Microsoft Blocks FSF Donation Website As a 'Gambling Site'

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."

Comments

Stay grounded

[meekg]

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

Re:Stay grounded

[beelsebob]

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.

Re:Stay grounded

[NotBorg]

Hysterics and hyperbole do not serve us well.

You must be new here. What have you done with 30651? Is he ok? What are your demands?

donate.fsf.org is just a redirect

[xiando]

You can go directly to http://my.fsf.org/donate/ if donate.fsf.org is blocked by your local friendly firewall. You can also use Tor to bypass blocks like these.

Re:Microsoft is the bad guy, how exactly?

[betterunixthanunix]

Why is everyone so paranoid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

Even if they don't allow it, maybe they would rather their employees donated in their own free time and not on their network?

You could at least read and understand the summary (RAUTFS?). It is not just Microsoft's own network; this is something a Microsoft product that is used on numerous corporate networks is doing.

Re:Why is this news?

[robthebloke]

I don't know why you say that, Microsoft have had an extremely good record supporting the installation of free software on their systems. Just look back at how easy they made it to install such common packages as the blaster virus, the chernobyl virus, conflicker, et al. Anyone who claims microsoft tries to stifle free software, hasn't really been looking at the facts.....

Re:Why is this news?

[Rei]

I don't know who makes the ban list that my company uses, but fedora's site is blocked, classified in the category "Tasteless". Other Linux distros' sites are fine.

I think someone has a sense of humor ;)

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm on the Microsoft firewall team. I'll explain what's going on.

First off I should say that the Free Software Foundation is in fact a type of gambling site seeing as how it can cause people to lose their sense of free market capitalism. Having free software means that for-profit software industries are losing money that would otherwise be spent on expensive and high quality software systems like Microsoft Windows. So yes the economy is losing money to free software just like gambler's lose money to the casino.

Microsoft also endeavors to protect children from obscene and immoral ideas that are related to socialism, like the free software movement. So yes, "free software" is among the words on our block list. Other dangerous words that we will protect children from are:

gun control
global warming
evolution
Noam Chomsky
Canada
medical marijuana
Green Peace
Al Jazeera
Julian Assange
Israeli Apartheid
corporate welfare
union
taxation
Digital Restrictions Management
public school teacher
anal probe

Re:Why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whatcha ya laughin' aboot, eh?"

"You'll love this, someone mentioned Canada, eh."

"Ooh, ya, that's a good one, eh!"

Re:Why is this news?

[TheMMaster]

Yes! Don't let children near priests!