. anyway, i have not yet seen any reasonable filtering methods, or programs. sadly. i know, it's very difficult task...
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
It's not a sig. It's part of the comment.
as to why they block things like sci.archaeology, is it? Remember that almost all censorware out there has a Christian Fundie slant, and it's easy to see that if junior discovers archaeology then dinosaurs, biology and evolution are next, and then from there you'd might as well write him off as another anti-creationism devil worshiping Darwinist!
No, Christian Fundamentalists are not against archaeology. They actually believe in Christianity, so there not real scared of people finding facts that contradict it, as they don't believe there are any.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
So go to a local library with the source for your decryption software on a diskette and upload it onto Slashdot posted as an AC. The Library isn't tracking who accessed their system when and even if they could prove it's his code, they can't prove he distibuted it. Kind of like the loophole I heard about where it's not illegal to have drugs in your system, but just to posess them, so if you sniff the cocaine as the cops are beating on the door, they can't charge you for posession.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Hell yeah!
Erm, they can't get this "web" thing outside America can they?
no sig.
I just thought, it could be a circumvention for filtering software, but then I admit I never had to cope with filtering software. Someone who is blocked by filtering software should just test it and then post it here :-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Also of note is Passenger List For Doomed Flight 1721, and Pass It Along (MP3 Mix) (for some reason, the link on their Pass It Along webpage points to the albumesque cut). Pass It Along is pretty damn funny as well...
-- Shamus
Pass It Along...
It's probably someone's sig now
Ranessin
I agree with one of the other posters that says Parenting is the best solution but otherwise it really needs to be regulated manually by each WAN (or modem) connection manager (be that the IT department, or a parent). You don't like it, block it. As for libraries and public institutions, have a policy regaurding what is appropriate and what isn't. I have manually bocked inappropriate sites with the use of a monitor program and a few DNS entries (yes all the "bad" stuff goes to either www.barney.com or to a buisness ethics web site). This means yes I do have to check out every site in question but one person doing that for a group of 150 people seems more than adaquite. If you find you have to block too much and there is too much inappropriate material being accessed a trip to a manager (or child) should solve the problem.
It's not that hard people...
Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternitive to work.
My school uses microsoft smart filter on its proxy. I have only had recent experience with it and its HORRIBLE. One day I went to slashdot.org and it worked fine, the next day it was banned for reason "chat", now I have to use slashdot.com... also I had to get drivers from microteks site and for some reason they had them in ip/~admin/ and it denied access for reason "public user details" or some crap. anyway thats my 1 cent
Wouldn't parents technically be wetware?
The Recreational Software Advisory Council rating service for the Internet. Based on the work of Dr. Donald F. Roberts of Stanford University, who has studied the effects of media for nearly 20 years is built into most browsers.
Find out more about it
fixed URL
These are correctly identified, they are cultish, all religion is cultish. It's the whole point of religion. "Those that believe are saved, everybody else is doomed".
They except people accept their ridicules stories as fact, without a shred of evidence, indeed against significant counter evidence. If you challenge their world view you're attacked.
Religion is for weak minds. Childrens minds are weak. These blockages are therefore justified in software to enforce parental control.
They are however not justified for censorship. Adults, even if they are nieve are free to make their own decisions, even if they are wrong.
You've clearly never been in a Catholic Church. I was raised as a Catholic, and this dogma was the primary reason for my early childhood skeptism. I later realisesed that it's about control, which was to lead to my atheism.
heh, if eminem's lame ass is listed along with marylin manson that's fine to me :)
anyway, fuck filters, they're useless ..
either you want to see some blocked stuff and just proxy around or wathever (this operation requires half a brain tho) or you do not want to see any ofensive stuff at all and beleive closing a window is too hard, in wich case you should think about your little pathetic life.
oh yeah, and MDMA does feel great :)
lost another few karma points again ...
I'd be even more concerned with the inability to spell words such as "extreme".
-
Lemme guess... the filter thinks Metallica and Dr. Dre are just fine and dandy?
