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Ask Slashdot: Cyber Patrol Censorship?
There's more to the situation, however...
"I am more upset that my ISP never told me that Cyber Patrol was blocking their server... they have known for some time and they chose not to spread this information to their customers. I only found out when a job hunter couldn't access my resume and wrote me an e-mail to alert me to the problem. What can I do about this situation, aside from move to another ISP? What sort of compensation can I seek, either from Cyber Patrol or my ISP? It's impossible to measure what sort of hits I have lost due to this block, and I don't know how long it's been this way.
I suggested to my ISP that they set up 2 web servers, one for unregulated content and one "safe-surfing" where people could sign an agreement to keep content clean in trade for an unblocked server, and to co-ordinate this effort with companies such as Cyber Patrol. My ISP responded that they would take my comments into consideration, but that they did not even know whether their web server alone was blocked, or the entire domain, and that my solution might not be feasible."
Such behavior scares me. Is it legal for ISPs to behave this way? Will we all have to worry about being silently censored in this manner?
I'm not sure I understand. Is it that you can't access cyberpatrol blocked sites or that Cyber Patrol users can't view your site? I assumed the second one until I read that your employer couldn't view your online resume. Why is an adult using Cyber Patrol anyhow?! If Cyber Patrol users can't view your website, do you want them to? I wouldn't want people who aren't mature enough to make their viewing decisions on their own visiting my website.
My school uses Cyber Patrol, so I have to get around it somehow (They block amazing amounts of actual useful information...) Anyone else who has this problem might want to check out peacefire.org which is a student anti-censorship group which has information on disabling 'censorware' like Cyber Patrol and Net Nanny.
People who use CyberPatrol and other such software have to understand that their internet access is limited by the discretion of Cyber Patrol, and whatever they deem appropriate or inapproriate, the decision is not your own. If people want to "protect" themselves from adult content, it's their own choice. Of course, most schools use some sort of software like this, but there's nothing that can be done. Schools are notoriously stubborn for infringing on free speech rights. They don't have to please the students, just the parents who fund the school.
Blah.
Let your money do the talking. Choose another ISP.
BTW, I do not endorse AOL since it does censors intelligent chats about STDs and breast cancer because the words like "sex" and "naked" et al are used.
Secondly, it is totally unreasonable to require an ISP to set up new web servers for every different category used by different censorware vendors. The stuff that Cyberpatrol considers adult will be different to the stuff that NetNanny considers adult. Should your ISP be required to set up a third server for all content deemed "inappropriate" by NetNanny? And what about the other five dozen different censorware systems?
Also, Cyberpatrol blocks using about two dozen different categories. So even if all the adult material were moved to a separate server, the remaining material might still be blocked for users who are blocking on "gambling" or some other category.
In short, don't blame your ISP - all censorware is a fundamentally broken and the blame should go to a) the people who push the stuff and b) those stupid enough to use it.
Danny.
Pornography is bad! I'm sorry, but that is the simple truth. Porn is a slow, insidious killer of all that is good in a man. It is a disease, and as such it is unworthy of protection. Wake up people, there are damaged human souls at both ends of the smut industry, and everywhere in between. Free speech and civil liberties are good things, but so are human dignity and moral virtue. Get your priorities straight before you're lost for good in a sea of blind selfishness and insensitivity. Pornography is the real enemy, why can't we acknowledge that?
use "example.com" for fake domain names...it's officially approved, doesn't point anywhere, and will instantly tell people that you're using a fake domain.
Does the headhunter have a clue about how inaccurate and ineffective blocking software is and how many other potential clients' sites are being blocked? If he is truly that clueless, perhaps John should find a different headhunter.
.sex domain? If there were, and if John's ISP could move the adult material from johnsisp.com to johnsisp.sex, that would solve the problem. The filter could be moved from .com to .sex and it would also be easier for those looking for the adult material to find it in the .sex domain.
Please excuse my ignorance on Domain name issues, but is there a
A strategic solution to CyberPatrol censorship would be as follows: all those opposed to censorship should have websites with adult content. If enough of us do this, the CyberPatrols of the world would have to block all, or at least most, sites--which would make the web useless for the users of CyberPatrol, and thus make the censors and their customers irrelevant.
Slashdot uses censorship every day to suppress ``incorrect'' thoughts. Why would you ask your question in this forum? Slashdot has not yet learned the meaning of free and vigorous debate. At Slashdot, opinions not in agreement with the party line are suppressed, just as in China or other communist countries.
true, but geocities, for instance, kills any porn on their servers as soon as they find out about it. I guess in that sense, they are "facist" enough not to worry CyberPatrol...
One man's censorship is another's editorial policy. Everybody filters what their kids' see or read, both for appropriateness and to match the values they are being taught. Libraries, for all their protests about "banned books", won't touch manuals for torture, etc. (Hmmm...I wonder if Mein Kampf is in my local library?)
Everybody censors, but applying this to the internet is new to some people. There are a number of ISPs that advertise that they do prefiltering of content. So, unless the censorship is required by law (see Australia), vote with your pocketbook! Go ahead and get a different ISP. Just don't deny me a chance to sign up with a "censoring" ISP if I should choose to do so.
So could you sue for damages if a comment on slashdot is moderated down? The right to free speech does not require a company to publish your speech nor does it require someone to listen.
Email: Whole sites blacklisted because of an issue of configuration of servers, even if the sites take strong action against customers who
spam.
IRC: Look at the ban lists for EFnet channels, such as the ones who ban AOL indiscriminately.
Usenet: UDPs.
The problem is that too many people care only if their own particular ox is being gored and think nothing about whether someone else is suffering as long as the "cause" is right. I find it amazingly hypocritical that those who would in other circumstances celebrate power without constraints for system administrators suddenly start crying when porn is voluntarily being filtered by other administrators.
Hear, hear to the 'Technicality' comment.
/.er mentioned, there is a built-in override to allow erroneously screened content through.
:]
I am often stunned to disctraction by an Internet community that on the one hand defends its perogatives against post-Columbine critics by saying, "The parents bear responsibility, not the Internet" then, seemingly without the beginnings of a sense of irony, lambast software like CyberPatrol as 'censorship.'
Either the parents are responsible for 'censoring' their children's usage or they are not. FTR, I am firmly in the 'censorship' camp, to the extent that the heinous concept of governmental quashing of freedom of expression can be perverted to encompass excercise of parental responsibility.
Of COURSE parents are responsible for their children's on-line viewing. Given that:
a) No parent can, or should, limit a child from exploring his world to the parents' (certainly more limited) schedule; and
b) That children practice deception as a natural part of testing parental authority and their own independence:
a legitimate compromise are parental tools to limit exposure without requiring complete disconnection.
THIS IS GOOD. To mandate that a parent's only alternative is to disconnect a child from the future or capitulate to a culture that conflicts with familial values is absurd. Worse, it is of a family with requiring Ten Commandments be placed in schools -- it is arrogant insertion into the relationship between child and parent.
CyberPatrol and the like are perfectly legitimate parenting tools, when applied intelligently. As another
That said, let me make two backtracks:
1) Why on earth an adult employer would feel compelled to use this may be explained by the spectre of Sexual Harassment lawsuits, but is no less ludicrous for that.
2) Should the suspiciously adolescent 'free the porn' argument win the day, I will follow the best suggestion on this topic. I'll go on a porn-hunting trip with my son. Lord knows if my Dad had done that, I'd be a monk and have no son to worry about.
JJMcC
it is my ISP's fault that they KNEW ABOUT IT and didn't tell me
Yeah, and when I place a classified ad in a magazine, they must provide me with a list of people who don't subscribe to their magazine! Grow up! Freedom of speech does not mean everyone is forced to listen. The only valid complaint that could be made is perhaps if your ISP was filtering traffic and didn't tell you.
I must apologize. I am up much later than usual, I am a bit weary, and my sarcasm detector has died and gone to bed for the night. Thus, I'm not able to tell if this post is intended as a joke. For the love of God, I certainly HOPE that it is a joke, but I can not tell, pardon my ignorance.
So could you sue for damages if a comment on slashdot is moderated down?
:P. CyberPatrol says that the information on his page is immoral blah blah blah... You get where I am going.
Sure, if it was a valid post and got marked down as off-topic, or something. IANAL, but I think the term is libellous
My suggestion is that you go with free hosting service like tripod.com, or geocities.com, which has a reasonable copyright policies. (So Geocities is out of question, but there are others which are acceptable.)
Or you could sprig extra few bucks for your own domain, and avoid the issue entirely, since with a different domain even the damn censorware vendors should be able to distinguish one from the other, even if it is on the same server...ie virtual domain serving is what this is ussually called, and ussually it has its own IP address as well, so you should be in the clear.
Hope this helps.
:>>--
Morally and legally, the only party that can reasonably be held at fault is Cyber Patrol. What right do they have to smear your name that way? And, their libel demonstrably has detrimental consequences to you. If you want to make a stand, talk to a lawyer about a libel suit. Of course, I'm not one, so don't listen to my opinion.
Switching to another ISP would only punish your current ISP for not censoring its customers. I know, somebody's going to say, if it's not the government, it's not censorship. Bullshit! If you can't get a functioning ISP, it's censorship right enough, whether or not the government is doing it.
Anytime someone in a position of authority restricts the flow of "bits" to someone they have authority over, it is censorship. Whether it is a govt. to its citizens, parents to children, or TV networks to viewers, it is still censorship.
That doesn't mean it is always bad. A parent should censor their children's TV/internet/etc access. It is less acceptable for a company to censor it's employees, and less yet for a govt to censor its citizens.
Most people here who object to Cybersitter (or whatnot) do so because A) it sucks, and indiscriminately blocks much content it doesn't intend to, B) Many people want to regulate public libraries, schools, universities, etc, *forcing* them to install blocker software (with known serious shortcommings!) That is govt. censorship. C) such software is sometimes installed on corporate firewalls to prevent employees from wasting time looking at porn, or more importantly, opening up a hostle-work-environment lawsuit. This is understandable, but obnoxous to employees who have to put up with its inefficiency.
My main problem with blocker software (aside from people wanting it gov't mandated) is that the blocker manufacturers don't seem to show any concern for unintensionally blocked content, either from eronious matches, or same-server as offensive content problems.
Some internet postcard company sued Microsoft because MS's anti-spam software filtered out the postcards from this company. They won. It seems to me that if Cyberpatrol is blocking out your web site and your web site is related to your business (Assuming your business isn't porn) you should have a pretty good legal leg to stand on. (IANAL though I play one on TV.)
Certainly the word "censor" was applied both to government and religious officials in history; the first censors (the Romans responsible for taking the census) were both government and religious authorities.
It's convenient to use the expansive definition since one can then worry about whether anyone has authority to censor -- those who think that parents should decide what their children do and learn believe parents have authority to exercise the powers of the censor over their children.
That's a silly special case. The .invalid TLD is more appropriate and more obvious.
My guess is that porn is harmful to some people and beneficial to others. Just as some medicines can save one person's life and kill another person, the effects of a thing can vary greatly depending on who the person is. "One man's meat is another man's poison," as they say.
Of course, I'm not saying this in order to make a relativist case that the concepts of "good" and "bad" or "harmful" and "helpful" are meaningless or that we can never know anything. We need science and philosophy to enhance our understanding of what things mean to individuals, so that those individuals can make better choices with a deeper understanding. We need lots and lots of personal experience. We need to look at the world honestly, collectively and individually, and outgrow the temptations to make simplistic generalizations and to control others.
First off the most likely reason the whole server is banned is because this cyber patrol software bans based on IP not name. When a web server hosts multiple domains they are all using the same IP. The server software (Apache) knows which site is being accessed even though all the hosted domains use the same IP. When you type www.somedomain.com that info gets passed along to the web server and the web server can figure out what webpages to server based on that info. These companies that put out this software use IP's because domain names can be spoofed. It kinda is a no win situation.
You *could* mess with the passwords, but it'd waste more time than is necessary. This is a *web blocking* product, not a security product. It'd probably take ~15 seconds and a restart to disable it.
I saw a cartoon a while ago about a parent buying a web blocking program like this, and then asking their kid (the computer-literate one in the family) to install it...
Wrong. They don't *guarantee* that they don't block non-adult content -- I think we all recognize that they pretty much have to (*you* try rating everything on the web...even being over-zealous, they can't get everything).
All you people out there that are anti-Cyber Patrol because your employer or parents or whatever uses it are just not cool. Cyber Patrol (and friends) provide the only real alternative from a politician's point of view to provide decency. ("Yes, we *are* doing something to protect your kid from filth...") And, quite frankly, I'd rather see client-side products like Cyber Patrol than legislation against server operators. Cyber Patrol is one of the best things that's ever happened to Internet freedom, initial appearances to the contrary.
And if *Geocities*, with little funding and so many anonymous pages, can do it, I think it's reasonable for the guy's ISP to consider it. Still, I wouldn't blame them if they didn't want to go to the trouble.
Maybe the company is one of those with 13-year olds that's about to go IPO and make them all millionaires before high school.
It *is* a good idea. Still, I can't see Fortune 500 companies setting up files called "pr0n.txt"... :-)
Porn sites aren't gonna care. 99% of 'em just want hits to make banner money... Yeah, so maybe Playboy and so on will follow the rules...the masses won't.
Was it that porno site that had the swirlies follow the cursor? I grabbed that too :D
It's the new guidelines. First post is considered 'redundant' when it says 'First Post' or '#1' like this one. This is because it happens so often, that there is no need to yell 'first post' anymore.
:)
And this one will be marked 'flamebait'. I am prompting for explicit flammage here
1. You are paying your ISP to provide you with a service.
2. They are not providing service as you desire.
3. ISPs are a-dime-a-dozen. Same price, better service.
THEREFORE,
4. Switch! I use Earthlink, and as far as I know they don't censor at all.
Right on!
If you've got a pool in your back yard and you have a young child, do you build up a fence around the pool to prevent this child from the possibility of going into the pool? Do you then continue to make a bigger fence as the shild grows older? Or do teach the child how to swim, being there when they go into the pool until your confidant they can swim?
It's the same sort of thing with the internet. Do you get blocking software for your kids or do you teach them how to use the internet?
-OnyxArrow (posting as AC b/c I forget my passwd)
Sure, it seems alright to sue everybody at first, but I for one hope you lose out bigtime. Here's why: The consequences would be horendous. Let's say you sue your ISP. They get the picture and boot the adult content. From now on all ISPs are 'required' to boot questionable content from their web servers. Or perhaps the ISP sues CyberPatrol (see next section). Perhaps they tear down the web server. This would not be a nice solution to adversity. In short, what do you expect your ISP to do? You are asking the law to step in and enforce a business decision that they shouldn't have to make.
Now let's assume you sue CyberPatrol. Let's pretend you win. Now they have to allow all users to access your ISP. This not only hurts their product a great deal, but also threatens other sites (read Universities for example) who block domains that {spam, crackers, etc.} If you win, a spammer could sue everyone for not recieving and reading his mail!!! So in short, sueing someone for not seeing your sign is not a good way to go IMHO. CyberPatrol acts as a 'trusted' third party who tells people when it is not a good idea to read someone's material. It should not be banner nor sued, even though the practice is abhorrent and questionable. It is a question about freedoms that should be allowed to systems administrators.
