Slashdot Mirror
Whitelists for Overzealous Internet Filters?
Anonymous Coward asks: "We've all seen how plenty of bad examples of Internet filtering in libraries and schools, so I need not list any. After browsing the aforementioned YRO archives &c., I had an interesting proposal. Books that people *want* the public to see are submitted to libraries to be placed on the shelves. So why not come up with a similar solution of the public submitting lists of websites to be *allowed* access from the libraries. Project Gutenberg or The Bible blocked? No problem, just ask a librarian to add the domain to the allow list." Would this be a practical way around overzealous filters?
Well, the most obvious problem is that there are way too many domains to request each one be added to a whitelist every time you want to do something (How many links did you click while viewing slashdot today? Do you want to have to go ask the librarian every time?)
And another obvious problem that we've seen with other censorware is that what one person wants isn't always what another person wants.
And, for that matter, most current censorware applications have the ability to specifically unblock certain sites, so you should still be able to do that.
Because who determines what gets on the "white" list? The same censors who created the blacklist?
Yes, I know you said people could suggest things, but there is obviously an intermediary between the library users and the whitelist. Suggestions to add Goatse.CX are going to get shot down (hopefully), but what about less obvious choices?
If the whitelist is just a blacklist with the criteria reversed, then it's not going to help anyone.
And yes, a human being will probably judge this differently from a keyword filter, but if they had that kind of man-hours, then why would they use the blacklisting software in the first place?
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
I'm sure others will state this more eloquently than I but one needs to consider the principle of a white list as well as the practicality of it. I feel, and I'm sure most slashdotters do as well, that the default should be "information wants to be free." For people like us, the idea of a white list is almost like capitulating to the censorship proponents.
As far as the practicallity of such a thing, I fear that it will suffer from the same problem that a black list would, namely that it's really agonizing to try to list every notable/worthy item of an enormous list. If I go to a library and get some information and then find out that it's not available and I have to special order it, I usually won't bother putting in my request and I'll turn to other ways of getting the data. I think the same thing is likely to happen if a white list would be instituted. People would get fed up with having to wait and submit a special request. The promise of the Internet as being an immediate source of information would be soured. One could certainly argue along the lines of "Hey, if you want unfettered access to information and can't be bothered waiting a little while, then buy your own computer!" but I would guess that majority of people who use library Internet access probably can't afford one for whatever reason.
In my view, the entire idea of a white list is the wrong way to be thinking of the issue. It seems like the censorship proponents should be the ones stuck doing the extra work since filters are their ideas in the first place. Sticking the poor high school student with extra work because of some over-zealous soccer moms who don't want their kids to look at undesirable Internet sites seems a bit unfair.
GMD
watch this
The problem is that you have to explicitly ask for something to be "unbanned". Gutenburg etc are the obvious examples that show how ridiculous the filtering is, but the base issue is that the government (assuming a publically-funded library) is not only deciding what you can and can't see, but spending your money to do it.
Imagine you were researching a touchy subject (insert taboo of choice here). Would you want to be the one to ask for relevent sites to be unbanned? Or, given the choice, would you prefer to research something else instead?
There are so many problems with your question, I'm not really sure where to start. In the interest of disclosure, I should probably state that I am trained as a librarian, but I do not work in a public library setting. So, I don't have any special concerns about filtering beyond my professional ones.
The whole notion of Internet filtering goes against a central librarian tenet, namely: We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources. It's a great idea, but it has never really been put to the test until the development of the Internet and libraries providing access.
You see, in practice, librarians have always been censors. They decide which books get on the shelves, which books get weeded from the collection, etc., and this is not necessarily a bad thing. Editors edit books in order to make them more focused, lucid, and pleasurable to read. Librarians are a kind of editor - for whole collections. Due to their efforts, you can find the books you are looking for if they are in the collection. You might be able to find other books by looking nearby. Of course, libraries are no longer just about books, there are article databases, special collections, music, videos, and so forth. But for discussion, let's just talk about books.
If I go to my local library looking for John Zerzan's book Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilization, I'm likely not going to find it. However, I can inter-library loan the item and read it. Some library, somewhere has a copy and I can access it. So, you aren't necessarily limited by the local censor. You have a means around him/her, if you don't have the means to purchase the book yourself.Now, let's talk about filters. Filters are essentially limiting your collection to what's on site. It's like taking away inter-library loan for books. It means you do not have access to the material, period - if your librarian doesn't choose to select it. Think about that for a moment in the context of books. If my librarian doesn't know about Zerzan, then I would not have access to the book.
You might say that I could buy my own, assuming I had the money, but buying your own is kind of counter to the whole point of libraries - its a community collection where people can spend time educating and thinking for themselves. Ideally, they should help diversify thinking, not homogenize it.
Or how about we put it another way, let's talk about your SPAM filters. No customizing of filters, we are all going to use the same one and then people can submit new sites to add to the allow list. How effective would it be to have all incoming mail screened for SPAM only at the sysadmin level. To be effective, it would probably mean that you would not get some of the mail you would have liked to recieved. But no fear, you can always ask for a particular address to be added to the allow list. Or hopefully, someone else has submitted it already. In the mean time, you have no idea what your missing.
Would that work for you? Part of the whole idea is that you need to know what's out there, and with filters that you don't create yourself - you can't.