/*Insert boring sig here*/
Actually, browsing some lyrics sites, Insane Clowne Posse seems to be the most offensive, Tupac has the most swearing, and Marilyn Manson just has lyrics that tries to be offensive. Manson is just another icon of pop culture, the media made him what he is, because they understand that its popular to rebel. All of the artists I've listed have some good lyrics, but the average Manson fan is no different from the average Brittany Spears fan, 'cept the Manson fan thinks he's being 'cool' and 'different' since he doesn't buy into media hype. Get a clue, when the local stores sells CD's of your band, its the first clue that your band is mainstream.
Chumbawamba is different. They just advocate shoplifting their CDs, as well as their general philosophy of anarchy.
I wouldn't call any of these bands extreme, and I'm not for censorship, but if you were going to make a list of bands to censor, these bands would be it. Don't be shocked about the bands, be shocked that sci.archeology is blocked, as well as the computer sites.
Peope are looking for some sort of content control... Either
- we're going to leave it to the big end of town to decide what we watch, or
- netizens are going to police the rating scale, or
- we're going to run a zillion standards that people are going to make uniform, or
- [Heaven forbid] they might kill off the net
...
In any case, if we don't make a move and get some sort of ratings systems, (any ratings systems), we are gong to live of grep's rating.OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
I mean, it's all well and fine to have rated pages. We need to take the next step, which should be like this:
Imagine a browser ratings engine that works off a standard list. You download a rating-profile from your site. It says `allow x, deny y'. Were the ratings-table a standard format, then you can download for any browser, and any society, a rating table. For example, you could use Netscape and a AntiScientology page, or a `no evolution' page. You should be able to load multiple issues, eg no-evolution + no-commie-stufff.
Maybe we could edit our own as well ...
The thing is, if it's there and not working, it might as well not work. If we want to make it work, then we need to push the UI somewhat.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
What bugs me is the way that parents, or other official type figures will do anything to avoid responsibility for watching over their children, or in a business scenario, their employees. A little more time spent (parents mostly, employers would have privacy troubles) spent watching their children would remove 90% of the market for these programs and shift the honus (methinks this is the word) back on to those who are actually responsible for raising kids... hell i remember looking up bomb "recipes" (we all did it once ;) and getting busted.. there was hell to pay, and I didnt do it again. Easy solution. Why people rely on software babysitters (that are obviously flawed, as stated in parent) is beyond me...
My other
However, my school has a solution that I consider adequate. If we believe a site to be blocked in error, we can bring it to the attention of the admin, and they will review it themselves. If they agree, the site is unblocked. Already I have gotten them to unblock 2600, attrition, and some other computer-related sites. Half your luck... my school's admin is a toss and wont unblock anything... even drugsense.org (which i badly needed for a Chemistry assignment... but erowid.org gave me everything i needed and more (ie instructions on how to manufacture drugs) which funnily enough wasn't blocked :P
My other
I always enter in my phone number... 1 (800) 555-1212 And my Email address? webmaster@real.com (Took me forever to get rid of spam from them, it'll take them much longer to get rid of spam from me!) Jason
-Jason
Actually, I just figured that the fellow who blocked sci.archaeology as "occult" had seen too many Indiana Jones movies. Or possibly watched "Poltergeist: the Legacy". Amazing what passes for literacy these days...
but (understandably) he's reluctant to distribute it, allowing for a more full analysis of SmartFilter's flaws, because there is no similar exemption for distribution of anti-circumvention tools.
I think you meant "circumvention tools", not "anti-circumvention tools." Nits aside though, do you think that the lack of an explicit exemption for distribution of these legally created tools was by design or by oversight? How tough would it be to get Congress to correct such a flaw in the law? (actually I think the DMCA itself was one big flaw, but fixing it a piece at a time is better than leaving it intact as is)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Actually, there is another reason. Your phone number is fairly strong unique identifier for a person. A given phone number is likely to remain valid for at least a year. If you only move a short distance (apartment hopping) you can often keep the same number. Any given (private) phone number will generally map to no more than a handful of people. With a reverse lookup directory, you can easily determine where someone works from a work number. A phone number provides a relatively accuration location (with the area code and the next three digits, usually within a few miles). Lastly, it's a number almost everyone has and you can legally ask for (there are limitations on using a Social Security Number).
