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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.
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
So any parents who aren't perfect are lazy and selfish?
No. Not parents who aren't perfect. Parents who don't make the effort. Because you can do the things I was talking about. No exceptions; it is always possible. It's not always easy; in some cases it may involve making sacrifices. But that is not important, because doing this kind of thing is a parent's primary responsibility, more important than anything else. And it is always possible; if you make an honest effort, you will succeed.
----------
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.
Forgive my apparent ignorance, but isn't the WWW run using a good deal of linked material? For example, couldn't another site about similar subject matter (but with a less unfortunate name string) have a link to this harmless site, that would be locked to all filtered comers?
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!"
I don't really know that anarchism is or isn't what little kids are ready for, and not being a parent, I don't care. As I mentioned before, my point was to show that there was a rationale, one based on the perceptions of the intended market of the product, behind why certain sites like that of Manson, ICP, and Chumbawumba were placed in the block list. Note that this != to: "they are slightly non-mainstream, and therefore it is my personal belief that they should be censored". My personal belief is that censorware is based on a number of flawed principles, but I wanted to point out that if you consider the market that they are targeting, than placing these bands in the list makes a lot of sense for them.
"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!"
This was posted in the YRO section. If you don't want to read about it, you have a few options:
***
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
Well if you can always manage to do so, then you are (almost by definition) a perfect parent.
And to do that, (always and without exception), you'll have to follow your kid to school, watch over his shoulder, not let him walk home alone with friends, not let him go over to friends' houses to play, go to the library alone, wander through the library unsupervised when you go with him, etc. etc. etc.
If you are not watching your child 24 hours per day, seven days per week, then there's the chance that they'll get into something they shouldn't. After all, kids usually _want_ to get into things they shouldn't--it's part of growing up.
None of which is to say that I approve of censorware (which is almost unfailingly useless), or good parenting. Far from it--when our kids are old enough to play with the computer, I'll have a log of everything they do on it, ported to my secure box. If they get places they're not supposed to, they'll get in trouble for it. BUT, I can't completely eliminate the opportunity for them to get into trouble. It's not possible, and it's not fair to them either.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
So any parents who aren't perfect are lazy and
selfish?
Obviously not a parent. Hopefully never will be
one either, with an attitude like that. (although
it wouldn't last very long)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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?
How is your kid supposed to know that they have the part he is looking for, or even what kind of site gcsextreme.com *IS* if it was locked out so he couldn't look at it?
Unless he had someone else check FOR him, there is no way for the person with the censored access to know what they are missing, and whether and what to ask for access to. Anything censored may as well not exist.
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.
"Dad, Masushitsa.com is blocked, help me?"
,say ,dickinson.edu (made up) and the censorware often winds up blocking the good sites too often.
"Dad, Scunthorpe.com is blocked.."
"Dad, why is Yahoo.com blocked?"
"Dad, could you unlock this site for me?"
repeat x 1000
My point is, too restrictive becomes a hassle for the parent, because his kids want to go to
As for the hammer analogy, censorware would be the equivalent of smacking yourself with the clawed 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.
Yet another painful reason that censorware invariably hurts more than it helps.
If you're a parent that genuinely cares about your child, you not only say, "OK, I'll take that filter off", but you also sit down and listen to your kid. Chances are they're scared stiff by the kind of hateful crap they hear everyday in the halls at schools, and they need your love and attention. Of course, chances are excellent that you never installed censorware in the first place.
If you're a parent that cares more about having your child turn out how you want them to turn out, then you'll tell them point-blank that they aren't gay, never will be gay, and eye them like a hawk for the rest of the time your child lives under your roof. Of course, your kid probably knows better than to tell you the truth, and probably hasn't for some time, with good reason.
Censorware just makes it easier for parents to try and mold their kids after the metal's already cooled. If your kid is still young enough that the contents of the internet pose a genuine hazard to their development, they shouldn't ever be using it unsupervised, anyway; if your kid is old enough to know right from wrong and make their own decisions regarding who they are, then censorware is just another wall to put between yourself and your child.
$ man reality
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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.
Please also read the discussion about Federal legislation in this area, and legal risks for investigators.
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.
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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
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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!"