The ISP owes him at least part of his money back. He defrauded him in selling him a limited-access web site without telling him it was limited access.
They did not sell him a limited-access web site. They sold him a web site that certain customers choose not to visit. That's their prerogative, and it's certainly not the ISP's problem.
And how do you think it would look if the headhunter figured out "Oh, this guy's resume is on an adult site!"
That would be the reasoning behind the suggestions that CyberPatrol be sued for libel/defamation. I'm not sure whether such a suit would have any validity, but I imagine it depends on how upfront CyberPatrol is about the fact that their software blocks a lot of non-adult material.
In the past I've had the sterotypical "Here's me, here's my wife and kids, here's what we did last week" site for my extended family to see. That's the only reason I got an account with web space, which cost more than a simple dial-up account. My family uses blocking software. If this same thing had happened to me, it would have defeated the purpose of the web site.
If I buy a car, but the government suddenly stops doing road maintenance and the roads become undrivable, that defeats the purpose of the car. Not the car dealer's problem, though. If I take dance lessons, but somebody later sneaks up on me and saws my legs off, that defeats the purpose of the dance lessons. Not the dance school's problem, though.
If I found out that the ISP was aware of the situation, and that they wouldn't refund part of my money (the cost above a dial-up-only), I would have filed a class action suit on behalf of the customers.
No doubt. But it would be a completely spurious one.
For any product, there are all sorts of things a third party could do to damage its usefulness. Holding the people who sold you the product responsible would be foolish, however.
They've been doing this sort of thing for a while now; it's nothing new. See this CyberWire Dispatch from 1996 for the start of it all, in Brock Meeks's inimitable style.
Later, in 1997, someone mentioned the Cyber Patrol search engine in a USENET thread I was reading (since the Boston Public Library was planning to install it). Naturally, being a curious type, I checked out my homepage--blocked! I checked other pages on the site--blocked! I checked a web page set up by an 11 year old about teddy bears--blocked!
At that time, Pathfinder had a database dump they'd managed to acquire, complete with categorizations. Apparently every page on the site with the same three-character prefix was blocked. All user homepages were in the same subdirectory, so all user homepages were "eeevil porn".
After complaining, they removed the block "at the wrong directory", but wouldn't tell me which page below that had been blocked when I asked. Further complaints on USENET eventually resulted in an email response (which contained a forward of one of my USENET posts and a comment to the effect "tell him why it was blocked originally so he'll stop posting that we won't tell him") giving the one URL which had been blocked "in error" (and had finally been unblocked)--a song parody that contained the word "netsex".
Yup, that human checking that they tout as a feature really worked well in that case. Of course, this is the same software that was blocking the Electronic Frontier Foundation's web site at one point. See Peacefire's Cyber Patrol page for more details on the history of this program.
The Real Answer is to tell people not to use Cyber Patrol because it's lame. Hard to do when they're potential employers.
There are lots of potential employers. No reason to go out of your way because of their cluelessness.
Folks, everyone is getting it wrong.
The ISP is not to blame, censorpatrol, er cyberpatrol is. The isp is just providing web service to its customers, they have ZERO control over what domains and ips censorpatrol blocks. Only people who use censorpatrol will be affected by this, so only suckers who didn't see that cyberpatrol is a purely political front will be affected.
Hey, Cyber Patrol isn't anything that imposes laws; some other filtering software might decide to block you anyway. Take it easy: no-one uses it anyway. If you find someone who does use it... Well: they wanted censorship and they got it. Tell them to quit whining or quit using the stupid program and get on the Web.
People who want to get into trouble will always find it. Ignore them. They invented their problems themselves.
(Still experiencing erroneous AC aliasing)
I'm not sure this is a helpful observation. By adhering to this etymological definition of censorship, we freely conflate Government repression of free expression and parental excercise of censorious responsibility. These are two VERY different things morally and socially despite their common final results. By disallowing the distinction you put at odds parental freedom to raise children and free speech.
In fact this is exactly what those who support Governmental parenting do from the other side -- expand Government censorship under the auspices of parental freedom.
To demand parental responsibility is to require parental 'censorship' IN LIEU OF the Governmental kind. Applying the emotionally loaded word 'censor' to this activity hurts, not helps, the debate regardless of etymological origins.
JJMcC
I certainly appreciate from the comments on the board that CyberPatrol appears to be a particularly bad implementation. It was not my intention to defend the particular implementation, but the concept of filtering software as a tool for parents that want it.
And I agree that finding a computer algorithm for childraising is impossible even for a single concept of child-rearing, let alone different visions of acceptable content.
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with over-filtering to some sanitized level of comfort, then, as a parent, intelligently waiving the filter on a case-by-case base with your child. This is what I meant by intelligent filtering.
Finally, I do agree that once the tool is taken out of the hands of parents and put in the hands of legislators it becomes full censorship in every sense of the word. The response should be to bitch-slap the legislators though, not hogtie parents that want it.
JJMcC
FYI -- no blocking software in place yet. Computer in the family room is enough for me. If/when I do want one, I'll shop for one that is a bit smarter than CyberPatrol seems to be.
If you ignore moderation, all the associated problems disappear at once and forever.
Bonus! Similarity between moderation & microsoft: only safe-to-ignore pogues pay any attention anyway......
An ISP may have more legal clout and money than an individual - get them involved under the pretense that if they don't get involved they're going to lose a lot of business. Contact several ISP's and turn it into a class action. Censoring Apps are just plain bullshit. I watched SurfWatch block a technical paper from going through the email. We never did find out what the objectionable content was - unless someone out there is a techno-fetish pervert.
Nothing replaces effective parenting. If parents are lazy, we shouldn't have to suffer for it (though our overloaded jails and high crime make us suffer anyway). If a kid wants to see porn, they'll find a way. I watched a fellow employee demostrate this - even with censoring he was able to pull up a porn site. Kids are going to see it. That's a fact of life. It's how they react to it - do they stick around and drool and joke with their friends and get a complex, or do they shrug it off and move on to more interesting stuff like baseball cards. It's up to parents to cultivate their values, interests and tastes. Tell a kid not to do something and he'll do it because it's forbidden. Show a kid how disgusting something is and compare it to not-disgusting stuff and chances are he'll pick up on that. My son hates Barney with a passion - not because we told him not to watch it, but because we showed him how much we hate Barney and how neater other stuff is (long live Bugs Bunney). He'll change the channel now. It's the same as getting a toddler to stop eating things off the ground - tell him not to do it and he'll do it behind your back, but show him how "yucky" it is, and after time, he'll realize that it's yucky. Call it parental brainwashing, but that's how kids learn - they watch you and immitate you, they use you as a cornerstone in how they develop their tastes and habits. If you come against them by demanding they not do something - then they rebel. It's far better that they immitate us rather than rebel against us, but that puts forth the assumption that we are worthy to be immitated. In any case, that is the most effective form of censorship - self-censorship. Forced censorship it a joke and an assault on our rights. If you don't like a tv show, change the channel - if you don't like a web site, click out of it. How hard is that? No contraversy there, no inconvenience (except for those damned javascripts that try to redirect you back into the site - kill those). If you're a pervert - get drool protection for your keyboard...
Concerned Parent
-- Protect the rights of my kids - overturn censorship.
Read more carefully. Cyberpatrol is instructing *others* to censor every document on the petitioner's server. ISPs that *don't* censor their own users' content are vulnerable to this.
I'm not sure what FotF's site is like (and I refuse to inflict it on myself), but James Dobson is known for advocating brainwashing people whose sexuality he doesn't approve of.
And remember, God Hates Phelps.
There's a *ton* of fetish porn here and there on Geocities. I think they might investigate a few ridiculously high-traffic objects, but mostly they follow up ruthlessly on complaints from fundies. ISPs can't piss away (paying!) customers like that.
According to a recent Time or Newsweek article (read it at a restaurant, don't remember which), you erect razorwire (no, I'm not kidding) to keep neighbors' kids out so their parents can't sue and steal your house.
What a great idea. Reminds me why I don't drink anymore. I got really puking sick on 3 kinds of 80+ proof liquor, now I can only handle beer...
Back on point, I think that 'kids' have mostly a distorted view of what sex is. Perhaps hitting the porn sites and answering their questions would be a good educational tool.
Software blocks can and will be defeated, another good learning experience, BTW. It's not like the kid can't go to a friend's house or look at a magazine. You don't need a computer to look at porn...
According to the article, the headhunter got an error they couldn't figure out, so they mailed the author to see if it was a problem with their Web server. Apparently Cyberpatrol is less than obvious about what they do.
I find a disturbing aspect to this question: the idea that the ISP/web hoster is somehow RESPONSIBLE for the content on the server. This is the spam issue revisited (see the very insightful article at http://boardwatch.internet.com/mag/97/nov/bwm1.htm l), but in much worse form. Forcing ISPs to censor content will come back and bite everyone in the butt. Today someone doesn't like pornography; tomorrow someone doesn't like sexual education; then someone doesn't like certain types of music; then certain political parties get the axe; etc. This is a slippery road to censorship of the Internet. Please do not travel this road!
The culprit here is CyberPatrol, for offering a crappy product -- it's easy enough to block on domain names (including virtual domain names), the fact that they block on IP addresses is ridiculous. Don't punish the ISP for standing up against censorship and for preserving the freedom so essential to the Internet!
CyberPatrol is bad. Not only because it is fascist-ware, but also because it is not done right. They could block just a certain part of a web site, but they don't want to. It is easier for them to just block a whole domain, and that way, it's more likely that they'll be able to manipulate ISPs and such into kicking off users who express their rights.
Secondly, CyberPatrol is funded by (a) Christian group(s).
Want to know how fucking effective it is? On a CyberPatrol-ed computer, I could go to go to godhatesfags.com, but not safersex.org. Hmm... (Oh wait, it is effective, if you're a white Christian male American conservative...)
I understand that this isn't really directly related or shtuff to the guys posting... Check out censorware.org, which is a little outdated/sparse, but still useful. And the EFF, of course. The ACLU has a thing on censorware in public libraries and stuff, too.
"Censorship causes blindness: READ"
Those of you that are really offended by CyberPatrol, (and who wouldn't be?), why not use their own software to get them in trouble. They have a nice place at their website for sniches, prudes, facscists and other nasties to suggest sites that should be blocked. Now, we know that the average slashdotter is a concerned citizen. Why not suggest that they block lots of sites that "might" have objectionable material.
For example, Kodak.com. Bare breasts! Bottocks! Photographs of violence! Definately not for the sensitive or young viewer. Now how do you think Kodak would react if they found these dolts had them blocked from every school in America?
Let's not stop there. If you look into some of the discussion boards at Time/Warner, you can find some amazingly racy material. All Time/Warner sites can lead you there. Better block the lot.
Oh. And Microsoft. Hacking tools. That illustrious organization the CoDC says that Microsoft has hacking tools. AOL seems to agree.
These type of submissions to the block list do not even need to be accurate. Just plausible. Let CyberPatrol figure out which are real and which are not. If this works, then the companies affected will scream bloody murder. The public spirited slashdotters can rest easy in the knowledge that they have done their civic duty.
There are lots of "loaded" words whose history shows that the people doing them didn't believe they were doing anything wrong. We get "propaganda" from another religious activity (organized efforts to foster religious belief) whose proponents certainly felt it was worthwhile. But the word has acquired certain emotional connotations which are nowhere in its definition: propaganda doesn't have to be false or misleading. The actual practice of propaganda in history teaches us to be skeptical of it (I hope). Similarly, the Romans thought that the whole set of duties of the office of the Censor was worthwhile and noble. If you disagree with their judgment, you stand as an example of how we can make progress in our attitudes and beliefs.
What a bunch of potato heads. Give me a break!
I know Cyber Patrol blocks my site. Big deal. I really couldn't care less what they do. For the surfer, there is a very simple solution. Turn off Cyber Patrol when it won't allow you to access a site that you want to access.
For the person who started this....I would never work for a person, nor have a person work for me who was unable to figure this out. If the person couldn't access your site because Cyber Patrol denied them access and they didn't know how to circumvent this then do you really want to continue a potential employment situation with this person?
Please don't blame Cyber Patrol or the ISP. You can blame the Cyber Patrol users. After all, they purchased the censorship product in the first place.
For the person who is whining that people can get to his site, why not go find one of those free hosts like Geocities. Hell, if you show and unclothed elbow on their they will shut you down. And that is pretty much the only place that Cyber Patrol clients can go to (except of course Microshaft.com)
Which is, in fact, what Illuminati Online did when they were blocked by CYBERsitter in April 1997.
Just because some ISPs think that security through obscurity is how to run a business doesn't mean they all do.
"I [...] don't believe in the activity when practiced by either parents or governments..."
Hmm. This position interests me. I strongly feel otherwise (in the parental case anyway) -- by which I mean I think I'm on solid intellectual ground and would be interested in hearing a challenging perspective. Not interested in flaming.
In particular, I am curious what you see as a parent's responsibility to deal with a child fascinated with Nazism/bomb building/extreme pornography (all of which are freely available to the online curious). Do you reject the notion that children have limitations in processing information, particularly when violent and/or sexual in nature? All children, of arbitrary age?
"There is no such thing as a mandated "choice" between government and parental censorship..."
If the first is too close too home, I also find myself disagreeing with this assertion. Even assuming for the moment that you and I agreed on parental roles, surely you allow that this country is replete with parents who disagree. To them, censorship is as clearly right as to you it is clearly wrong. For them there is NO other possibility. To reconcile these desparate views as a society, our recourse is to either: a) capitulate and grant their mores the force of law (government restricting free speech); b) legislate against their way of life because they are wrong (government restricting parental rights); or c) leave parents to make the choice locally (parents restricting children's 'rights').
Is your contention that the 'damage' done by parental censorship is greater than damage from governmental squashing of free speech or parental rights (presumedly the latter)? Given that parental censorship (often abetted by the Governmental kind) has been a staple of history's family structure, how do you even measure damage/benefit of completely open information to children?
Again, this is not (intended as) a flame. My curiousity is piqued. Email jjmcc1@REMOVEME.home.com if you care to converse further.
JJMcC
Unwieldly? Yes. But you've just made it no more unwieldly than the alternative, so if they do any filtering at all, why not do it this way and guarantee that their employees are looking at 100% corporate-approved work-related content?
You stop running a promiscuously open mail relay, as described on the MAPS Transport Security Initiative site.
If you can't be bothered to run your mail server competently, then the hell with you.
Do they clearly inform thier customers of this? What happens if you are a Cyber Patrol customer whose ISP is blocked? Can't see your own webpage??
btw - Don't blame the ISP folks, I'm sure they didn't volunteer to have all of thier webhosted sites blocked...not exactly a market advantage, that. No publisher, publishing house, etc. etc. or the cyber-equivalent - the ISP - should be held responsible for some idiot censors running around screaming "don't look at that!!"
Also, has the user in question thought about trying to get a local article published in his newspaper about the story? National censorship company blocks local internet customers' websites!! Read all about it!! See if the paper can publish a Cyber Patrol contact number in the story, and see how they react to a flood of phone calls from pissed off netizens...
I have a 15 year old son who is a budding artist.
