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Library Censorware Blocks Own Site
squiggleslash writes "The Daily Dayton News reports that a demonstration of a new website for a library in Piqua, Ohio, went horribly wrong when the site was blocked by the library's own censorware. Why? Because the library, founded by and named after businessman Leo Flesh 70 years earlier, had the domain name www.fleshpublic.lib.oh.us. And that key word, 'Flesh,' was a no-no as far as Flesh Public Library's copy of Net Nanny was concerned." And for an extra dose of tragicomic priority reversal, the library actually decided to change its domain name rather than have Net Nanny fix the erroneous blocking. I hope no one at the library wants to read about the fleshpots of Egypt.
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."
When I was in middle school, I didn't have the 'net at home, so I had to use the library's. You would not believe the trouble I had looking up the Trojan War. (Really.)
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Because the U.S. Congress decided that libraries have to implement software like Net Nanny or else lose federal funding.
The American Library Associate is fighting the law in the U.S. Supreme Court:
http://www.ala.org/cipa/
You would think so, but the particular thing that Net Nanny picked up on was actually "flesh" paired with "public". As stated in the article.
Still, gotta love that quote "we banned ourselves." Too bad no lesson was learned.
I think websense is the worst of all, considering some of the categories it puts things into.
Archive.org is a "proxy avoidance system"
everything2.com is "Tasteless"
Among other categories: Non-Traditional Religion, Drugs, Alternative Journals, Political Groups, Financial Services, and Activist Groups.
Makes doing research on anything hell.
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Wait,
if the library's censorware censored the library's own site, how did the librarians find out about the censoring without bypassing the censorware?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
If you're worried about what your kids see, then it is your job as a parent to do one of the following:
A) Monitor them closer
B) Trust them
C) Ban them from all things that may put bad thoughts into their heads
A and B are good solutions. C is the solution that censorware takes...the easy way out. When are people going to step up as parents and take responsibility for their kids instead of pointing fingers? Personally, I would tell them how I feel about the matter and trust them. If they want to look at porn, the internet is just one of many ways to go about doing it. I'm sure kids still steal their dads' magazines and show them to all their friends.
Well, considering the person responsible for the design mainly uses static pages, and there appear to be at least a hundred or so pages in the non-dynamic portion of the site, three months is a reasonable figure.
If they had employed PHP/MySQL, then it probably would have taken much less time -- but this is a library, and they're pretty much operating off the knowledge of the people that work there, aren't they? For that, they did a nice job.
The implementation is awful, but the intent is acceptable. Why can't you go to a library and checkout/read Penthouse? Because Penthouse does not fit in with the mission of a library. The protecting our kids thing is great politics, but little more. I don't buy it and I don't like having others tell me what I should think is something my kids shouldn't see. However, I don't have a problem with a library using some form of control to block access to sites that lie outside of the mission of a public library.
http://www.davpilkey.com/ too.
If I were running a library (which I'm not), of course I wouldn't cencor the internet...I would let the people look at whatever they wanted. I would moniter their activities preiodically, and if I suspected the resources were being abused, I would simply stop the service for that individual.
Anyway you look at it, cencorship is a crackpot solution to problems that should be dealt with using more care than people are willing to put forth.
You know, I'm assuming this is done for The Children (tm).
Just more of the same old stuff: Let something/someone else do parenting duties. Anything but the actual parent, please!
Seriously, the internet isn't a good place for children to begin with. Supervise them yourself. If you can't, don't let them on, because clearly filtering software is garbage. And the internet is NO place for kids!
Quit being shitty parents.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Does it have to be actually said?: Keyword filterings of internet searches are just moronic. The censorwareans have yet to demonstrate that keywords bypass the highly integrated nature of Human knowledge. "Flesh" can be sexual, but also medical, religious and generally metaphorical for many other things, like the "substance" of an object or idea.
The only thing that "works" with stopping inappropriate Internet browsing in the public library is the common control of citizens. If you see a kid surfing for pygmy lesbian cheerleaders (which he should do at home, like I do), stop him from doing it. If the confrontation gets awry, just resort to a librarian and perhaps a security guard. Problem solved.
My local library system has browsers that always come up with the same startup page, which is a yes/no statement of understanding. It says that if you surf for the nasty stuff, the library can boot you off the computer and even out of the library, and perhaps can even confiscate your first-born child when you get one.
That the library that censored its own website -- and then changed its domain name to avoid being filtered -- was in deep Ohio, is hardly surprising. It's in the flyover. Don't expect much to come out of Ohio but tomatoes, corn and grapes. (Oh, and also call centers to handle support and billing calls before an Indian company is found to handle the work at 1/2 the price.)
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
Color me idealistic, ignorant, misguided or deluded; but why not create an open-source filter for libraries to use? This would solve a lot of problems.
1) The list of blocked sites and algorithms is available.
2) The community would probably make available separate levels of filtering. Like, maybe a whitelist appropriate for little kids, something else for schools and a narrow list for purposes like libraries.
3) It would be freely available, so politically motivated censorware like NetNanny would see its market eliminated.
Yes, I know this proposal is evil, because it is caving into a bad law. But guess what, the law ins't that unreasonable, it's just that the implementations are downright awful. Most libraries would probably choose to have a modest filter (known porn sites for the most art, maybe all-numeric IPs) than nothing.
Many parents would like to have moderate filtering to kill things like obscene links hidden in slashdot discussions. I mean, even if you're surfing the net w/ your kids, how does it help with stuff like that?
This NetNanny keyword based, politally motivated filtering is A Bad Thing. And a law requiring libraries to install filtering software is A Bad Thing. But, a good, user controlled, community built filtering software is absolutely, positively, a good thing.
Actually, I'm from the UK, but used American terms as to not confuse them all. Having never used the word before, I'd say it's fair to have spelt it incorrectly.
A friend of mine is a 10-12th grade math teacher.
He is young and very dedicated to his students. He has a long last name, something like 'pasquerella'. His students often call him "Mr. P"... You can guess the rest.
It is unfortunate, but his website to help students is blocked by censorware.
The thing is you cannot count completly on parents to watch your kids, but at the same time you can't block half the internet because of some word or set of words in it. But I do believe there has to be some happy medium between the two, like start off by just banning well known porn sites, ampland, drbizzaro, goat.se, playboy.com (even though it does have good articles.) and pro-Actively remove stuff as it comes along. the thing is a lot of porn comes up that is unwanted, if a kid misspalls, a url, it could easly send him into a pop-up ring of every form of sick and twisted porn you could imagine.
As if there were no books on the subject.
Seriously, why is it that the slashdot community thinks that installing filtering software on a library's computer systems renders them useless, or, worse, renders the entire library useless? I just don't get it. There are still plenty of worthwhile books on the shelves. If they don't have the hard-bound book or magazine (or CD or LP or book-on-tape or whatever you want), then you go buy it yourself. Same thing with their computer systems. You don't like what you can get through their internet connection? GO GET YOUR OWN UNFILTERED FEED . It's not the job of the government to provide this to you. I cannot fathom why people extrapolate the fact that we have libraries in most cities to mean that the government has some Constitutionally-mandated responsibility to provide access to every resource under the sun.
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
The problem with the censorware is that they also filter political sites they disagree with.
Our policy at our local library is that unless a resource violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms it is illegal for us to remove it. Patrons with children sign an Internet Use Agreement which states that we do not use any filtering software and that it is their responsibility to be aware of what their children are doing online.
Parent have to take responsibilty for their children. This goes for books etc. as well as the Internet.
AFAIK the law in Canada forbids censorship in libraries so we don't have funding problems because of this.