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WebSense Patents Censorware System
Matthew Skala writes "As reported in SiliconValley.internet.com, filtering-software vendor Websense has received US Patent 6,606,659 on a "System and method for controlling access to internet sites". The new features in the patented system seem to revolve around using time limits instead of filtering sites out entirely; offering users a choice of viewing a site and having it logged, or not viewing it; and a scheme for automatically categorizing sites that looks very much like the "Bayesian filters" we've heard so much about in recent weeks. You may be interested in the filtering company's press release about their patent, or my own view."
If internet filters are going to cost money, then maybe schools and libraries will stop using them.
My local library blocks out anything to do with pregnancy (like the council run pregnancy advice service), anything with chat in the domain name (like the casual chat web forum) but doesn't block goatse.cx. Go figure.
The only news that could be better is that someone had patented spam emailling and was taking every spammer in the world to court.
Beep beep.
Can anyone comment on the existance of prior "software" using these features. I seem to recall a "time limiting" software designed for Windows 3.1 back in around 1994 or 1995. There have been "filtering" software utilities for longer than that.
Is this another example of the abuse of software patents? I think I might move to the EU (assuming they stay sane and reject the ability to restrict software development through patents).
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
I don't want to use a censorware application anyway. Hopefully they price things high so that other people won't use them, an in particular, so that the government won't use them (in libraries, etc).
What about all those people who burned karma saying they wanted to protect our freedom by patenting censorship? You thought they were crazy didn't you?
I've been using the same basic web site access control algorithm for years. A description of my code reads very similar to the abstract.
My system maintains a database of Internet files, (not sites, though I don't know what the difference would be...)
My system does not limit the number of visits to a category a limited number of times, however, it does limit to download links once per user, which is (probably the same thing).
My system allows users to request access, and then have access granted.
I don't log which pages/sites users visit, but I know many apps that do (like nuke).
I'm not a patent attorney, does this mean that my access control code violates the patent?
Truly bizarre.
...dont tell them about a firewall, its a super-secret secret.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
AOL can censor sites, and their bundled spyware logs where you go if you circumvent the block. Same thing?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The story seems to have almost no merit at all. it's YASAAP: yet another story about a patent. OK, so the patent office issued a patent that lots of people are going to think was either (a) obvious or (b) invalid because of prior art. Is /. going to start mainlining the output of the patent office to come up with stories?
We already know that the patent office is issuing what seem like silly patents, and we already know we'd like them to stop.
Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?
John.
Seems everything's patentable nowadays.
Can someone do me a favor and patent DRM? and closed-source? and antitrust? and that stupid L-shaped enter key?
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
I helped to sysadmin a Novell Netware installation back when I was at high school in '94.
I seem to remember that they had a time limiting system. Per user, you could set when that user was allowed to log on and access the network.
We used it make sure that users couldn't access the network when they weren't supposed to be able to - so kids didn't share their accounts with others or access the network outside of the allowed times (after hours unsupervised, etc).
I'm not sure how this would relate to the patent (I'm not a patent lawyer), but this was a form of network censorship based on time.
Yup, I'm being reduntant as others have probably have and will post about this but its a serious thing here. How many patents have we seen lately that have had mounds of prior art? How many of them have been so blatently obvious that even non-techies are shaking their heads? How many non-techies know that this patent was granted? There is the crux of the issue.
This patent might actually be good for us as it may jack up pricing on current programs but one has to think, how far reaching will they allow this to go in a court? Hey, I filter out port 135 traffic (gg people patch your machines!!) and some known spam networks at the core end, will they now come after me for filtering? It seems that more and more the patents are being granted on the overly obvious and are being abused to the hilt by the company to which it is granted.
I see mass law suits in our future over this one and with the state of the clueless judges presideing over the cases this could turn sour.
I guess in the rest of the world outside of USA (is Canada included?) we can be live just fine, keeping our development of similar web applications without paying any fee to the company, which has just abused even further unfamous American IP laws.
Less is more !
My school district uses WebSense to block out 'inappropriate' sites which includes porn, and instructions on making bombs as well as gaming and chat sites. It's pretty damned easy to bypass. Just find the google cache OR if pictures/files are needed find the foriegn version of the site. The de extension seems to be really good for downloads. Another idea would be to setup your own web server which had a form so that you could give it the URL of the site you wanted and it would then dl everything and serve it up under http://yourip/website_ext/
Something like this would require replacing all the hyperlinks but that's not too difficult.