When he attends drawing classes at an Art Institute (Which I won't name to protect it from the raving loonies of censorship) he draws and paints nudes for hours on end. These sometimes are pretty females other times other ages and sex.
It doesn't bother him, it doesn't bother me.
It doesn't bother his mother, his grandparents or
his pastor. What is it with the SEX HANGUPS of
the loudmouth nay sayers?
Even sites that present full blown hard core erotica are just presenting pixles. It is images
and nothing more. No problem end of story.
As pressure is asserted upon the Internet from insecure individuals in the US Government, an alternative network is needed to insure that the free flow of information is not obstructed, captured, analyzed, modified, or logged. This is the main purpose of guerrilla.net. To
t .html
provide a networking fabric outside of Governments, commercial Internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and dubius Internet regulatory bodies. The free flow of private information is a REQUIREMENT of a free society.
http://www.l0pht.com/~oblivion/radionet/radione
This is from Lopht Heavy Industries.
Ok, so the whole CyberCensorWareCrud(tm) *should* be nuked (IMHO) - but doing that will not make it go away. Most of us /. readers will never have any problems circumventing such moronic and ham-fisted measures, but we should try to help the non-techies who suffer behind such blocks...
/. reading folks!
Am I making sense here?
Probably not. Anyway, enjoy your
An excellent website with info on all types of filtering software and it's limitations is at:
http://www.peacefire.org
The above site really shows how crappy this whole game is.
Why do you assume that "compensation" means "suing for lots of money?" Maybe it simply means "reimbursement for not providing the services that I was paying you for."
Look, if
(a) I was paying $50/month (let's say) for my account,
(b) The main reason that I got it was so that I could have a web page, and
(c) My ISP told me "hey, sorry, but for the last three months, we haven't been serving your web page. Got lost in the shuffle somehow."
then *I'd* feel that "somebody owes [me] something." Probably about, oh, let's say, $150. Is that "ludicrous?" I payed for services. Said services were not rendered. Reimburse me, please.
Now, this guy's situation isn't identical, but it is similar.
First of all, don't blame the ISP.
Cyberpatrol seems to me to be a company that just wants to make a load of cash. They're not interested in "protecting the innocents" except from a marketing point of view. They just found a niche and jumped into it hoping they would become the dominant provider (or excluder).
This whole "adult content is bad for kiddies" argument is getting *really* old. Get this folks.
Adult content is not bad for well brought up kids.
period.
This is the point where many people start screaming "but there's kiddie-porn out there and anyone can get at it!" Not true. Sure there's kiddie-porn out there. Look at yourself. How would you react if you encountered such content? I know what I'd do. I'd 'call the cops', in a matter of speaking. They have people for dealing with that. The whole 'kiddie-porn-hysteria' cuts both ways. If a department is working on a kiddie-porn case that cuts across international boundaries, all these boundaries magically disappear. Where do you think the stories about kiddie-porn "rings" come from? These people do not advertise on prime time TV in case you had not noticed. They *know* that what they are doing is considered extremely evil by almost anyone in any society on this planet, and with good reason.
But I'll skip the whole 'self-regulating-WWW' argument for now. The big question is 'why?' do companies like CyberPatrol exist? I'll tell you why. It's because most parents are incompetent swines who want to 'offload' the responsibility of raising their children to some vague entities like 'the state' or 'the media'. Being a parent has lost most of its meaning in this society. The knowledge and moral values kids grow up with these days comes directly from institutions such as the, rather nebulous, "state". Arguments like, ".. but my kid hangs around with the neighbours kids" are all void here. They get their values from "the state" as well. Parents should *live* for their children. Whatever they learn in school or from TV should be just 'extra stuff'. Parents should spend real quality time with their kids and *teach* them things. Things like reading, philosophy, basic physics, survival skills, history, self-defence, etcetera. Especially when they are young. As a parent you have a responsibility to teach your childeren about the world they live in. You are the person(s) they look at to guide them through the first 12 to 16 years of their life. Teach them how to cope with it and remain sane! Teach them to think for themselves and deal with nasty situations. Teach them to help, not only themselves, but also the friends they will make in their lives. Most of them will not have had the privilidge of having understanding parents.
Do not *force* them to grow up within a religious structure, even if you adhere to that yourself. Let them make their own choice when they are old enough to make it.
If you really care about your kids (you should), then teach them everything they want to know.
You will not have to lie awake at night worrying about wether or not they are browsing the the web looking for porn. Because (admit it) you know they will. So would you.
But then you know that they will not be harmed by any images they find. They can handle it. Trust them.
On the other hand, if you don't want to spend that much time with your kids, you don't deserve them. But maybe you deserve the result your neglect has created.
Sleep tight y'all!
"The ISP hasn't misrepresented their product. The ISP provides internet service, exactly what it implies."
Interesting viewpoint. Does that mean that if an ISP makes their HTML server listen on a random port every day, that that's OK? So you wouldn't be upset if you got a letter like this;
"Sir, you claim that between the hours of 1-3 PM last Friday, your Web pages were not available. In fact, they *were* available. It's not OUR fault that your potential clients' Web browsers attempted to connect to the wrong port. Last Friday, at 1 PM, our web server was listening to port 2543. At 2 PM, we switched to port 4731. You will note that nowhere in your Service Contract do we state that our Web server will be listening to port 80. Our records clearly show that your client foolishly attempted to connect to port 80. We have no control over that!"
Have a heart for all us Australians.
Next year our wonderful Internet Censorship law comes into action which will inflict ISP based blocking of all 'inappropriate' sites, meaning this sort of thing is likely to happen even more to us.
Unlike Cyberpatrol etc, we won't be able to turn it off.
This is quite relevant:
The Naked and the Nude
For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.
Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.
The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick
Their dishabille in rhetoric,
They grin a mock-religious grin
Of scorn at those of naked skin.
The naked, therefore, who compete
Against the nude may know defeat;
Yet when they both together tread
The briary pastures of the dead,
By Gorgons with long whips pursued,
How naked go the sometimes nude!
-- by Robert Graves (1957)
If your ISP is www.xxxnakedlesbosluts4sale.com you should consider switching...
(yeah, moderate this one to troll)
What an interesting idea. Get your PhotoShop or
Gimp out and a photo of Jesse Helms. Now give him a pink tu-tu and a wand. Now paste him into
some SanFran photo and post it in a Rush L. group.
I can see it now...
It's your fault for hosting with www.lesbians4sale.com anyway...
CyberPatrol checks the ip. I didn't work on that code (worked on other products there), but I would have checked the IP first since it would have been quicker. Early on, they had found some porn sites that changed their IPs.
Injured software engineer fights back against Mattel
You might try calling the ACLU. They probably don't like the way the censorware programs put control of internet access into the hands of so few. It would be in their best interest to have a public trial about it before they gain too much popularity.
Charles Spitzig
Your domain wasn't blocked. Just your web servers IP.
Oh, great, let's resort to ageism, shall we? You're completely right, nobody's opinions are worth anything until the hour they turn 18. The news on peacefire is real, and is only reflective of the problems with filtering software. The "child" who makes that site knows exactly what he's talking about, and is supported by many, many others who do as well. Including me. I'd be using a nick now, but it hasn't come yet, so I'm just being an anonymous coward.
A new way to find the best web sites, like the sticker on music letting you know "good stuff within" :-)
Not a permanent solution... but try https://lesser-magoo.lcs.mit.edu/s/
According to the cyberpatrol website they have control to the page level, "This means that appropriate material at an Internet address need not be blocked simply because there is some restricted material elsewhere at the address."
I also have a document that has the VP. of HR from Microsystems (in 1997) stating that software engineers only use the keyboard 20% of the time and spend most of their time looking keyboard. So, I question their honesty at times.
So, it could be their documents are lies, or that there is a bug in the software, or the cybernot list was not set up correctly. They do have a website you may submit your pages to.
http://www.sorehands.com/injury
Injured working fights back against Mattel.
The best solution would be move all porn stuff to a top level domain like .sex
That certainly does suck. As others have noted, your real beef is with CyberPatrol, there is no reason your ISP should be responsible for working around that. I have a little banning program I use that bans all sites dealing with environmental issues, does that mean all those ISP's should have to provide a seperate server for their non-environmental-content such that people like me using this program can see the non-environmental pages?
As a parent, I can't be sitting next to my child while they are on the computer all the time. And no matter how well I teach them, kids are a curious bunch and will eventually crawl across these questionable sites. I teach my kids how to use guns properly and safely, but I still lock my guns up -- it's the responsible thing to do. The same thing goes for the internet, I teach them that material is not appropriate, but I would still like to keep it locked up, simple as that.
I have a simple solution to the problem that should have been put into effect years ago. Simply come up with a rating system and have sites that carry this sort of material rate themselves appropriately. That way, I can configure my machine to block pages with questionable ratings. This avoids any issue of censorship (except as I censor my kids). I have never heard anybody complain that an R rating on a movie is a form a censorship, this is the same thing. I suspect the vast majority of the porn-sites would comply willingly with such a system.
The system would also allow sites like geocities to allow users to post questionable content as long as they marked their pages as such. ISP's could force customers who are posting questionable material on their home pages to mark them or lose service. Little to no government regulation would be needed. Personally, I would go so far as to have the government mandate it (just like they did for movies and TV). Through a combination of CyberPatrol for ISP's that don't enforce the 'rules' or sites that don't participate with this system would solve everybodies problems.
JeffP
My School district uses cyber protrol. From what I have read at http://www.peacefire.org (Blocked by cyber protrol by the way...) is that Cyber Protol blocked the Time website because Time wrote an article that ended up being anti-Cyber Protol. Back to my school, at one point they blocked http://www.altavista.com, it is a stink'n web search because it had access to questionable material. All web search engines do that.
I've grown up in the Netherlands, and now live in Atlanta GA, USA. Although you do raise some valid points about the USA, it's not a fair judgement. By living here for quite a few years I've come to realize it's futile to judge one country by the cultural values of another. From a Dutch perspective, the USA is severely fucked up. From an American perspective, the Netherlands is severely fucked up. Now let's just shake hands, laugh over each others' differences and quirks, and go get a (root) beer. Or a cider.
Uh, you really think that looking at pornography will give kids a better
idea of what sex is really like? I'd sooner let Jesse Helms teach my
kids what it's like to be gay.
Well, how would *you* improve intelligence? D/l images, look for color histograms approximating flesh tones (being politically incorrect...Crayola just removed "flesh" as a pink color because parents of other skin colors got upset...)? Build a list of links, and check how many Web "hops" a site is from a known porn site like Playboy? (You can get to a porn site from *anywhere*...In MacUser, they published a game called "Web that Smut!" to try and see in how many clicks of the mouse button you could reach a porn site from a given site (w/o typing in an url or search value, or using bookmarks, of course).) How about proximity of keywords in a page?
It comes down to this. Even *people* sometimes can't tell if a site is porn or not right off the bat. So it's just not possible to make a computer that can distinguish it in this decade.
It wasn't mentioned above, but an AIDS education or gay/lesbian site may be considered offensive to some parents.
There's no easy fix for this.
There's no more porn on the 'Net than in real life. It's just easier to get to.
I first got on the Internet at a very early age and all I looked at was porn and building bombs. My dad asked me to get some porn for him even, no big deal. Besides almost blowing off my hand after making a pipe bomb with a screwed up fuse, nothing bad came of it. After the first few months of doing that I stopped looking at that stuff all together. I think parents too often shield their children from things without explaining to their kids why certain things are inappropriate. If you _really_ want to stop your kids from looking at porn, both parents should all sit down at the computer with their child and have porn hour. Nothing would stop a kid from looking at that stuff faster than having to look at it with their parents. Creep em out is what I say.
Sounds like you answered you own question. The only thing to do is A.) Get your ISP to do the right thing, which is move adult content to another server and work with CyberPatrol to remove the block for the clean server. or B.) Get a new ISP that doesn't talerate such crap from customers for a few bucks.
It's like saying "If you pay us money, we'll let you know what towns have adult book stores. That way you can avoid those towns alltogether, if you so choose."
It is tough luck for the people who have non-adult book stores in those towsn, but that is the way the cookie crumbles. Deal.
--
Pasc
First, the ISP who knew that their pages were reaching a limited audience, and said nothing. What they did is annoying and obnoxious, but they were not censoring your site, your site is available to the entire internet. Yes, some people don't have access to your site, but that's because they only have access to a limited internet feed (eg. filtered through CyberPatrol). There are thousands of machines that have no internet connection at all, they can't get to your site either. There are thousands of people who are on machines behind firewals that filter out the http port, they can't get to your site either.
Your ISP did its job, they made the site accessible. It would be a nice gesture if they set up an alternate website in the hopes that it doesn't get filtered, but they have no obligation to, nor is it guaranteed to work. Yes, they should have mentioned the filtering, but they are not responsible for circumventing it for you.
CyberPatrol, on the other hand, is essentially telling its customers that your resume is "inappropriate" and "containing material that parents might find objectionable" (descriptions of filtered sites taken from CyberPatrol's page). This is potentially libel. Contact CyberPatrol, make them fix their screwup. If they refuse, legal action is an option, but it probably won't be worth it to you.
In addition, CyberPatrol claims that their block list "can be managed down to the file directory or page level. This means that appropriate material at an internet address need not be blocked simply
because there is some restricted material elsewhere at the address." So they have the ability to limit their filtering to just the adult pages on your ISP's site, they just choose not to. Your ISP can potentially sue them for both libel and restraint of trade. They also have the option of helping their customers with a class action suit against CyberPatrol.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Be proud of being on the banned list. The more "regular" sites get banned, the less people who choose to use these filters (instead of common sense or supervision) will see of the Internet. Eventually, the uselessness of these filters will become apparent.
The ISP *is* doing the right thing. Why should they mess with their infrastructure and stigmatise a class of users (i.e the ones with so-called 'adult' material) to satisfy the needs of a company with a broken product?
There are legal reasons too. If the ISP starts making judgements as to the content of their webservers, then they leave themselves open to lawsuits against them. If they do not, then they can claim that they are just carriers of the information and take no editorial control.
Cyberpatrol is broken, fix that.
I work for a place that has a filter. In fact, I'm the person who put up the proxy and maintains the filter, at the insistence of the H/R department. We're an older manufacturing company, and there's a lot of machines out on the factory floor. I can say from experience that (a) you don't know what it's like to live in constant fear of a major sexual harrassment suit the way most big companies do these days, and (b) Not everybody is as high-minded as you'd like.
Yes, we have people who would surf for pr0n all day if they could. Yes, we have a pr0n filter. Yes, I have to live in the real world. I fought like hell to keep the network connection as open as possible, and I think I succeeded.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Trying to block sites with "bad" content is clearly a hopeless task, and objectionable in a number of ways people have already outlined. The only way I can see to create a kid-friendly version of the Internet is to allow access only to sites that carry some *positive* marker of being suitable content. A large body of volunteers in, say, schools could be empowered to hand out the marks, and to withdraw them if there's a complaint, and if I get such a mark then it becomes my responsibility to apply it to those parts of my website where it's appropriate.
Libraries and bookstores have "kid's" sections, and the content in the rest of the bookstore is not rated for content: it's not just the "adult" section that may contain (eg) graphic descriptions of sex or violence, but any of the "fiction" section. This seems the sensible way to go about things.
