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Microsoft Blocks FSF Donation Website As a 'Gambling Site'

Posted by timothy on from the what-are-the-odds? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The FSF slammed Microsoft for categorizing donate.fsf.org website as a 'Gambling Site.' Corporate systems that use a Microsoft 'network security' program cannot access FSF donation website because of this and as a result, many people were unable to make donations. FSF has submitted a correction to Microsoft and they are now waiting for a response. However, John Sullivan warned corporate about Microsoft's proprietary network security programs."

15 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Stay grounded by meekg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hysterics and hyperbole do not serve us well.
    IF MS ignores the correction, sure. But that hasn't happened, has it?

    1. Re:Stay grounded by beelsebob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Frankly, the idea that this could be accidental in the first place is ludicrous.

      Frankly, the idea that it wasn't accidental is ludicrous, I would doubt very highly that MS has humans categorising sites, instead it's probably all automated based on roughly the same tech as email spam filters.

    2. Re:Stay grounded by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, MS aren't stupid.

      Citation needed. Bringing obviously-faked evidence into a courtroom seems like a strong counter-example to this claim.

      Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

      Wait, now you're saying they are stupid? :)

      More likely the FSF home page, with all of its talk about "free software" was classified by MS's filters as a warez site.

      That might make sense if it had been classified as a warez site. But it wasn't. If I had to make an honest guess, mine would be an in-house joke used during testing that got left in when they went live.

      That's assuming they do fix it and apologize. Otherwise, I think we're back to malice. ;)

    3. Re:Stay grounded by h4z3 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Any chance you write for Fox news? I'm sure 0.7% of 75~80% of the pc market is bigger than 1% of 7~15%.

    4. Re:Stay grounded by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You could start by leaving little comments like "I don't care, I use a mac" out of your post, because while you might have intended it to have no harm, that transforms the rest of your post into flamebait. Don't bitch when your kindling catches fire.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. malice or incompetence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    what's that old saying "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" or whatever? I mean this is MS we're talking about...

    1. Re:malice or incompetence? by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      what's that old saying "never attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" or whatever? I mean this is MS we're talking about...

      Which makes malice in the guise of incompetence particularly insidious and effective.
      In the absence of clear evidence one way or the other, it's best to reserve judgment regarding malice vs incompetence where a recidivist company notorious for its dirty tricks is concerned. The aphorism you quoted (especially the "never" bit) is overridden in this case by Microsoft's track record of cunning malice, mind-boggling incompetence, incompetent malice, and malicious incompetence. It could be any of them.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    2. Re:malice or incompetence? by Mabhatter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The most obvious answer is that a handful of Microsoft fanboy admins submitted the site just to mess with FSF fanboys. These things have all been crowd sourced for years.

      Most of these tools us a proprietary list that takes an unknown number of input votes to block something. Then you have to ask very nicely to get off the list that gets published to the masses. It's censorship by the noisiest submitters. It's much like how big websites like yahoo or Engadget keep getting their emails "automatically" blocked by spam filters. A few high influence admins just keep hitting the Spam button on work accounts and 1000 users have to unblock to get it off the spam list.

      There IS a process at most of these filter agencies if you grease the right palms, you will get on the mythical "white" list. Whether you are big name sites like Amazon that can bully to keep your name off, or the list runner has a sweet spot for Equestria Daily... But that's a "private list decision"

  3. Legal Response by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The FSF should sue Microsoft for loss of donations and ask for punitive damages for monopolistic anti-competitive behavior.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  4. Re:MS by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You think there is a person in Microsoft who tags every web page out there?

    The list is made by a computer to try to catagorize them based on words in the page and other links. Sometimes software makes odd mistakes.

    Oh there is an exception then they fixed it.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  5. Re:Non-proprietary options? by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First result on Google:

    http://www.csoonline.com/article/597063/network-security-three-open-source-options

    --
    Palm trees and 8
  6. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  7. Re:Why is this news? by jrumney · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's speculation that their accepting of Bitcoin inadvertantly categorised them as a gambling website. ... It does not seem malicious or incompetent that this mistake happened.

    That looks pretty incompetent to me.

  8. Re:Why is this news? by Angeret · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While I think that both sides in this debate/war are behaving like asshats, I do believe that you are tarring a whole nation with a rather broad brush here. The fact that a certain number of stupid people from either side wish to keep on killing doesn't justify the current Israeli policy (quietly supported by the US) of starving the population out of existence. And if you're looking for citations & quotes, fuck off, I really cannot be bothered today.

  9. Re:Why is this news? by dakohli · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course the panel front and center which reads:

    Stand up for your freedom to install free software
    !
    Join 30,000 people in opposing Microsoft's Restricted Boot by signing this statement

    Has nothing to do with it.