It's by no means a perfect tool, but it's better than nothing. This is one of the reasons that many businesses demand your phone number on your checks. It's yet another tool for tracking you down if you bounce the check. It's another tool for tracking your spending habits.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Jamie provided a link to Seth's home page, but not the article itself. Definately give his article, SmartFilter - I've Got A Little List, a read. His Anticensorware Investigations has links to his older work.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Of course, any filter company would block their rivals' sites.
I admit that was a unique denial of service attack using goatse.cx popup windows. I had to power cycle my computer to regain control! :-( Then IE forgot my desktop settings..
Big middle fingers to the AC!!!
cpeterso
> photos of mutilated dead bodies, bizarre
:)
> hard-core pornography and child pornography
What were the URLs for those, again?
Thanks.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
I think you forgot the period.
"Tupuc is dead. Good."
If you had guts enough to listen to Chumbawamba after they were branded "sellout" by your local i-know-what's-kosher-punk idiot, you'd noticed that their politics have not changed. And their music hasn't been anything like punk since the eighties, damnit.
Being on a major label gives them the opportunity to reach far more people than they would otherwise do. To them, I think it is more important to get their message across to as many people as possible, without caring about if their listeners know what labels, clothes and bands you must prefer to be a real punk/revolutionary/anarchist/vegan/whatever.
As for oi bands wanting to stomp the shit out of Chumbawamba, try Oi Polloi. Crass wouldn't stomp the shit out of anybody, and they're even less likely to reunite, whatever the reason.
Peace...
Oh, don't be ridiculous, and the ad hominem attack is unwarranted. There are *really good* scientific reasons not to believe in evolution - see http://www.scienceagainstevolution.org/newsletters .htm, if you're not afraid to deal with the truth, that is...
I don't believe in evolution simply because the "science" that supports the idea is so apalingly bad, and would be run out of town on a rail if it weren't in opposition to religious claims, which gives it a perverse immunity to rigorous examination.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
hehe, i feel ya, all unix, tcpip, telephony site etc where marked as "criminal activity".
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Linux: /etc/hosts and put this line in there:
Edit
127.0.0.1 goatse.cx
Windows:
Go to start, run, and then type "notepad C:\windows\hosts"
add this line in there:
127.0.0.1 goatse.cx
Now you don't have to worry about seeing that site. This trick is also good for blocking ads (127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net) or a simple form of filter software for kids since most of them have no idea how it works.
"Sure Apu, kids pretty much raise themselves these days, what with the Internet and all..."
How we know is more important than what we know.
You just described EVERY e/n site out there, starting with stileproject.com, and going down to archu.com, rebel-alliance.net, etc. MIght as well block the string "e/n" since stile has a million copycat sites.
. Every one of these and many more are blocked as "Extreme," which puts them in the same category as photos of mutilated dead bodies, bizarre hard-core pornography and child pornography.
Not my point at all. What I was saying is that there is a reason that the sort of people that feel that SmartFilter needs to be installed on things would feel like Chumbawumba should be on the list. Not that it is right or wrong that they are possibly on the list because of their political beliefs. I was just saying that their selection might not be as arbitrary as it appears to someone who doesn't have the same (perhaps irrational) fears as the sort of people that think that filters are needed. The earlier posts seemed to imply that the selection was arbitrary, and I was trying to point out that it makes sense if you consider the market that the makers of the product are trying to appeal to.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Agreed. I don't think this sort of thing should go on libraries. It was installed on computers at my school for a while when I was in HS, and it was worse than useless. It blocked access to useful sights, and probably allowed access to thousands of porn sites (didn't poke around looking for them, but that would be my guess). But, if you consider the demographic that their software was targeting, there is a reason that they included the sites that they did. That was my main point.