Thoughts?
--
Xenu loves you!
Yes, I imagine it's difficult to segregate the 'adult' stuff from the non-adult stuff, but blocking whole multiuser servers? That seems a bit sloppy.
In short, I think the ISP is in the right; there is no reason why they should run separate servers (after all, whose definition of 'bad, evil content' would they use to separate the web sites?). CyberPatrol is the one libeling your content; your beef is with them, as I see it.
--
Sorry, but I disagree. How is it the ISP's job to keep track of which censorware packages are currently blocking their customer's sites indiscriminately? So, they may have found out that Cyber Patrol is blocking their server; considering the tiny percentage of people using ridiculous software like that, it would seem rather silly to me for them to inform every customer ("currently the following censorware is blocking our site: Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, etc.").
It's not the ISP's fault. They're not the one's falsely suggesting that your content is not suitable for general consumption.
I hope someone goes after Cyber Patrol or one of these other censorware vendors for libel eventually.
--
Red herring.
The truth is that I've never actually even seen a machine that had this stuff installed on it. I'm anti-Cyber Patrol because of what this guy is reporting: that it is indiscriminately censoring his entire ISP. That's wrong, and suggests that Cyber Patrol is not a very good product. If they're that sloppy about who they censor, who's to say how much stuff *isn't* getting censored?
I also don't like the fact that many of these products (perhaps Cyber Patrol, perhaps not) block material based on political motives, or because a web site is critical of their product, or censorware in general. That is wrong, wrong, wrong.
But mostly, I jumped into this discussion because I saw a guy whose site was blocked by a poorly-programmed censorware package, and he was attempting to blame the *ISP*. Argh. It's *not* the ISPs fault that some bozo at that headhunter agency is relying on a piece of (Windows) software to improve productivity rather than paying his employees a decent wage, or otherwise motivating them.
I don't think anyone should be able to get away with the kind of sloppiness these censorware vendors engage in, as it amounts to libel. Is it too difficult to program the thing to do its job correctly? Perhaps. Tough. They still shouldn't be able to get away with libeling people.
--
Because what sites are blocked by whatever censoring software is not their concern, and is totally out of their hands.
If Joe Crackpot writes in a letter to a TV station and tells them that he will never watch their station again because he saw a show where someone said "monkey ass," must the TV station disclose that to every potential advertiser? Of course not.
They have an obligation to deliver the goods.
They have an obligation to make your site available via TCP/IP. Whether others choose to visit or blacklist your site has nothing to do with them.
--
This kind of thing should not be tolerated. If you ran a technical book store in a medium size town, and because there is one adult book store in your town, someone in another town started running ads in the newspaper that said "DON'T VISIT THE BOOK STORES IN HAPPYVILLE; THEY PEDDLE FILTH," don't you think that might be improper, and possibly actionable?
--
There is no solution that will work for everyone. Not laws, not software, not rating systems.
Yes, rating systems are voluntary, and they're imprecise. But they're a hell of a lot better than blocking software, if people would simply use them...
Dave, off to look for that perfect world...
There's a standard to do exactly that, it's called PICS. You describe the content in your page (nudity, violence, etc), and then the web browser can be configured with various filters.
If you want to describe the content on your site easily, you can rate with RSAC, which gives you a standard baseline and spews out the appropriate PICS metadata for your web page, and you copy and paste it into your HTML document. Easy. And any loser on the internet can configure their IE or netscape browser (or anything else that's PICS compliant) to not let a user view content above certain levels without a password. Self-governance on both sides is the only way we're ever going to get anything reasonable around here, the filters have already proven to be extremely politically biased (some of them block the National Organization for Women, for christ's sake.
Well First Off Cyber Patrol/cyber Sitter and the all of those 'filtering' software thingys are racist, anti Non-Christian (jewish sites are blocked or so i'm told so shrug.) and espically anti- Pagan. simple solution? Delete the software, unless you really want to use software created by bigots for bigots. -Shanoyu
And if your mother is at a public school which
added censorware they can expect the students
and the ACLU to sue them....
just can't win can they?
-- Steve
If you want people with blocking software to see your site, move to where they can see it.
Just becuase you do that doesn't mean you don't support your ISP for housing such material. It just means your interests conflict with their ability to provide you the service you paid for.
Problem solved....
and this ranting about puritain values and liberty returns to placing responsibility where it should be, on the individual concerned... Why do you feel you have to stay with them? Just becuase they support porn or becuase you don't want to look like you don't? Sillyness. This is the real world. If someone can't provide what you want, you look for someone who can.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
Actually, they have often claimed that they don't block non-adult materials, and have further claimed that every blocked site is human reviewed.
It is also notable that anti-censorship and anti-web filter sites are blocked.
I'm not claiming that I ever COULD rate every site on the web (anyone claiming that is either wrong or just lying). They shouldn't be making the claims that they do either. They are currently under fire from consumer groups, civil liberties groups, and banned sites and domains that do not have objectional materials.
I am anti-Cyber Patrol because of their misleading claims. I am not against the idea of software meant to help parents restrict adult content from their kids. I am against anyone but parents using any such software. I am against anyone using that software to restrict another adult's internet browsing.
I'm sure that adult web search engines would soon make use of pr0n.txt to help people find content...
That's how you can have such a file without loosing common carrier status. You bill it as a porn finder service, and allow your users to freely add their site to the list.
There are probably two headhunters for every tech worker. A clueless headhunter will place you in a clueless job. Just fax/email your resume to all of them. They're not all clueless.
I wouldn't bother the ISP, they've got enough troubles. The best thing that could happen to the makers of Cyber Patrol would be for it's victims to waste time and energy fighting each other.
On a humorous note, laugh a little. This professional employment broker has just told you "I tried to look at your resume, but my mommy wouldn't let me.". How professional can a business be if it needs parenting software to help it with HR issues?
Yes, we have people who would surf for pr0n all day if they could. Yes, we have a pr0n filter.
Then they are now finding other ways to goof off. Porn doesn't cause GOOFING off, but employees who like porn and goof off will combine the two. I don't imagine that productivity was improved for very long. I'm not blaming you, it was HR's decision.
If a few people started using a broken web-browser that didn't work with their server, and your ISP didn't keep you on top of the situation, would you sue them for that, too?
People are using a client that won't view your stuff because of your web host. Poor you. Get a new ISP, bitch out the censorware vendor, (who you also can't sue, any more than you could sue the hypothetical broken-browser company), and move on with your life.
This looks very bad to me. Now CyberPatrol already can influence your decision on provider choice - by blocking full range of web-servers just because of one page with content that CP doesn't like. Tomorrow they may choose to take fees for removing from the list (if they don't already) - thus making this CP thing full-blown blackmail scheme. Then they might choose to slightly change content of the web pages that they'd like to - with any intent and result you can imagine. And surely, they'd never tell anyone about this, and no plain user could notice this.
I think that the thing like CP should be eliminated - not by force, but by PR campaign, like go and explain every user that uses if that he puts all his WWW experiences, browsing habits, data access and literally everything he does on the Web in the hands of some people he doesn't know at all! And those people yet are so technically illiterate that they can't even design sane scheme for content blocks management!
I think, a good deal of FUD could also help the self-called cops from CP to get a copule of clues.
There's also thing about employer being so dumb that he installs child-protection filters on his own machine, obviously not trusting itself in choosing proper sites, but delegating this task to some unknown company...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
That word is what a gov can do to limit the flow of information. If I "limit the information" that is available to my daughter, then that is NOT censorship. It is simply my choice.
Only govs can censor.
The rest of us just make choices.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
This is somewhat vaguely from memory...
Well, there was this idea of freedom, freedom to worship the way you believe, and didn't like the state-run official religions. The only problem is that in the beginning, people clumped together into communities of like beliefs, so if you didn't agree, you went to a different town. So much for true freedom, but no one is perfect.
Make sure you don't shoot people for having ideals that were different from reality... This nation is slowly correcting these differences... women's rights, slavery, civil rights, and unfortunately reproductive rights also. Don't get me wrong, but some people don't deserve to reproduce.
As for prostitution, I don't know what to believe. It does seem degrading to women and men to let them be so base as to trade sex for money.
Pornography... I am certainly not one to believe that exposure of a certain 5% of body area is going to tear society asunder, but some people would really rather not see some of that or some 90% of other surface area of some people.
Head over to http://www.peacefire.org/ for information on disabling CyberPetrol. If you can't get to the Peacefire web site because it's already been burned with CyberPetrol, try going to http://ians.978.org/, or https://lesser-magoo.lcs.mit.edu/.
To search the list of web sites burned by CyberPetrol, head over to http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/ians/cyber_petrol/ (I like this logo better than the one on their "official" page). Be aware that the client software often burns sites reported as not burned by this search engine. I've reported it. They've ignored me.
If n2h2's real intent was accuracy, the'd be blocking only http://visitors.978.org/people/profiles/diagonail. html and not *.978.org, www.drumhillford.com, and every other web site I run or provide hostnames/DNS for.
The real reason for the blocking is to punish me for creating the page at http://ians.978.org/, which contains information and software that reveals faults in their product and renders it even more ineffective than normal.
I'm sorry to say that I've experienced similar problems with n2h2's Bess censorware. Bess is popular in many public schools and libraries in my area.
Shortly after I published information on my web site criticizing n2h2's Bess product and similar products, along with software that helps censored users work around such products, n2h2 blocked every web site on my machine. Despite repeated attempts to get them to rectify the situation, it goes uncorrected. At one point, they even went so far as to modify their program to provide false unblocked results when accessed from hostnames I commonly browse the web from!
N2h2 has ignored or dismissed my requests to narrow the scope of their blocking. Through carelessness, negligence, or malice, they have chosen to block the entire 978.org domain and any other site hosted on my machine (ie, http://fiero.978.org/, http://tendafoot.978.org/, http://www.drumhillford.com/) and to tell third parties that contact them about the blocking that these sites are blocked due to pornographic content, information about circumventing their product, or because I offer free, anonymous, and instantaneous web access. None of these claims are true.
The fact that n2h2 has chosen to not only prejudicially block every web site that I'm involved in but also to spread lies about the nature of content on hosts in the 978.org domain and sites hosted on my machine is particularly disturbing.
Shortly after I discovered the blocking, I sent several letters similar to the following, asking them to rectify the problem.
With all the "foul" language in /. comments, I can only assume this site is blocked by at least some of the filterware. Can anyone verify this is true for any packages in particular?
I dislike the CyberPatrol product as a whole. Censorship is a very bad thing, and that's what CyberPatrol brings. If parents want to be with their kids when they surf the Internet, that's fine. Censorware is just a bad thing in general.
::Ahem:: Back to your question: I think that it's not unreasonable to ask your ISP to move the adult content to another server, but they may want to compromise (i.e. have redirect scripts from the old pages to the new pages). -Evan
- The people who go to porn search engines are looking for porn. This would help them find "relevant content"
- The big (legitimate) search engines have long been looking for ways to make their search queries more focused. This would allow them to let users filter out such sites from a searches results, giving users less irrelivant muck to wade through, making them feel better about the relevance of the site's search results, leading to more customer loyalty. (You have to admit, on a search engine 80+% of the time all the porn sites just get in the way of what you're looking for.)
- This may even help the porn sites get a more targeted audience, and less hate-mail from users who ended up at their site by accident... (although this might not be the case, because many porn sites are only conserned with number of hits, so they get $$ from their advertisers.)
So I think this (if widely deployed... which is unlikely at this point) would be quite usefull... You have to admit, if you're looking for porn, you're going to find it. Why not make it easier to tell what is/isn't porn so everyone's not bombarded (as much) by information overload?Loren Osborn
Loren Osborn
Take a look at a company called Trusted Net ( http://www.trusted.net). It does web filtering by basically forcing users to connect through a proxy server which reads from a list of sites that are "blacklisted". It wont block the whole site, just the URL. It has its own proprietary system for blacklisting web sites that I cant disclose, but I can say that it works pretty well if you're concerned about filtering and getting pissed off that a whole site is blocked out. They're Linux friendly, too!
-Dave
--
Dave Brooks (db@amorphous.org)
http://www.amorphous.org
Censorware is complete snake-oil; there's no way that it'll ever work as advertised because the net is growing so fast that it's impossible for them to fund development of the blacklist by selling software packages for $49.95 ea to an extremely limited market. They'd need to employ thousands of people to surf the web all day just to find the sites that will be created TODAY, and that's saying nothing about all the web sites that already exist.
CyberPatrol reacts to this in a way which is similar to virtually all other censorware: It gives up any pretense of accuracy and performs wholesale blocking of entire domains whenever it suits. Your ISP doesn't necessarily have any control over this, any more than the "Maple Soccer League" home page had over the fact that they were blocked (the descriptions of the teams in their league included the words "Under 15", so they must be kiddyporn, right?)
The problem in this case is that someone couldn't find your resume. I'd question whether I really wanted to work for someone who was dumb enough to hide their head in a box when they're on the web by using CyberPatrol. While you're complaining, keep in mind that the problem isn't that large: Packages like CypherPatrol are only used by the terminally insecure, the vast majority of people on the web will be totally unaffected by their blacklist.
To see more about CyberPatrol, see The Censorware Project, which specializes in exposing the stuff that is supposed to be bringing up our kids. While you're reading it, ask yourself: "Is it right that these people should be able to charge money for software which can never work?"
-----
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I tried an internal modem, but it hurt when I walked.
Reading this gave me the idea to include "objectionble" content (words like: sex, nude, drugs, explosives) in my meta tags so all my site would be intentionally blocked. A note to all the lame website hackers out there: Don't post a bunch of p0rn on the websites you've hacked along with your shout-outs. Just put some "objectionable" keywords in. This is much more subtle and with luck no one will notice for a while. Now, I'm not saying to hack websites, but if you do consider what I've said.
yes, but wouldn't you block anonymizer if you were CyberPatrol?
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
No it's like saying: "You pay us money to let you know what bookstores have adult contents, so you can avoid them". But instead blocking entire cities just because they have some adult bookstores. And most importantly NOT telling the customer about this!
FRA: STFU GTFO
No... It's more like "If you pay us money, we'll choose which towns are inappropriate for your children [presumably who the program is bought for] to view and restrain anyone from your house who doesn't know the secret password from entering them."
So it's pretty much tough luck for whoever doesn't know the password/can crack the program (hehehehe... I bet they use plaintext or XOR to store the passwords).
-- K
hello? pick up your clue phone!
why should your isp know which censorware products ban them? censorware companies don't say who they ban - they consider that a competitive edge.
no, the fault lies with the authors of the software, and the people that use it. your headhunter is a moron. your isp is dead right. you, well, you need to think more.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I agree in that I rather see client side filters that people have the "choice" of using, as opposed to government or FCC regulations.
The problem lies in the fact that while CyberPatrol does not make guarantees, they are misleading customers, as well as, being lazy with their coding as to block entire domains.
Awesome!
Our old ISP, texas.net, had this problem. The root of the problem is the use of name-based virtual hosts as opposed to ip-based virtual hosts (see the NameVirtualHost directive in the Apache docs). Cyber Patrol, etc., block by IP. We solved the problem by switching ISPs. You may have legal recourse in this situation. Our company is an online retailer and you can imagine how this cut into our sales and pissed us off when we discovered it. Switch ISPs (we love our ISP, Internet Direct, check em out) and contact your attorney.