Can anyone tell me if their filters check port 81? 45? etc?
-Tim Louden
The patent is GB2366891. The crux of it is that programs that use more than a certain percentage of the CPU (eg: 50%) are incrementally slowed down by quickly pausing/unpausing their threads at short intervals until their CPU usage is reduced below the threshold.
How does this qualify for a patent? It's self evident! Things like this have been done in real time control systems (software and physical) for decades. It is nothing more than a high-frequency 1-bit DAC controller. Just because instead of controlling chemical reaction rates, the system is used for controlling processor usage, suddenly this method is worthy of a patent? Take a look at one of their diagrams. Is that the standard for new and inventive developments in the software industry? A flow chart with four, count them, four steps?
The patent system needs an overhaul, and fast.
In his article, Skala tars Bayesian spam filters with the same brush as website filtering. He touches on the differences but seems to miss the main one - one has to actively seek out material on the web, while spam is pushed onto you by third parties. If my child happens to type in a web address that shows pr0n, I may not like it, but short of typosquatting, the site is not in the wrong. However, if a spam merchant sends email to my child's account that includes images of sex acts, the child has no choice to not view it. So Bayesian filters are great for spam, because they are freeing me from seeing crap I don't like, and would waste my time to delete. Web filters prevent me from accessing stuff (good or bad) that I know may be out there, and must actively seek.
Does this particular story add anything to the debate or is it just a troll?
It most certainly *does* add something. If you say something once, people will be very unlikely to remember it. If you say it twice, a few will remember it.
If it's repeated every week or so for a year, most everybody will have gotten the point. It's called "repetition".
I'll paraphrase Hitler: "Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it to be true".
Except, in this case, there's no lie, except maybe at the patent office.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
PN/6618857
And guess who it was?
Somebody get my tinfoil hat, quick!
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
U.S. Patent has just issued me Patent 6,606,660, which states that I now own exclusive rights to the following keyboard keys..
Enter, Spacebar, Ctrl, Alt, Esc, all function keys, Tab, Shift (both left & right), Caps Lock, all Page Scrolling fuctions, the Numeric Pad, and directional arrows. You are still free to use alphanumeric keys without my permission.
Obviously this is sarcasm, but it's heading there... Real fast..
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
Here is a patent application for a pepper shaker shaped like a dog where the pepper comes out of the dog's ass. That's what is being patented: the fact that the pepper comes out of the dog's ass and that it can be called a 'pooper shaker'.
I would love to read Matthew Skala's view but Websense at work here blocks it as "Non-Traditional Religions and Occult and Folklore"
They don't seem to like criticism, do they?
A day ago I received patent 6,606,659: The act of pressing the three keys Ctrl, Alt, & Delete on a keyboard simultaneously to achieve a desired effect.
:)
I believe your patent infringes on my patent so you must get permission to use those keys. In fact earlier I was issued patent 6,606,658, a patent that patents patent infringement. I will be expecting two big cheques.
No, not really. See, you can always give your password to someone else (or rsa key if that may be the case). The major "concern" here, if you want to call it that, is the GNU folks don't like giving the sysadmin "too much control." Something like logon restrictions is against their thinking, but then again, the sysadmin can just change your password or delete the user.
Of course, since you can do that, it makes the 'wheel' rant a bit silly, now doesn't it? In theory your statement should hold true, but it doesn't, so the whole "freedom" thing falls apart. If it were truely free, then you'd be right -- no one would have passwords. So disabling 'wheel' support in the name of freedom, in my opinion, is just dumb. Root is privelged access and *should* be restricted.
Nice try at a "I AM SO SMART!!!1!" comment, but that totally defeats the purpose of su. 'wheel' simply defines who is allowed to su to root, not other users. 'su' by the way stands for "switch user" -- you can su to users other than root, you know. su should be mode 7411, and its program code should be something like:
"If user is in group wheel, then su to root is allowed."
But you already knew that.
SquidGuard changelog
Stupid lameness filter blocks me from posting more, but you can easily see it in the changelog.