;)
On parrot law: one more proof that there is little fundamental consensus in society. If I rules, killing parrots would not only be legal, but mandatory.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
As long as child pornography or mutilated dead bodies, or whatever, must be treated differently than marilynmanson, or whatever, the problem remains the same: one person wanting to control what another person sees, says or does.
I'm all in favor of people claiming the right to some say over what is done TO THEM or BY THEM. Let it stop there.
Would you black hole a site simply because I say so? No? Then why pay any attention to the US Government or the UN.
Perhaps what we need are Frank Herbert's "Family Atomics": make every point of view fully mayhem-capable. Then we are down to two choices, tolerance for all or mayhem for all. Both choices seem morally superior to censor-ware...
Oh nevermind.
What other reports have an extensive discussion of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the legal risks involved in anticensorware investigations?
Hey, at least enjoy the section header quotes :-)
Note a basic finding is that one has no idea about the actual content of the categories. It's common for "Sex" to have everything from feminism to gay rights.
SmartFilter - I've Got A Little List is ati st.php
http://sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/gotal
Whenever a random web site asks for my phone number or email address without a good clear reason, I just use WHOIS and fill in their own address. Then I make sure to check all of the little boxes that say "We sometimes share this information with our valued friends. Would you like them to spam you too?" They probably remove themselves from the spam list pretty quickly, but it's fun to try anyways.
Stuff like SmartFilter sure makes me glad I work for a university whose head security admin's philosophy is "most of our students are smart enough to get around any blocking I might install, so I don't bother."
Thank You for your feedback!
Your suggestion to re-categorize the following URL(s): URLSuggested Categorization www.securecomputing.com
wt has been submitted to the SmartFilter Control List technicians for further evaluation.
-Legion
First of all, I'm in favour of content control; parents should be able to control what their kids watch. I'm against mandating this in any way; adults should be able to choose what they want to watch.
Censorship is a two stage process; deciding what the content is (Is it obscene ?, Is it blasphemous ?), and deciding whether it's acceptable to the audience (Is something that is obscene to a homophobe acceptable to me ? Is $cientology blasphemy offensive to me ?). A rating scheme addresses the first part, but leaves the second choice up to me. Commercial censorware simply takes both choices on-board. My personal morals are not the same as those of the censorware author - why should I accept their choices as to what my kids should watch ?
Secondly, censorware typically applies ratings in an arbitrary and often naive manner -- the "Scunthorpe problem". Content authors are the best people to judge these ratings, and we should provide means for them to do so. OK, so the Trolls and the regular goatse.cx problem needs solving, but we should concentrate on this, not just abandon self-rating. After all, even a commercial Pr0n site wants a band of satisfied adult punters, not a bunch of under-age kids with stolen CC numbers, bringing the pr0n industry into disrepute (sic). Apart from the Trolls and a very few subversive sites, accurate self-labelling suits everyone's interests.
Finally, there's often no context to the decision made by censorware. Should every site full of pre-Holocaust anti-semitism be banned ? If you're a museum publisher (as I am) it's often a serious issue; how to have content that's related to an offensive subject not be confused with the offensive material itself.
You can use a service like Surfola to get around these filters at work. Surfola gets the pages, relinks them to use their CGI, and then send them to you from their site. According to the SmartFilterWhere, there is no listing for it.
-no broken link
Indeed. ;-)
Seriously, LOC only was given the right by DMCA to make exemptions to the circumvention provisions, not the distribution ones, so it could not have addressed distribution. Subsequent to the LOC rulemaking, which exempted *only* censorware research and one other non-controversial class, there have been many who have called for Congress to revisit the whole concept of DMCA, and some who have made the call are in Congress. Whether (or when) that might happen, I just don't know, though I know that I would like to see it happen.
Child Pornography: Excessive Violence / Mutilation
The Extreme category includes URLs that may fall into other categories, but push the limits of acceptability because of their particularly graphic nature. These URLs are typically extremely violent, gory, or horrific in nature and may be related to sex, bodily functions, obscenity, or perverse activities. Sites include:
Pixman's Vault of Porn Pix - contains extreme hard-core pornography Bizaree & Maximum Perversum - sex site with extreme and bizarre pornography
http://www.fuckedcompany.com is listed as "Extreme". Yeah a dot-com-deadpool is in the same leage as hard-core porn or excessive violence. They use the word "Fuck"! That's all it takes!