I do hope you're offering to move your own page to a "safe" server, not suggesting that they kick other people onto an "adult" server. If I were at an ISP that did the latter, they would immediately lose my business. Just because I have the word "bisexual" on my page and some idiot filtering program doesn't like it, doesn't mean that I should bear the burden of moving my page, changing my links, breaking other peoples links to my page, etc.
If you want to move your page to www-safe.isp.com, that should be fine; but you are aware that there's no way for users to comply with that "keep content clean" clause, right? Many of these filtering programs keep their criteria secret, and there's no way to know whether that reference to breast cancer or Middlesex County or shitake mushrooms is going to trigger it. And on the administration side, dealing with monitoring content for N different users for M different filtering programs can't possibly be cost-effective unless they're charging really high rates.
Out of curiosity, do most ISPs get banned by CyberPatrol? If not, why not?
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. You are asking your ISP to implement a workaround for someone else's voluntary usage of one particular blatantly broken software package? Or to refund your money if they don't do so? Sheesh.
(Yes, this is voluntary. In this case, the decision was made by the agency, not the individual; the principle remains. They are knowingly using a product which prevents them from viewing web pages relevant to their business. That's their problem.)
Incidentally, how many of these fucking babysitter programs block all of Slashdot? Most of them, I'd imagine, for reasons which the preceding sentence should make clear.
Your ISP would have to have a server for folks-who-want-to-get-past-Cyber-Patrol, folks-who-want-to-get-past-Cyber-Sitter,folks-who- want-to-get-past-Net-Nanny, et cetera, et cetera.
To make things even odder, if you have content about some issues you are guaranteed to be blocked by one side or another:
Does your page have content that is gay-positive?
Welcome to one set of blacklists.
Does your page have content that is homophobic?
Welcome to another set of blacklists.
Seriously though; why should the onus be on the ISP to disclose a third party's censorship of their net block. They don't have to disclose that they are cut off from the people inside MY firewall. The real problem is that these idiotic censorware programs don't work. They just plain don't work.
Our real job is to make sure they really really don't work, and this gives me a wonderful idea.
There are probably enough sysadmins and webmasters here on Slashdot that we could probably do it. The idea is if we can figure out the method that they use to choose to block netblocks. Then we break their rules. all of them. If they end up blocking enough sites, they become useless.
Active resistance can and should be used!
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
This problem with CyberPatrol seems almost exactly the same as the one presented by Paul Vixie's Realtime Black Hole List. It's a list that ISPs subscribe to. Any domain even accused of having spam sent from it is automaticaly blocked by every ISP using Vixie's naeserver. Thus, no mail from ANYONE at any domain on the list gets out to ANY subscribing ISP. He's had major universities, MSN.com and the ISP I used to work at all on the list at one time or another.
Like Cyberpatrol it's horribly, unfairly implemented and causes all kinds of crappy things to happen to people who have nothing to do with the "problem". The problem is, how do you stop it? Like the users who install cyberpatrol (if I understand what cyberpatrol is, a "child-protection" client like netnanny?) the ISPs who subscribe to the RBL do it of their own free will so who has the right to tell them that they can't? It's their mail servers, they can refuse service to whoever they want. Likewise, if someone wants Cyberpatrol on their machine then that's their prerogative.
So I'm stumped, kids. Vixie is totaly unapologetic about the way he runs his list, so how does one try and knock some sense into these idioticaly implemented, destructive "services" without unjustly trying to violate the rights of others?
As a person who has worked for a web hosting company since the beginning of such services, I can say that there are a number of issues with what this person asks.
First, webhosts have been fighting for years to acheive common carrier status. This means that you are viewed as a telco, not being liable or responsible for content which you serve. If the ISP were to introduce a service whereby the adult content was contained to a separate IP address, the ISP would lose common carrier status. This is due to the differentiation of content.
Once you begin classifying content, you are in the biggest crap shoot there is; being a publisher.
I presume that this person is referring to Best, another Verio property. This person is also referring to a ~userid account, which means that they don't have a domain name. Best uses IP based virtual hosting, not named based, thus if he wants to be unblocked he has to spring for a domain name. There is no guarantee that he will be unblocked because the indiscriminate nature by which blocking software works (IP address or netmask/subnet).
The bottom line is that you can't expect an ISP to jeopardize their common carrier status because a single customer is unhappy.
Abraham Lincoln never said "no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent." It's stupid to think that the man who led the Union side of the Civil War could think such a thing. After all, the South did not consent to be part of the US, and Lincoln insisted that the country remain united anyway.
This and other sayings attributed to Abraham Lincoln were spread around by John Birch Society pamphlets, and seem to have no validity at all (he never said them, and probably never believed them).
You have focused your question a great deal more here though, and made it much tougher in the process.
Of course, IANAL and all that crap, but I don't recall any net.wisdom floating around about this stuff in the legal arena, so that's probably an expensive precedent-setting type legal battle.
I don't think its reasonable for the ISP to tell you though, as there could possibly be hundreds of unknown filters blocking your site, making it impossible for them to know whether you were connected or not. Even the known filters have mostly secret, ever-changing lists.
As your argument for free speech indicates, you don't mind sharing the server so you don't have a moral issue, so it looks like the buck stops at the headhunter.
I'd keep the ISP, drop the recruitment agency if possible, and just relax about the censorship. I'm also making assumptions about the type of employment you're looking for though. To be pragmatic, if I really needed the headhunter for some reason, I'd mail them the resume and make an effort to discuss the censorship politely with someone in charge because it seems like an easy way to be an activist since you already care enough to be public about it (and I'm not a big activist or anything, it just seems like an easy opportunity here).
There are just too many good opportunities right now to put up with prudish closed-minded folk, IMHO. I've de-fanged one internet-use policy at a firm I used to work at (quit for different reason, not internet use), so they will maybe even listen if you try.
If they don't, I start using a (non-Cyber-Patrolled) headhunter :-)
I'm not advocating surfing for pr0n or w^r3z on the job or anything, I just don't think employees should be pre-judged in this way. Stifling an employees ability to do anything will have a ramification somewhere down the line, and it all adds up. There are many legitimate uses for things that seem completely illegitamate at first.
I'll admit to surfing for porn a bit (I'm honest, so sue me), and when I was doing some web-design, I actually snarfed down the source to one of the sites I'd been to recently, because I thought they did something neat with Javascript.
Would have taken me much longer had I not been able to do that, so I think it saved them money and they should be happy with it. I'll bet that would give the CEO fits :-)
Seriously, you're dealing with an adult who is provably hindered at doing their job. I wouldn't want to work in that environment or be associated with a company that tolerated it.
More to the point, by voting with what leverage we have (our labor in this case) we can perhaps influence people's decisions to censor or not.
I know I would let them know specifically why I was upset with the prospect of doing business with them, and I wouldn't be too bothered about "missed hits", life is too short. If the economy was worse, I might be more pragmatic, but that just isn't the case right now.
Perl modules are not hard to install...
$ perl Makefile.pm
$ make
$ make install
--
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I disagree. I think a class action suit may well be in order on behalf of the *customers* of the software - the way it indiscriminately blocks inoffensive content, fails to block actual adult content on other sites, and essentially compromises the valid, normal, expected Internet service of its customers with its lazy, broad-handed methods for filtering.
The "go to another ISP" suggestion is a frightening one - it rewards ISP's who censor, punishes those who don't, and effectively creates a market incentive for compromising the avenues of expression. Of course, people who believe that the Hidden Hand of the Market is Always Just, Always Fair and Always Best won't believe it, but it's true.
> Porn from, say, "www.seagate.com"? "www.fbi.gov"? "www.acm.org"? Whatever.
Sure, but it's a fairly well worn path. You either read support archives or click through to a portal site, get to dejanews, find some spam with a url in it, click, porn. Or you can make it more challenging and not go through dejanews and see if you can get it two or three clicks out of the portal.
The other path is to go through mp3 sites and click on a banner ad.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
...by some software, due to the words "deep" and "penetration" in the same sentence.
("How deep is their market penetration anyway?")
Many companies use such blocking software...through things like Cyberpatrol or mandatory proxies.
I'm sure that adult web search engines would soon make use of pr0n.txt to help people find content...
In many families, both parents have to work. So, when school quits for the day, the kids get home before their parents. And there is the computer.
Nothing can totally prevent a kid from looking at 'indecent' material, but I can sympathize with the parents that doesn't want it to happen in their own home.
Heh.. perhaps a better solution would be a timer on the computer; "This machine can only be used when your parents are home, and they are still working".. I know kids will circumvent that as well, so perhaps the most important thing is to let them know you have a policy on the issue.
--
Fast, Soon, Correct. Pick 2.
Well. This is a troubling issue since you can't blame CyberPatrol (because you are not using it) nor will blaming the ISP do you any good (since they can claim that their service contract doesn't cover informing clients if some half broken software has blocked the ISP's content out).
I would suggest write a polite complaint to both your ISP and CyberPatrol. Explain the situation and indicate how dissatisfied you are about both parties.
At least, it will make them both aware of the problems that have occured. The complaint will be on the record. Maybe they'll even try to find a way to resolve this.
If your complaint falls on deaf ears, I would try to arrange a reliable method to make your resume available (e-mail perhaps). Push your complaint forward and contact the highest manager you can of the parties involved. If you dog them enough, they should come to some sort of resolution...
I didnt realize the problem was this bad. I was in a similar situation several months ago, but I really didnt give it much thought then.
If we can garner enough support (its entirly possible from the sampling of posts Ive seen) perhaps ther may be grounds for a class action suit against Cyber Patrol. The decission in a case like this would most certainly shape the way censorware like this is used in the future.
I for one am more than willing to participate.
The problem is with Cyber Patrol. When the ISP I used to work for got blocked by one of those censoring software packages I found out that most, if not all, operate on a domain basis. Not URL, not IP, domain.
Seperate servers will not help. It also would not be cost effective, especially for the smaller ISPs, to have to double their architecture and police their own users. Furthermore, there really isn't any reason for the censorship consortium to not block the new server(s) when they come up.
For the larger ISPs, domain block and IP blocking are just simply insane. Take ELN, for example. Over one million customers. Just because one of those has some "objectionable" content doesn't mean the other 999,999,999 should be blocked along with them. Also, since ELN uses several servers in a round robin fashion the same IP does not serve up the same content.
In the end, it is up to the censoring software people to tighten up the way they block and the sites they do block. It is up to the users of such software to complain, LOUDLY, to the censoring software people to get their filters straight, to disable the filters, or to switch to something which doesn't filter in such an inane fashion.
-- Grey d'Miyu, not just another pretty color.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that Cyber Patrol only blocks access to its own customers. I'm not familiar with the details of the service, but if someone wants them to block access to certain sites, what's wrong with that? If the user of Ctber Patrol doesn't like their choices, they can use a different service.
/. moderation system is censorship. Censorship is when the government forcibly blocks your access to information. In this case, the users *chose* to block the information. It is voluntary. Therefore it is not censorship. I don't think that kids have a constitutional right to view porn behind their parents' back.
This is not "censorship" any more than the
So I don't think anyone deserves to be sued here. If you want to avoid being blocked, switch to an ISP that doesn't have adult content. Or encourage your users to switch to a different filtering program. A lawsuit would be ounterproductive and would cost all parties unnecessary legal fees.
This is off-topic to be sure, but can someone with a little historical knowledge tell me how come the US (and to a lesser extent Canada) is so puritanical? Most of the original settlers were European, so why did all the anal ones come over? Perhaps they were sent away from Europe rather than choosing to live in N. America.
Using Microsoft software is like having unprotect sex.
Bite the hand.
So what if they didn't tell you that Cyber Control blocks their whole CIDR block? They can't possibly keep track of all the possible filtering permutations possible, let alone waste time informing idiot customers like you who try to squeeze them for five more bucks off their dialup service.
Cyber Patrol, the V-chip, and all those other hysterical efforts at 'saving the Children from the Internet' are mind-numbingly ineffective solutions to a non-problem. Get over it, and get a panty-waste ISP who meets with Puritan America's politically correct approval.
Militant/Extremist:
Pictures or text advocating extremely aggressive and combative behaviors, or advocacy of unlawful political measures. Topics include groups that advocate violence as a means to achieve their goals. Includes "how to" information on weapons making, ammunition making or the making or use of pyrotechnics materials. Also includes the use of weapons for unlawful reasons.
Well, I guess that kills off all of the .gov web sites.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It is not the ISP's responsibility to tell you that random private company 'A' is blocking them.
The ISP's site is perfectly open-- if someone else chooses to block it, your problem is with the blocker, not the ISP.
-OT
The title says it all. A third party company has decided to block your ISP. The ISP is not responsible for making this information known. If I hate your ISP, and write them a message, "Your site is dumb, I'm going to block it from my server." They don't have to fire off a message to their customers informing them that Outland Traveller is now blocking their site. I hope you can understand how obvious this is.
Your problem (and your head hunter's problem) is with Cyber Patrol. Your ISP is not doing anything wrong. In fact, I tend to believe they are doing the right thing by not changing their business to fit the broken design of a random third party blocking service.
It's not your ISP's responsibility to please CyberPatrol, and it's not their responsibility to track who is blocking them and let everyone know. You shouldn't get any money back with your reasoning.
You have the right of free association. I assume the contract you signed with the ISP allowed you to terminate it. So that is the first option.
Your ISP has the right of free association. If they want to kick off the accounts with porn, and did not contract not to do so with the relevant individuals, that would be one solution. Another would be to kick you off! I doubt either solution is possible, though, contractually. That is in large part what the contracts were for.
You have the right to cease association with your headhunter, assuming again you did not contract away that right. There are lots of headhunters in the world. Trust me. Get one which trusts its employees; I hardly see that as a great strain on you.
Cyber Patrol has the right to block your ISP's address. They have the right to block whoever they want. They could block just you, simply because they don't like your eye color. Tough luck, isn't it? Freedom is meaningless unless it includes the freedom to make mistakes, or to do the wrong thing.
If you signed a contract with your ISP requiring them to make sure your pages are visible even past Cyber Patrol, then you should feel free to sue. Otherwise, caveat emptor. Somehow I doubt such a clause will be there. It is not possible that they can guarantee that everybody, everywhere can see your pages at all times. Since they control the last of those, they may make some guarantee about it. But they would be fools to guarantee the others, since those are outside their control.
Bottom line here: you are suffering just the slightest amount from unfair discrimination, based on your second-hand association with some porn sites. Not very nice, but that is one of the prices you pay for freedom. Perhaps you might consider how lucky you are, if that is the worst discrimination you have ever faced. Some people face discrimination more hurtful than your little problem every day of their lives.
It is NOT your ISP's responsibility to notify you of who does NOT have access. It is you ISP's job to ensure that your pages are available to anyone wants access (and can fulfill a set of requirements to include 'can view web pages').
Your ISP absolutly fulfilled their contract and being censored (in appropriatly) is totally beyond their control -- weather they had knowledge or not they should have no need to inform you.
Your ISP (if it's anything like mine) does a hell of a lot more than 'serve your web pages'. Do you have a business accout? There is a reason you'd pay more for that. There is typically no gaurantee of service for non-business class services. You might want to think about that if you plan on getting DSL through some place like US West. No DSL connection? Not our problem we'll get to when we get to it. Want everything ASAP? pay for it.
Personally, I find that the more innocious sites that are blocked by CyberSitter, the better. That's the best way to discourage people from using it.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
I am trying to put together a group of developers to help with the Active Guardian Project.
/. crew would be interested in helping me. Please check out the site.
http://www.activeguardian.com
AG is a filter that blocks based on YOUR preferences. It uses Approved sitelist, Denied sitelist, PICS rating and Word list. AG is so configurable you could configure it to ONLY allow sites with questionable material.
But I need help!! I Know some of the
Thanks
Well...then...I've been imagining these German pages all along? Wow. I must be REALLY creative...
-Smitty
± 29 dB
Sounds like the best plan of action, but if you really want to yell at somebody, yell at Cyper Patrol. Tell them to make some software that will only block the "offensive" pages and not every page on the server.
By the way, before you're too hard on the ISP, ask yourself (or them) how many of the ISPs in your area are blocked by Cyber Patrol. If one page is all it takes many ISP may be blocked.
Cyber Patrol is not necessarily a voluntary product. In some cases there are persons working at companies, where Cyber Patrol has been installed, and the people working there might not even know until they try to access a page that is blocked and it comes up with an error.
If I ever get that kind of problem I'll go to the boss (or more likely the system administrator) and say "I need to access this webpage in order to do my work! I'll be waiting (and collecting my salary for nothing) till it gets fixed."
They will then have to modify the blocking list, or turn the thing off for a while. Sooner or later they'll get tired of it and see the problem with such blocking.
I cannot imagine how blocking can help a company either. The user who can't waste company time on porn may still waste the same time on family-friendly entertainment. Just keep a log, and check it whenever someone doesn't get the usual amount of work done.
None, I hope. I know that's an insensitive thing to say, but I think it would be a total disaster if people were allowed to get legal compensation for this sort of thing. The right way to fight is to vote with dollars and encourage consumer watchdogs.
The first thing you have to realize is that Cyber Patrol's customers are just as much victims as you are. Except that, unlike you, they are funding their oppressor. Education and information would help them. When people hear of Cyber Patrol, we want them to think, "Oh, that's the resume-blocking software, right?" When the person who wanted to read your resume was unable to access it, it should have set off a warning in their head about that Cyber Patrol had defrauded their company. (I assume that the job you're trying to get isn't porno video editor. ;-) Ideally, CP should fix their defective product or go out of business due to lack of sales or lawsuits from their own customers.
As for your ISP, you'll have to decide for yourself if you like the way they are handling this situation. If you were a porn-hater, or if the ISP were doing something of a more offensive nature (like openly hosting spammers), it would be an easy decision. (From what you've described, it looks like they haven't really done anything bad, IMHO.)
I'll just mention one more thing about the ISP... if people start blaming their ISPs instead of the filterers, then it will give strength to a bad idea: that user of ISPs that do not have strict content guidelines will suffer from "collateral" censorship. Most people don't want to be censored, so they will have incentive to go to ISPs that they believe are less likely to be blocked. Surely you can see what the consequences of that will be.
Of course, it's easy for me to try to encourage you to not "wimp out" since you're the once being censored, and I'm not. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...about the people blocking themselves from relevant information? I wouldn't switch ISP just because some censor-program has banned it. I would stay, just to demonstrate against such stupid blocking software. Just tell the head-hunter he'de better off stopping to use that program. Tell everyone who uses CP that it bans your site (And possibly list some other blocket sites), what type of content your site contains, and what a bad blocking program that must be (If it blocks your site, which contains no questionable information, it may block a lots of other non-questionable information, and may not block a lot of questionable information). Perheaps tell them about some other blocking software that does not block your site (If such a blocking software doesn't exist, tell them that).
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Some companies employ such software across their networks for several reasons. For one, they figure that if their employees can't get access to porn, then they won't waste the company's time or network resources. A second, more understandable reason involves preventing sexual harrasment. When a company gets sued because an idividual who works there keeps porn on their computer, other companies are going to do their best to prevent the same happening.
Don't sweat it. Just tell the headhunter to lose the lame filter software, and he can go where he damn well chooses on the net.
I mean really, this is a problem?...
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
What they are doing isn't illegal, if it is, it shouldn't be. What they are doing is WRONG, but not illegal. It's not illegal for Wallmart to not sell certain cd's. It shouldn't be illegal for an isp to censor web sites. I don't believe in Governement approved censorship, but the people should have a right to censor what they want to censor. If you don't like what they are doing, you boycott them. It's as simple as that. That is the power of the people. We don't need more laws, we need more people to think with their heads, not their lawyers. If you own an isp and you want to run some software that blocks web sites, so what, isp's are a dime a dozen. If all your customers leave because they don't like the way you do business than you will be out of business. They should have told you. They aren't doing it for moral reasons, since they host "adult" content. They are doing for other reasons, I don't know what they are though. I am just sick and tired of everyone always bringing out the legal issues of things like this. It shouldn't be about legality, it should be about morals. By morals I don't mean christian morals, I mean the morals like right and wrong. It is up to you, the consumer, to say this is wrong. Write them a letter and tell them why you are dropping them as an isp. That is the right thing to do, don't freaking sue them.
That's my two cents.
LoRider
:) or a Barq's Rootbeer.
I've been a US citizen from birth, and even I feel we as a country are fucked up about sex and violence. I can't see how people think sex is so bad. Personally I'd rather have my kids watching sexually explicit films than violent films.
I've often thought it would be good to setup a blocking service that blocks only violen content sites, but then that would go against my strong feeling that everybody needs to be exposed to all sorts of information, good as well as bad. If you only look at one side you get a distorted view of reality. Once your view of reality is distorted, you stop being able to make well ballenced decisions. Unfortunatly I see our film system saying to our kids that violence is ok, and sex is not.
The ISP owes him at least part of his money back. He defrauded him in selling him a limited-access web site without telling him it was limited access. And how do you think it would look if the headhunter figured out "Oh, this guy's resume is on an adult site!"
Nope. The ISP is not limiting access. CyberPatrol is. Big diffrence. If the lusers who want to access the webpage is stupid enough to use cyberpatrol it is their and noone elses fault.
His ISP is NOT limiting ANY access. They are offering FULL web-access. The users ISP is also offering full web access. CyberPatrol is offering their customers a product, and i'm sure they won't claim that no legitimate pages will be blocked. The customers who choose to install the product is the "guilty" ones. NO ONE ELSE.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
The blocking is not the ISP's fault. Failing to inform customers of the it IS the ISP's fault. It's a form of lying, and lying to take someone's money away is fraud.
Why on earth should they be obligied to inform anyone about that? It would be a nice thing to do - yes. But heck, THEY are not responsible for someone blocking them.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Although it isn't the ISP's fault that Cyber Patrol is blocking my site, it is my ISP's fault that they KNEW ABOUT IT and didn't tell me, or any of their users! They just wanted to keep it hush-hush. I think that was wrong. It was a shrewd business move... As in: "Customers might leave if they know they're being censored, and we're not willing to do anything about it!"
.. then the ISP should be forced to inform all their customers that such a program exist? (If I make sure they know about it..)
So, every time some stupid sucker blocks their site, they should mass-email all their customers? If I make a little product that blocks a certain kind of ISPs
I couldn't disagree more. If I was a customer of an ISP that bothered me by mass-emailing about some stupid program vendor blocking them, I would switch ISP to an ISP that didn't send stupid mass-emails. I don't want to know about that kind of junk. People who are stupid enough to use blocking software don't want to see my page
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
If the ISP knew that legit sites were being blocked and chose not to tell their customers (*Business* customers), then why is it not their fault. They have an obligation to deliver the goods.
They *Are* delivering the goods. It's the other end that chooses not to accept it.
The only reason they didn't is the fact that they knew if they did, then they would loose money from corporations wanting web site hostings.
And they would lose customers like me who HATE massemails. I've btw registered my last domain at internic, due to their stupid mass-emailing about what they do and so forth. I'm not interested in dealing with companies that send me non-wanted email.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Do you ask the water company if their water is free of carcinogens? Do you ask the electrical company if they make their electricity available all the time? Do you ask car dealers if the car they sell you will explode when rear-ended? Do you ask your grocer if their produce has been spit on?
None of these questions are releveant. The water company can't be blamed if someone won't turn on the water. The electrical company can't be blamed if the receipent don't want to use their electricity. And I don't understand what the car dealer is in here for at all. The grocerer can't be held liable if there are some people out there who don't want to buy their products.
The ISP is hosting the pages. Nobody is required to download them. Should Water companies be obligied to inform their customers which people don't want to use their company?
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
I was rased by my mother after the devorce...
My mother didn't care what I watched on TV or what I saw on BBSes. BBS porn didn't bother her one bit.
What did worry her was the wood burnning kit my father left me. She respected his wishes that I should have it but she would lock it up when she wasn't around so I couldn't hurt myself.
Now if parents want to lock up a computer they could use a system password to keep the computer from booting up or just lock the keyboard with a keyboard lock. Maybe both just to make shure the kid dosn't hack the password or run the computer entirely by mouse.
Or just take the power supply to the modem with them to work.
The TV is a bit harder... Maybe instead of V chips TVs should have key locks. Lock the TV and it can not be turnned on even by remote control. Such a lock would only cost $5.
I believe every home with teen agers should have phone locks. Even if the parents ARE around all the time.
Accually I think there are better ways to rase a kid than to issolate them from the world but I'm not out to tell anyone HOW to rase there kids just that if they can't expect the world to do it for them.
I don't actually exist.
The target market of those filters are parents who can not be bothered to keep an eye on there kids.
Thies parents need to watch what there kids are seeing/doing instead of expecting the world/internet/tv to rase them.
I encurage filters to block my page even though I have vagely adult matereal. I've got no problems with the idea of keeping immature types away from my pages. Saves me a lot of headakes and I am free to put up what I want and say what I feal.
Being blocked by adult filters from my prospective is a wonderful thing. No need for disclammers or warnnings for those who arn't mature enough to handle what I have to say.
It's also a good thing for the world at larg... I'm freqently wrong... a person who believes everything that person reads dosn't need to read what I have to say. When you read my pages consider the source I'm not giving information I'm giving my opinion nothing more nothing less and I should allwase be seen for that.
So I say block me.. keep the brats away... If your not mature enough to surf free of restrictions then your not mature enough to surf my pages.. end of story...
I don't actually exist.
At my last job, they decided to finally get web access and then decided to use CyberPatrol. We were having a wierd problem with windows and i was searching on the web to see if i could find others that had experienced it.
.de. All reall addresses end in .com, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil."
Cyber Patrol blocked the first 7 results. The description in the search ingine seemed to indicate that they had the identical problem. I complained to the head of the department. He told me to write down the address and he would look into it. I gave him the address.
He looked at it and said, "No wonder it was blocked, this is a fake address."
I said "what makes you think that?"
He said, "it is rather obvious. This address ends in
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
Please see www.censorware.org
There are some legal and political challenges being mounted to the proliferation of 'censorware'.
Ironically, this site is blocked by some censorware itself, so you may want to try:
208.249.126.162
-or-
3506011810
Incidentally, I have a program which blocks all hatred and bigotry, and is 100% effective. It does so by blocking 100% of the internet -- but it works!
www.cgstock.com
But the idea that somebody owes you something because of this is simply ludicrous.
The ISP owes him at least part of his money back. He defrauded him in selling him a limited-access web site without telling him it was limited access. And how do you think it would look if the headhunter figured out "Oh, this guy's resume is on an adult site!"
In the past I've had the sterotypical "Here's me, here's my wife and kids, here's what we did last week" site for my extended family to see. That's the only reason I got an account with web space, which cost more than a simple dial-up account. My family uses blocking software. If this same thing had happened to me, it would have defeated the purpose of the web site. If I found out that the ISP was aware of the situation, and that they wouldn't refund part of my money (the cost above a dial-up-only), I would have filed a class action suit on behalf of the customers.
Basically, if somebody's honest and up front and (what a concept) HONORABLE, I have no problem with them. But when they lie or withhold important information to take away my money, I would happily teach them a lesson.
it's not even the isp's fault.
/. to people who request it.
The blocking is not the ISP's fault. Failing to inform customers of the it IS the ISP's fault. It's a form of lying, and lying to take someone's money away is fraud.
he could have just faxed the resume to the headhunte
Or he could have mailed it, or asked the pony express to deliver it, or used smoke signals, or semaphores. Get a clue. The fact that you had to think up a workaround is evidence that there was a problem. And by your logic, Rob shouldn't worry about it when his server goes down, he should just fax
The rest of us are moving into the next century. Hope you like living in the past
Do you ask the water company if their water is free of carcinogens? Do you ask the electrical company if they make their electricity available all the time? Do you ask car dealers if the car they sell you will explode when rear-ended? Do you ask your grocer if their produce has been spit on?
I don't think its reasonable for the ISP to tell you though, as there could possibly be hundreds of unknown filters blocking your site, making it impossible for them to know whether you were connected or not
You can't hold the ISP responsible for what they don't know, agreed. But if the ISP knows that its customer's sites will be blocked by a popular brand of censorware, I think that failing to inform customers of that is fraud.
Think about it. All ISPs have the email address of all their customers. They generally have a list set up to inform people of scheduled outages or special offers or whatever. It would have been EASY to send a mass eamil out and say "Your site is probably blocked." Why did they not do so? Because they believed they would lose customers and money. Taking money under false pretenses is fraud, in my book.
Did the ISP block it?
...a company had blacklisted our mail-servers...
...most ISPs have themselves covered...
My point was NOT that the ISP was responsible for the blocking; they were not. The ISP was responsible for withholding information from its customers.
If a backhoe cuts the ISP's upstream link and the telco is unable to fix it for three months, that's not the ISP's fault either. By your reasoning, the ISP would be justified in keeping customers in the dark and continuing to collect money from them.
in the Netherlands
I freely admit my ignorance of what is appropriate in other jurisdictions. I'd file a civil suit because the criminal justice system is too swamped to handle fraud cases like this one.
Agreed, this is not the ISP's fault, though the spammers were hopefully hounded to the ends of the earth and forced to consum printouts of every email they sent. HOWEVER, the ISP should notify its customers when they can't provide the service they promised to provide. Otherwise, it's fraud.
I'm sure there's a provision in my service agreement that says "In case of fraud, you can't sue us." I'm sure it would stand up in court, too.
Big, bad, evil, internet-using, lawyer-hiring telco employee,
D.R.
Rather interestingly, the only one of those that has a legal requirement for notification is the Electrical one.
In my area, the water utility regularly sends out literature detailing the quantities of a number of chemicals that are in the water. This is required by (I believe) state law.
Anyway, my point is that there are so many nonobvious potential problems with ANYTHING that we buy that we generally have to trust the seller. Why would they make their product less desirable? Because it's the decent, honest thing to do. And dishonesty used to gain money is what I call fraud.