Uh, oh, I may have just gotten slashdot banned as "Extreme"...
Perhaps smartfilter's parent company showed up on fuckedcompany and this is retaliation? If they didn't, maybe they should...
-c o r e
Block extream sports sites, but allow goatse.cx? Did a troll write this list? :p
Its all so clear now... Censorware was produced by a collective of trolls... It makes so much sense!
-RickHunter
Typically organisations wouldn't file a class action lawsuit--the whole point of that item is to give organisation-like powers (and numbers) to individuals.
But a company filing a standard civil lawsuit would be interesting.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Well, SmartFilter, at least, publishes its definitions of each category, so if "nobody is the wiser" then perhaps it's because "Nobody" hasn't made the effort to inform himself.
No, they aren't. They are regulating those who freely choose to subscribe to their service. This is the salient point: The association is voluntary. IF it were a case of the government imposing filtering on every public and private machine with Internet access, THEN you might have a complaint. It's not, so you don't.
These ./ whinings strike a bit like complaining the New York Times is censoring the public simply because it doesn't print everything you want to read.
Here's a radical thought: if you don't like filtering software, don't use it ! And if your school/employer forces you to use it, complain to your employer (I suggest /RANT mode), not SmartFilter.
The only way to force these companies to behave ethically...
I.e., the bastards ought to go straight to hell because censorship is evil ! I suspect the only "ethical" thing these companies could do in your eyes is put themselves out of business.
As I understand it, SmartFilter sorts, you select. If you want chat but not porn, do it. If you want cult/occult but not "shock", no problem. I believe the customer can also circumvent the filter on a site-by-site basis. Strikes me as quite reasonable.
The fact is, your company/school owns the hardware you're surfing on, and probably feels it has the right to a modicum of control over the activities being performed on its property. If you disagree, then do your surfing from home.
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
The school board in Palm Beach County has been blocking "all" websites providing e-mail access for some time. Well, starting this week, they (actually the company that makes their blacklist) decided that password-protected discussion boards are a form of e-mail. Hence. students in Palm Beach County may no longer access Slashdot. I checked some other websites with message boards (including such sites as CNN.com). Of course, these weren't blocked. Perhaps it's because they censor their comments... who knows? I don't really see the logic on this one, Perhaps we should demonstrate the Slashdot Effect with the district homepage...
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
It seems they have a "Worthless" category as well. So that means they can just decide that, say, the "end of the internet" page, or Slashdot, or CNN, or any Time Warner website is Worthless since it's of inferior quality to their own (assuming, of course, that they're owned by a rival company). Can't there be some legal remedy for this, despite how the information itself was obtained?
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
why is it that you can't block partial nudity without blocking "entertainment"? which includes the infamous IMDB
It was a joke for fucks sake.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
Unfortunately, I also believe that censorship sucks. It's not that I want to surf for porn, or that I think no one should have the right to decide for me what I should be looking at. My university implements a filter on its network, and as a student, I recognize that I am under the university's authority, so I have no problem with that.
No, the problem, as you said, is that there is no real check on the manufacturers of these pieces of software. However, my school has a solution that I consider adequate. If we believe a site to be blocked in error, we can bring it to the attention of the admin, and they will review it themselves. If they agree, the site is unblocked. Already I have gotten them to unblock 2600, attrition, and some other computer-related sites.
In reality, I am the check on the manufacturers. I turn off image loading, bypass the filter, and check the page out for myself if I think there is a mistake. Because unless I have made a typo in the address, the filter is most likely making a judgment call I am not going to agree with. True, I am not going to make the companies change by doing this, but neither am I going to get the movie industry to change the rating of a movie simply because I disagree with it. Instead, I will do like I always do: Ask my friends who have seen the movie, check out the previews, and maybe give a little weight to the rating, then make my own call.