Hmmm...an interesting exercise, and something to add my "How to be annoying" list. For some product you are planning to buy (anything from groceries to gasoline), compile a list of all its possible flaws. Ask the seller about each of them. Demand proof of their claims.
They sold him a web site that certain customers choose not to visit.
At some point, the ISP became aware of the fact that ALL their customer's web sites were categorized as adult sites by a popular brand of censorware. They failed to inform their customers of this fact, though it would have been trivial to do so (assuming the ISP is not run by morons). Those are the facts, as I understand them. My judgement of the situation is that the ISP was dishonest in withholding information, and they did it so they could get more money from people. I call that fraud.
If I buy a car...
I rent you a house. It has a septic system (redone just before you start renting the place) and a well. You rent for several years, and one day I realize that septic system is blocked and all the nasty fluid from the septic tank is seeping into the well. I don't tell you, but I keep collecting the same amount of rent from you. It's not MY fault the septic system is bad - the contractors I hired to redo the system obviously did a bad job. Or maybe you were flushing socks. Or maybe the neighbor's tree has roots growing into it. Regardless, the problem is the result of a third party's activities, and I don't tell you.
In both cases (reality and analogy) part of what I'm renting to you (internet acount / house) becomes less valuable (web space / septic system). I don't tell you because that will make you either renegotiate the rates or go somewhere else. Or maybe I figure you know, or should know, so I don't have to tell you. Either way, I am implicitly representing to you that what I am renting to you today is the same as what I rented to you at the first, when I know that is not the case, and my reason for doing so is to keep taking your money. Fraud.
But it would be a completely spurious one.
I don't think so. I think sellers (or rentors) are responsible for disclosing nonobvious flaws to buyers (or rentees).
I would rather see client-side products, but as currently configured Cyber Patrol is McCarthyism. The innocent are burned with the tainted. I may not want my child accessing some of the stuff that is out there, but at the same time I would not want my business to suffer because some company who is crying "nazi" is not too careful about who they point the finger at.
I went to www.cyberpatrol.com. They have a search / submit link for finding out if you are banned. Unfortunately, I do not trust their answer. If their search engine is a sloppy as their exclusion policy, then it may be that my site itself is not banned, but my ISP is.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
Well, we can debate the pros and cons of the software, and of the ISP policy, but that is not getting your resume seen. I suggest you go to one of the job boards, like dice.com or monster.com, or headhunter.net and post your resume there. The account is free. My URL above is my resume, for example. There is a lower likelyhood of those sites being blocked than that of an ISP.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
check out www.peacefire.org . they have lots of info on the filtering software. i think you'd be suprised what these companies block. they clearly have a political agenda.
joe
If you want to describe the content on your site easily, you can rate with RSAC, which gives you a standard baseline and spews out the appropriate PICS metadata for your web page, and you copy and paste it into your HTML document. Easy.
And useless. First off, this can't work unless there's some sort of international law mandating that every single website uses it. Otherwise, most people are going to ignore it because ratings don't work well (see below). Then, you're left with a choice: block all the sites that don't rate themselves, even the good ones, or allow the non-rated sites, even the (relatively few) bad ones.
Have you looked at the RSACi rating system? For one, it's more suited to video games than webpages (how often have you seen a webpage with "destruction of realistic objects" as violence?). For another, there's only 5 levels for each of the four categories. What if you have a website with pictures of David and other classic [possibly nude] art? Oops, that's "Frontal Nudity", your site gets a 3 (on a scale 0-4) in that area. What if you're writing about the history of war? "Aggressive violence or death to humans", maybe even "Rape or wanton gratuitious violence" depending on the particular war. Oops! There's a 3 or a 4 in that category. Would a database of sex offenders (FBI Wanted List?) get a 3 or 4 because it has to say what they did?
And finally, who's to decide which rating your content deserves? The Christian Coalition? Neo-Nazis? Bill from Arkansas? Slashdot posters? Everyone has different standards as to what exactly is good and bad. In certain countries, pictured of women in bathing suits in the Sears Catalogue would be censored as porn. Remember, it's the World Wide Web. If you want a rating system that can differentiate between all the variations, you'll end up with something not even a lawyer can understand, 2M blocks of rating data on every page, 1G programs to parse it all, and people will STILL claim sites are improperly rated.
There is no solution that will work for everyone. Not laws, not software, not rating systems.
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Besides, 12-year-olds don't have to bother with the Internet to find things CyberPatrol would consider bad. All they need is to hang around with some other teenagers in a situation without strict parental supervision. What's the use of blocking the 'net when the kids hear it from their babysitter?
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
Anonymizer.com is BLOCKED!
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
This seems to be becoming a common problem. Everyone and everything is starting to block websites that they don't agree with. Not only the standard, NetNanny, CyberPatrol, etc. Even McAffee's VShield blocks sites. Now None of these neccessarily block content simply because they don't agree with it, I can't make a judgement on that....but I've heard of some software blocking sites such as the Republican and Democratic Party homepages (not the same piece of software, obvisouly).
I would say your problem is with CyberPatrol. Your ISP shouldn't really have to use more money to run a separate sever because a poorly written program blocks them.
I'm not a lawyer, but if you really feel the need to go after someone, I'd be lookind at the people that write censor software. They obviously need to come up with something better than they have now. (Again, I'm not a lawyer, so talk to one if your going to do anything serious.)
- AMW
I work for a reseller of educational software, and just last week my boss gave me some press releases for CyberPatrol and asked me to "dumb them down" for our average customer. According to the material I was given, it can filter to the precision of a page. Therefore, they should be able to block www.generic.org/lookingupanoldfriend.html while allowing www.generic.org/churchpicnic.html Also, the individual adminstrator (parent, sysadmin, etc) should be able to go and change even the default CyberNOT list. Still, I would have to worry about an employer that's using censorware. I expect a certain amount of trust from an employer. How much are you going to enjoy the job if you feel like you're being watched all the time. And, if the job involves using the net, being unable to access the clean sites that get blocked by censorware is counterproductive.
-"I talked to God and here's the deal/ He said to floss between each meal" -- Uninvited
if the place blocks by domain name, then all you have to do is reference the server by it's IP address, and the problem is solved.
However, if this is the case, then a techno-savvy kid could do the same and get around Cyber Patrol. The whole damn thing is pointless, anyway. For every "protect the children" scheme, the children find a way around it.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
You're still not thinking. It's OTHER PEOPLE who have Cyber Patrol installed that are unable to view the site.
The Real Answer is to tell people not to use Cyber Patrol because it's lame. Hard to do when they're potential employers.
It's already been done. It's called RSACi.
http://www.rsac.org/homepage.asp
The ISP should *NOT* be responsible for brain dead filtering software. Most filtering programs *CAN* block only certain parts of an ISP.
Since CyberPatrol won't budge, and your ISP seems unwilling to make changes, the only change that can come is in your choice of ISP.
You might write a polite letter to both CyberPatrol and your ISP, stating your reasons for leaving, and stating that in the future you won't recommend use of either of their products.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
For the life of me I can't understand a society in which it is acceptable for children to see people blown apart, but it is not acceptable for children to see people making love.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
I can see setting up CyberPatrol to filter porn from kids (up to about age 5 when they can break it easier than you set it up), but why would an adult do that in a business? I think that both the ISP and CyberPatrol are on target and that someone is using CyberPatrol in an illogical manner.
Ah yes, but family-friendly harassment lawsuits are not so nearly expensive as sexual-harassment suits. ;-)
:-( ). We have filtering software in place to prevent employees from having pornography on their monitors that came through our network that someone else might see. (yeah, they can still bring in a porno CD, but that's less under our control than filtering the connection).
DISCLAIMER: I do not support the use of blocking software in a general sense.
But, here we run a business. We're in it to make money. We make money by charging our customers for services. We pay employees salaries and we pay expenses like renting the building, paying the electric bill, taxes, etc. Whatever is left over is profit for our shareholders.
We have a responsibility to our employees to keep the business profitable so we don't lay them off. We have a responsibility to our sharholders to maximize their stock value by not running the company into the ground, and keep profit margins as high as possible. A sexual harassment lawsuit is *really* expensive and can torpedo a small company like ours. If we don't take "reasonable" measures to prevent things like fire, flood, lawsuits and other preventable expenses, we are being negligent (sp?) to our employees and shareholders.
It sucks that we have to use filtering software. It sucks that a few employees can't use good judgement in how they use the 'net connection during work. It sucks that companies live in fear of big lawsuits (remember Mitsubishi?) because some employees don't know how to treat their co-workers with respect. We have laws and big penalties to make sure that employees are protected from harassment.
At our company we do a lot of things to minimize the risk that we will have a sexual harassment problem. We have training classes for all the managers so they understand the law. We have policies to keep the workplace free of potentially offensive materials (no hooters calendars
These are all "reasonable" measures that we have taken to reduce the risks to our business that an expensive sexual harassment lawsuit would pose. I wish we could all live and work in a world where this wasn't a problem, but we don't so this is how we deal with the problem.
been reading /. for a while now and never thought i'd post, but all i have to say is AMEN. the same statement you quote in your header pricked my attention me the moment i read it. THANK YOU and AMEN again. that's all.
Well gee that's a blind statement without any attention paid to the facts. Most filtering software companies do not act in such a dispicable fashion and in fact have very strict criteria about what is blockable and what is not. There are a few that politicize their blocking process (CyberPatrol is certainly the most infamous for this) but they are not the majority. I know this for a fact because I work for one such company and I can tell you our process for adding sites to our library is very meticulous and is constantly being improved to ensure that the sites we block do indeed fit the criteria. Our criteria likewise is very strict. I'm sick and tired of this BS pointed at filtering companies and products. It's just not true. CyberPatrol != All filtering software. Would you say that because RedHat distributes an Operating System that they are just like Microsoft? It's just not a fair comparrison.
What Fools These Mortals Be!
Completely untrue and irresponsible. Plenty of filter software companies care a great deal about maintaining a list that blocks only porn or whatever else they block. If people do not research what they are buying then of course they will come across the bad ones (ie CyberPatrol). As for Peacefire. As usual outdated, one-sided, irresponsible information put out by a child who knows very little about what he's talking about.
What Fools These Mortals Be!
I would be under the assumption that these blocking companies don't fully block major page providers (like Geocities) or major ISPs (like AOL). Then again, I could be wrong. :)
The very problems you are facing are one of the key objections people have to placing such blocking software in public software. While it argueably does get a decent chunk of the porn out there away from children, it also blocks countless legitimate sites (womens rights, aids education, etc).
People need to realize that they must properly educate their children rather than try to physically block them via the use of filter products (which are either to lax and useless or too strict and burdensome).
As for the ask slashdot question, I wouldn't place too much blame on your ISP. Besides, I personally don't know anyone (except for my schools library) that even uses such filter programs. How deep is their market penetration anyway?
If you have an ISP that is blocked, it is probably a wise idea to either switch to a more fascist ISP (with a non-porn, non-interesting, non-anything policy) or pick up a free homepage (eg: one from hotbot.com or geocities.com)
It is a bad thing when a corporate head hunter can't see your resume because of censorship, but we must realize that it is the end user doing the censoring.
...
... what am I babbling about?
In other words, why was this corporate guy using net nanny?! I would be more concerned about this if he was blocked because his ISP was censoring content. This is rarely the case
Blarg
-- Wuzoe
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
Considering how CP is made to block things unacceptable for a 12 year old, why don't they come out with a separate product, with a separate black list, just for corporate use?
.... 8-)
The problem is they could also then block other (non-porno, non-evil) sites like a certain "News for Nerds" site I know of, just because it takes up so much employee time
--Wuzoe
I'm a nice person. People like me.
This would be a cheap technical fix, if it worked. You could get a free redirect from some domain like travel.to or go.to . Does anyone know if CyberPatrol blocks sites that it is redirected to?
--
Is there really a Canada or are all those guys just kidding?
"Is there really a Canada, or are all those guys just kidding?"
It's not too surprising -- lots of techies/hackers/etc., at least those I've met, dont think that law / government actually affects them from day to day, and their ignorance spills over into their business sense and causes holes for themselves later down the road.
For example, when I say Zippo, what comes to mind?
(*Sound effect*: falling bomb)
It's also not unheard of for ISPs to play the Dept of Misinformation role and try to hide things like their whole server being blacklisted or blocked by CyberPa-troll. I'm sure a few have decided to make the wrong thing a secret, and got badly burnt for it.
And people wonder why tech startups are so fragile. Just look out the window at the tech lawsuits falling like bombs, driven by ignorance. Often on both sides. Better get an umbrella on retainer.
Point is, your ISP not only should be making the fact that CyberPatrol is screwing them known to their users, they should be making it known to as many people as possible... AND promptly suing CP. But techs aren't prepared for legal hassles. Most of us are sitting ducks -- and all we do is cry on
Can anyone remember why so many of us were called names in grade school? I thought so.
Regards,
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Is it possible that we might some day get sanity checking on moderators? How is it that this post is marked redundant, when it was the FIRST post? I myself have been the victum of "drive-by-knee-jerk" moderation like this, and it is totally inappropriate!
While not very practical, and not well worded, I AGREE that sites like Cyber Patrol should be shut down, or at the very least harrased into non-existance by the rest of us. If you think all they block is pr0n sites, I suggest you install the "software" (Censorware, to be accurate) and try to access sites like the Vatican, and the National Organization for Women official web sites. These people are totally anti free thought, anti choice, and anti personal/parental responsibility.
And even they are SMARTER than a moderator who marks a first post "redundant". It's so bad that I think posting first is automatic criteria for slashdot moderators to mark you down! I never have, and I've burned through about 15 moderator points in the last two months.
How about it, Rob? How hard is it to implement sanity checking on first posts?
"I have no respect for a man who can only spell a word one way." - Mark Twain
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
I don't feel that anybody has a responsibility to tell anybody else that some third party has blacklisted them. That's all blocking software is: automated blacklisting. I can't blame the ISP on that one.
Of course, it is good business to fix the blacklisting problem. One cheap and effective way to do this, that won't leave them open to lawsuits, is the following.
The ISP can set up another domain name on their current Web server. They suggest to their customers that they should move non-porn pages over there (letting them be hosted on both old and new domains) to get them out from under the blocking software.
If you assume that the porn page owners will play nice (yes, big assumption...more on this later), users can put themselves under the vanilla domain, which isn't blocked. Since the customers are choosing the new domain, the ISP isn't determining what is and isn't legit here. Thus, they are immune from the legal exposure of rating their own pages.
This can be screwed up if somebody moves a porn page onto the new domain. The ISP can't stop this, or it would be legally exposed. This should only happen if you have malicious users, or if someone moves a page over that is on the "borderline". In either case, the ISP loses, and is no better off than they were before.
However, they are not that much worse off. They need no new hardware, just a new domain name and some expert configuration work on their present Web server. While this strategy is not guaranteed to work, it stands good odds of working and failure isn't that bad, either.
--The basis of all love is respect
When I first got online 2.5 years ago, my dad installed Cyber Patrol to prevent my access to "the bad places." It did rather well on protecting me from that, but it did go overboard. I live in the county "Middlesex." Anytime I wanted to read the county news (www.middlesexnews.com) I got a Cyber Patrol error. That obiously came from the word "sex" in "middlesex." Sure that was annoying, but I noticed several other faults with the program. For instance "nude" gets a Cyber Patrol error, but "nakid" gets right on by. That always seemed rather odd to me. So just like it was said... get another ISP if you so care to do.