My method works for me, because the admin is cool enough to acutally listen to users who complain, and I am getting the sites that would otherwise be blocked. Maybe this will not work for you, but it is worth a shot.
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
And their choice is simple: watch the kids and guide them, or choose to switch off the computer/modem.
Same argument goes for TV. Don't like something, switch the damn thing OFF!!
On that line, commercial software should only be seen as an aid to parents, not a replacement.
--
Scientists today discovered signs of intelligent life on planet Earth.
--I don't believe in .sig files.
Most of those are un-moderated news groups. Marylin Manson fans after they jerk off to http://www.rotten.com go to those news groups and then shout, "rape the virgin mary!" at the top of their lungs before their mom kicks their ass for being up on a school night.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I was just wondering if redirecting links could be used to trick filtering software. You know, like http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd=linux &target=http://slashdot.org ;-)
Well at least it is the URL I use at work, but we are just being monitored, not cencored.
Besides "Microsoft Smart Filter" in one sentence...either word combined with "Smart" sounds weird to me
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
That's the basic solution. You won't be able to prevent your kid from seeing everything you find objectionable, but neither should you want to. There's pleny out there that's bad, but good parenting should be able to instill a level of maturity to let the child figure that out. Yes, kids will access a little more than what you want, but make sure they understand the reasons and not just that it is forbidden. I remember in 7th grade trying to get movies working on win3.11 because I had found a porno clip. I spent several hours and had a very educational experience about windows, how video works, and I watched the porno once or twice, then moved on to other things. And when I was done, I don't think I was corrupted or badly influenced as a result. I guess I'm trying to say, be a good parent and raise your kids right, and they'll be able to make their own decisions. They'll be different from yours, but at least they'll know how to decide. You do your part in your kid's education, and it will work out in the end.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
simpler analogy: censorware is like a squad of dumb security guards ordered to keep hoodlums out, and let the VIPs into a convention. They repeatedly refuse entrance to about 50% of all VIPs that walk up, but let 90% of all the hoodlums in anyway.
When you call the security company that you contracted out to, they threaten you with violence for complaining...
Joshua
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Every one of these and many more are blocked as "Extreme," which puts them in the same category as photos of mutilated dead bodies, bizarre hard-core pornography and child pornography.
And now you explain to me how Marylin Manson doesn't fall under all those categories...
If you look at some hotel guide, you see all of these silly little icons, like `food', `showers' etc. You can work out what facilities are available from these.
Now imagine something like a search engine, picking up these ratings icons, and filtering them according to requests. You want no {x}, we'll screen out the {x} or grey them out or whatever your preference is.
Site rating would be done at the first at peer level. There would be some rights of appeal, to a certian number of authorities. There would be about three or four levels of grievence appeals each costing additional money.
Sites can decline to participate, and you can decline to use the ratingware on your system. But in both cases, it's like going outside. You don't know what sort of strangers you will meet... Sites should also be able to reject an applied rating (as in opt out), even to the extent of posting a `don't disturb' sign on the door.
Say I create a site "occulthelp.org". It may get rated as some setting, eg "occult" by things that look for sting. On the other hand, the site might be a genuine resource for families that are recovering from excessive occultdom in one of the children.
If the site were subjected to peer review, the rating might reflect the true help-recover-from nature of that site, rather than a `this is more'.
You could have three or four or so chanels of censorship, by different groups. You as a user might then select the ratings engine as you select the search engine.
I mean, if we want anything better than big business, grep or whatever looking after our ratings, we have to do something ourselves on it. Hence this suggestion ... :)
It sounds pretty optional, but it is a lot better than name-guessing, grepping and whatever. I mean, if you as a page opt out, you can not be seen by those who have ratingware running. It's your call, not someone else's
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
It's something like they do for the movies.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
you sound a lot like our politicians. They feel that this and that are bad for the public (Internet, driving w/o a seat-belt, music) and they also feel the need to push this bullshit on us.
:)
Just because Marilyn Manson is weird and his music is not for your taste (along w/ICP) does NOT mean that a filter program needs to block it... There needs to be some sort of decency here. A filter pogram is not to be some fool's idea of what is wrong. It is what society in general believes... I think that this guy should be put into the mosh pit at an ICP show and see how much Faago they can squirt on his ass before he is pounded into the floor
I hate censorship software and filters with a passion... My pet peeve is that they're becoming more and more common in Australian schools and other public places and, by default, enforce American moral standards on Australian kids. The two societies are similar, but not the same - a point which is lost on our politicians.
There is also the VERY large issue of the banned lists of sites including sites that:
a) in no way qualify as a danger to kids but have fallen foul of a keyword search. eg (large Aussie company Dick Smith Electronics - forced to refer to itself as DSE across its entire web site)
or
b) are listed as an act of spite by the companies providing the software.
with no public disclosure of who is on their lists nor any legal recourse for those companies who are there inadvertently.
HOWEVER, I am torn between my high moral standing on freedom of expression and my ability to decide what I can and can't access, and my desire to protect my kids from some of the very BAD parts of the Internet.
The fact is that if you take the lowest common denominator for the human race and halve it, you're guaranteed to the result lurking somewhere on the net.
Lets assume that I'm a conscientious parent with home computer set up in the full view of everyone. There are still times when I'm not going to be able to be there while my kids are surfing, or at a mates place with decidedly less supervision. Even good kids do stupid things.
Slashdot has, quite rightly, bagged a lot of this software right from the start. What we haven't done yet is come up some alternatives...
So... what are the solutions???
M@T
'sapientia potestas est'
Please tell me what the danger is with commercial "censorship" software?
Product often has inflated and unrealistic claims made about it. (Effectivly the companies concerned lie about using people, when in fact they use search engines.) But as it's sofware it drops through loopholes in consumer protection laws.
In my mind, this type of thing should be encouraged, to give parents a tool to protect to their kids.
Maybe it it were to stay in that market. Rather than being pushed into the workplace, libraries and schools. Where different (sometimes radically different) filtering criteria make sense.
Yes, almost all filtering software currently available is next to useless, but it improves all the time, and may someday actually be a useful tool for parents to guide their children's exposure to 'controversial' material.
Exactly how are the products improving, they might have bigger black lists. But there are still the same quality problems. Let alone the fundermental issue that "contravesial" is a moving target and highly dependendant on such things as religious, political and ethnic orientations.
Here's what I see happening in the future (or maybe my idealized future):
One of these filtering progs starts scanning around for "obscene" material. It runs into itself, which, by nature contains "obscene" material, as this is what it is built to catch.
The filter prog filters itself.
This recursive paradox causes a huge explosion that destroys all filtering software.
Endgame.
Has any band, company, charity ever tried to sue a maker of filtering software for lost business due to an erroneous classification?
Perhaps a very LARGE class action suit could solve this problem.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
They ask for your phone number whenever you want to run their little search engine? Imagine if altavista asked you for your phone number every time you did a search. I'm really getting sick of seeing the word "phone" on internet forms. You know the only reason they are asking is to either try to sell you something or sell your phone number to somebody else trying to sell you something. Basically asking for your phone number is tantamount to asking for a run to the phone and a few minutes of your time, or wasting your employers money. I'm also sick of headhunters seeing my resume on dice.com, seeing it has no phone number but clearly has an email address, looking up my number and calling me. I think we need a movement to divorce all relationship of phone to internet.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
It's the whole point of religion. "Those that believe are saved, everybody else is doomed".
Er, no, you're wrong. For example, the belief you cite is not a doctrine of the largest single Christian sect on Earth, the Roman Catholic Church (hasn't been since Vatican II). Nor is it a doctrine of Hinduism. Or Buddhism. And those three represent more than half of the religious believers on Earth.
So next time you feel like generalizing on what "all religion" is like, a grasp of actual religious doctrines would be useful to have first.
And before you start slamming into me, first note that I am also an atheist. However, I made sure I knew what I was rejecting first. You obviously didn't.
There's no "we" in team, only "me"
I think it's a little disturbing that Chumbawumba's site was banned, and not because it has anything to do with music, which it likely doesn't. More likely, it's due to the fact that Chumbawumba has extremely leftist views, something a lot of conservatives are obviously not comfortable with.
While I might not agree with all their politics, this is tantamount to banning Nader's site, or Buchanan's for that matter.
I honestly don't see any other reason for them to be lumped in with more 'shock' oriented artists like Marilyn Manson and ICP; they share little musically, or lyrically, or even in their videos. The one 'shocking' thing about Chumbawumba is the politics.
If this is the reason they're blocked, then someone please save me from the Information Retrieval Agency, because I'm a wee bit scared.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
The disgusting thing is that these companies inflict their own political and religious agendas on their own customers and nobody is the wiser.
The problem is that these companies say "Hey, we'll regulate ourselves -- no need for government involvement!" But they are not just regulating themselves, they are regulating the public.
At least when I go to see a movie, I know that the R rating isn't unfairly applied because the lead actor is a prolific democrat or republic or even a $cientologist. The only way to force these companies to behave ethically in their generation of lists and filters is to take every oppertunity to confront them in the most public means necessary and possibly to undermind, reverse engineer and defeat each package as quickly as they put them on the market.
---
seumas.com
Their music-critic skills need work too, as they block InsaneClownPosse.com, Tupac.com, Marilyn Manson, and even Chumbawamba's website.
No, I think their music critic skills are spot on perfect.
--Shoeboy
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I work on a military installation that uses SmartFilter to prevent access to sites on it's blacklist. Imagine my surprise Monday morning when trying to get my daily dose of Slashdot to find out that this site is listed as being unaccessable because it is a "chat" site.
I'm sure someone will remark that Slashdot could not possibly be considered as a work related site, therefore the military is justified in blocking it. That maybe true, but as a systems administrator there are several sites that I normally frequent to find out what crackers are up to. I cannot access these sites at work (since SmartFilter blocks them) and must do so at home to keep abreast of news on the computer security front.
"Smart"Filter and all the other packages that pretend to "protect" people from the "evils" of the internet only end up restricting access to many of the sites admins/programmers/techies access to do their jobs. When will the companies that produce these pieces of crap realize that they are selling parents and companies pipe dreams that they can block out the undesirable aspects of the net? It is far more effective for parents to spend time with their kids surfing the net and helping them avoid areas they want to be off limits. Most companies have clear policies about what is considered acceptable usage; employees who violate those rules should be dealt with as the company sees fit.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Type in as:
http://www.insaneclownposse.com
http://www.gcsextreme.com
http://www.extreme-offroad.com
If you don't type that EXACTLY (http and www,
not case-sensitive), you will get a misleading result
How long a list would you like? What's bad about this is:
I'm not interested in denying people the right to make a choice about whether to install censorware or not. Individuals can make whatever choice they want about whatever level of brokenness they're willing to live with. But in order to make that choice intelligently, they need to be truthfully informed of what this stuff really does. So far, that's not happening to the degree it needs to.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Comment removed based on user account deletion
IAAL, and to me, this is the more important part of the piece. He's written a tool which arguably is legal because of the LOC exemption for censorware research to the DMCA anti-circumvention provision, but (understandably) he's reluctant to distribute it, allowing for a more full analysis of SmartFilter's flaws, because there is no similar exemption for distribution of anti-circumvention tools.
We here on Slashdot have seen tons of stories on the flaws of censorware, but the message is one still not gotten by much of the media or the general public. A truly exhaustive analysis of SmartFilter or other censorware products would help, but LOC's "half a loaf" exemption prevents that from happening without some reasonable fear of legal risk.
as to why they block things like sci.archaeology, is it? Remember that almost all censorware out there has a Christian Fundie slant, and it's easy to see that if junior discovers archaeology then dinosaurs, biology and evolution are next, and then from there you'd might as well write him off as another anti-creationism devil worshiping Darwinist!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"