----
PovRayMan
prm@[remove.this.no.spam]alignment.net
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
And I don't mean Cyber Patrol. I mean the user who runs it. This is a voluntary product. Nobody is being FORCED to use it (except maybe the kids that it supposively tries to protect). However, regardless of flaws, I'd rather that citizens voluntarily use it rather than the government step in and force the same thing on all of us, no doubt with the same set of flaws.
I don't think that ISP's are obligated to disclose that they happen to be censored by software. It can be an excessive amount of trouble to keep up with all the software, along with how they work. Some use network or domain blocks, other use word matches, and most use a combination of the two. This causes a variety of problems. You have fly by night porn sites that exist in one place only long enough to alert the censors and get the service banned, then leave. And then you get whitehouse.gov banned because the word "couples" appears somewhere on the page.
However, Cyber Patrol is a voluntary product. I may use a 4 letter word on my page somewhere and it could therefore show up. I can't control that. And if someone else on my service uses a 4 letter
word and they censor the entire site, I can't control that either. I don't necessarily like it, but if someone can't access my site, I'll tell them to remove the software and try again.
You might miss some hits as a result. In this case, you have a choice. You can choose not to worry about it, or you can switch ISP's to someplace where the the networks aren't censored. But I doubt looking for compensation is going to be a fruitful venture. You can certainly try, but I wouldn't count on it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I take it your potential employer is over 12 years of age? [you never know these days]. The guy that tried to access your site will be a victim of the firewall/proxy version of the product sold to corporations using the very same "CyberNOT" list. Here's what's funny -- their criteria is this:
I wonder whether CyberPatrol blocks whole domains or just hostnames? If it's only hostnames your ISP could simply map [home2.isp.com] to the same server thus getting around the block. If it's domain names there's no reason why they couldn't map another domain name to the server [for $70 total outlay].
The best cludge? get your potential visitors to go to http://anon.user.anonymizer.com/[http://your.url]
It will work fine so long as Cyber Patrol haven't blocked anonymizer.com
--
Rare Window - free your photos
The person who attempted to view your resume should alert the idiots who decided Cyber Patrol was a a good idea and let them know that their decision is hindering their business. Don't be so quick to kneel down to censorship, the more you pacify, the worse it gets.
... I understand why a corporation uses them. But, if I EVER have trouble accessing legitimate info due to the use of a system as messed up a Cyber Patrol, I'm not gonna try to get the victims of the censorship to make unnecessary changes.
They have relinquished control over what they can access, and they have to come to terms with the consequences. If we aren't vigilant now, then we can kiss any semblance of freedom goodbye.
The company I work for has a filter on the proxy, so far I haven't had any problems
--Mark
It took me 5 minutes and half a pepsi one to pull cyber patrol off of my friends windows machine. All it takes is logging into dos and typing "del cyberpatrol.exe". Not hard to do. These programs are for wimps, anyone who is confident enough in his/her computer to go looking for "bad stuff" should know how to get this off his/her computer.
Not that he was looking at "bad stuff", he was trying to go to ebay, but that's another story.
They're saying "these are sites that *WE* think are offensive. If you choose to use our product, and abide by our opinions, they will be blocked, at your discretion to remove them if you want to"
That's a bit different.
ryan
I'd just add a line to my Terms Of Service:
"We don't give damn if some shit-for-brains filtering software filters your site. We're not in the business of guaranteeing that everyone on earth can see your site. If somebody can't see it, tough shit."
ryan
You're right, the main culpability here lies with CyberPatorl. However, the ISP has a responsibility to its customers to inform them that CyberPatrol is indiscriminatly blocking their sites and to try and work a way around that. If it's web content for a few users they can just buy a cheap pc, put FreeBSD on there and move those few users with adult content onto that server. Set up redirects to a different domain in their old addresses and after a few months it'll all be perf. The ISP is providing a web hosting service in order for their customers to reach an audience and when they know about things that are preventing access to their site, they should fix that.
+-------+ between the wish and the thing lies the world - All the Pretty Horses
Rather interestingly, the only one of those that has
a legal requirement for notification is the Electrical one. So,
if you don't ask, how are you going to know? THEY
certainly won't tell you if they don't have to--why
would they make their product LESS desirable?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
i was thinking the same damn thing. it's embarassing to think that someone would actually consider suing their isp when a person can't access their "here's a picture of my dog, follow this link to my resume" homepage.. hell, it's not even the isp's fault.
/., he could have just faxed the resume to the headhunter.. what foolishness.
and before complaining to
meow
did you actually ask your isp before you employed their services?
meow
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
Well, that's really gotta suck. I think I still gotta go with my original answer.
Get a new ISP.
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
--
A mind is a terrible thing to taste.
"A mind is a terrible thing to taste."
I completely agree. There are times when lawsuits make sense (although, IMO, Americans seem to sue even when they don't make sense). Accompanying this story on the front /. page is a story about Compaq, and I suspect some of the very same people who are saying "SUE THEM!!!!" here are complaining about frivolous law suits there.
I know it has become the "American Way" to sue, but if you change ISPs and let other people know why you're doing it, that is probably the best way to effect a change in your ISP's policy.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
Are we just taking this guy's word for it? I work on a LAN that uses CyberPatrol not for censorship, but for limiting the hours which each employee can spend on the internet. It's a productivity thing: my company wouldn't provide each employee with a desktop television set so they can watch TV all day long, so why should they provide 24-7 internet access for them to surf their days away instead of doing their jobs? Internet access is provided for a few hours a day, and for all business-related websites.
Anyway, all defensiveness aside, I asked my administrator to crank up my restrictions policies to maximize web filtering/censorship. After he did this, not only was I able to hit this guy's ISP, but I was able to hit his webpage, and many other users' web pages at his ISP.
Before we start whaling on censorship and on CyberPatrol in particular, why don't we get the facts straight? God, some issues (um, censorship, for one) just set people off into an irrational fit....
I got more rhymes than Jamaica got Mangoes.
Why would the ISP _help_ fix a broken product like Cyber Partol?
Why would the ISP even consider helping an obvious cencor?
I'd leave the ISP if they HELPED CyberPartol personally, next you guys go invent CommiePatrol or something. CyberPartol is dangerous, its a MindControl tool.
Hugs SlashDread
I never ment to give a "fair" judgement. But I can see your point.
:)
In my moral "culture" though The Netherlands is just NOT severely fucked up. Lots of American politicians try to paint us that way, yes.
I do not agree with American politicians ussually.
But I love to share a Cider, or a Joint with you
Greetz SlashDread
I do not agree,
The biggest problem with this censorware stuff, is their FLAWS.
If indeed, they only blocked certain content -some- people find offensive, and -only- that, it might have some merit. Although it would still be dangerous. (From a radical Free Speech point of view)
I can promise you however no censorware will ever -work- that way, you need a human brain to tell the difference between a nudie pic, and a work of art, say a picture of the 16th chapel.
No censorware can rely on human brains however, theres just to much content to consider.
Therefore the situation that people who DONT use the broken censorware thingies, get labeled porn lovers, or less hard, but still ridiculous, Kid unfriendly.
So libraries and whatnot feel themselfes forced to use it, effectively blocking a MAJOR part of content for a LOT of people.
Now this is in my opinion VERY dangerous indeed.
The biggest problem as I can see it, is the widely adopted opinion we should mindcontrol our kids, and preferrably all other people who dont get the Political Correct American Way.
I dont like the face of Bill Clinton, I also dont like the face of David Letterman when im hunting for porn (:)
But the Back Button is always a click away, might I stumble on those faces..
To All Those Who Think Their Souls Get Lost By Seeing A Naked Breast :
Dont Click On The Get Sex Free Button In The First Place. If So.
Use The Back Button.
Gr SlashDread
Besides indeed being the laughingstock of all of MY country (I live in The Netherlands, and our sexlives is our OWN bussiness, and the prez sex'life is his, but we cannot bear a knife big enough to peel a fish in public) I Just Dont Get It.
Why is that Americans think "love" (or sex) is something people should be protected against, and violence and Guns should be freely available?
Is the right to censor everything that collides with the American Way more important then the right of free speech? Is the right to use CyberCop (wich is obiously not even doing the cybercopping right) more important then the right to publish porn or lovestories or the adress of the neirest abortion clinique?
Its seemingly impossible for the anti-guns lobby to DO anything, apparently the right to bear arms is rigorously defended by a lot of people, but a headhunter who uses Cyberpatrol (what is this guy headhunting for? The Vatican?) gets a headline on SlashDot. And we are supposed NOT to laugh?
And then the US of A wonders why the whole world is scared shitless if you guys start policing the world again.
Face it. Their is NO Freedom Of Speech in the USA, there is only totally arbitrary court rulings, like the pro-life dudes who had to take down there abortionist list (dont get me wrong prolife is NOT my way, but LISTS dont kill people, people do, to paraphrase a pro-gun slogan, what list will be next?) and in the meantime almost all porn is produced in.. the USA
In the meantime, you are murder country #1
In the meantime, American highschool kids get the idea they are totally weird, for thinking about sex, but its ok if dad has a sawed off shotgun, and takes Brat out hunting every weekend.
Face it, The American Way needs a revamp.
Greetz and good luck, and who knows.. you might get it one day.
SlashDread from SlashHolland
I was curious, and checked out both http://www.netnanny.com and http://www.cyberpatrol.com. Slashdot does not appear on either of their Bad/NoNo lists.
Please read what he is actually saying... he's not in his post John talks about the fact that HIS ISP DID NOT TELL HIM THAT SITES WERE BLOCKED, *EVEN THOUGH THEY KNEW*. Sorry for the capitals, but that way you might actually read the main sentance of this post.
If the ISP knew that legit sites were being blocked and chose not to tell their customers (*Business* customers), then why is it not their fault. They have an obligation to deliver the goods. The only reason they didn't is the fact that they knew if they did, then they would loose money from corporations wanting web site hostings.
As per usual it is "Money first, sod the customer".
I was not saying that it is under their control. Knowing about such facts and choosing not to disclose them is what I am talking about.
You're right that it is not up to them who blacklists their sites. I never argued that point.
Go check out the link from my previous post on this thread. Or try going here, and jumping to the website ratings and warnings section. I like the idea of filters like RSACi or SafeSurf, which have the ability to differentiate between a chicken breast recipe, a breastfeeding mother, naked breasts in a work of art, naked breasts in Playboy, and a man with a breast fetish doing X-rated things to them. :)
:P
:)
I don't know as much about CyberPatrol, but I do know that CyberSitter has done a lot of very stupid things: blocking an entire site for hosting a gay square dance page, making "mistress" a not-allowed word (webmistresses and listmistresses take note!), blocking any use of the phrase "Don't Buy CyberSitter," messing with TCP streams at a level that makes it possible for programs to break, and threatening/e-mailbombing folks who disagree with any of the above. Lovely way to run a business, folks.
When my new page is up (I'm moving off of GeoCities as soon as I have the time, energy, and a decent computer to get everything restructured), I'm rating with RSACi, SafeSurf, and VCR. I *know* I've got a lot of at-least-PG13 stuff on my pages, and forewarned is forearmed and all that, but by the same token, any kid old enough to read the original Chronicles of Amber is probably old enough to deal with the contents of my web site.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Filtering software is in general a Bad Idea.
:P
That reminds me, did anyone else see an article recently that talked about how CyberSitter is now blocking net-commerce because some folks find themselves addicted to spending money online? It'd be hysterically funny if it wasn't so sad.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
CyberPatrol is fucked in the head.
This definitely is an issue that could be taken to court.
Especially if there as a website with no objectionable material on the same server that makes money and it's being blocked by Cyber Patrol.
More than likely in the outcome, Cyber Patrol would be forced to ban specific URL's instead of whole websites.
One could probably sue for damages.
It's like banishing all Jews from America for a few jew's crimes.
I'm sure that many sites would love to be at .sex. Unfortunately, I would be afraid to see this implemented. We would end up with an MPAA style fiasco. Legitimate artistic sites would rather be at a .com (or .art). Some people could find these to be sexually explicit. Thus, it would either be approved by an all knowing body, which I doubt you would want. Or, it would still create a market demand for censor products in the .com space.
Ok, hear it straight from the kids mouth. We got a 46" TV in our basement. It has a V-Chip. My mom decides to block any thing above TV-14. IS SHE FLUXING STUPID?! Just unplug it. I wont deal with censorship. At school, I cant get on /. because its blocked. I got banned from the internat at the school because the teacher said i was trying to visit porno sites. NOT! I was visiting slashdot, hotmail, and the like of anybody's midday check during free period. I just sent the sites in and the fat moderator took the blocks right off because the blockheads who put them there were worried parents like mine. Now, at home there are no blocks because I'm in FreeBSD all the time and they dont know any UNIX. (or DOS for that matter)I don't need mom or dad to tell me not to do drugs, not to have unprotected sex, and what not. Im glad im not in Australia! I think Mr. Prez should stop trying to censor schools and libraries. (I'm at the library right now... Unfiltered. UPS is sooo slow.) Parents out there, most of us DONT need your help, and we WONT take the censoring.
I'm right in the middle of the censorship issue. The owners (my in-laws) do not censor sites as a general rule BUT if we were losing business because of porn sites blocking our "clean" customers from being seen there is a problem. I'm all for client web content monitoring and it's not up to us ISP's or (gawd help us) the Government (Australian or US) to determine what we put out there for someone to view. On the other hand if I lose 10 paying customers due to 2 customers that publish porn, limiting content makes good business sense on the ISP's part.
My advice: Dump the blocked ISP/WPP/web server and find one that is not on the Cyber Patrol block list.
pr0n rules..... just because your own pointless morality has skewed your mind and forced you to live in your own guilt doesn't mean that it is wrong for the rest of us to look at naked people while we jerk off.
you really should loosen the fuck up man....
Noone likes CyberPatrol, they are always missing the mark. Here's another complaint.
Abraham Lincoln said "no main is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent."
How we know is more important than what we know.
I see two ways to take this news... either pressure ISPs to 'quarantine' the 'bad' pages, or punish CyberPatrol for distributing a faulty product. I'd prefer the latter, so come on everybody... put some four letter words in every webpage you can reach... let's deny the entire internet to everyone who chooses to use CyberPatrol! ;)
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
IANAL, but...
The CyberPatrol folks are essentially selling a list of sites that they claim are "offensive". By putting your site on that list, (even if their poorly written software forced them to include it), they're publicly asserting that your site contains offensive material. You've obviously been damaged by this.
Isn't that grounds for a libel suit? That may not be a realistic solution for an individual, but I'm sure countless websites have been wrongfully blocked... it would make a hell of a class action lawsuit, wouldn't it?
MSK
Did you mispell pornographic in this post so the page won't be blocked by filtering software? I only wondered...
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
This article barely touches on the problems of censorware. The author seems to be under the illusion that if you make a "clean" server, as in one free of adult content, it won't get censored.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. Every censorware program that I know of simply blocks any website that their creators find objectionable -- and their creators are mostly right-wing Christians. Sites on homosexuality, Wicca, safe sex, and even the websites of prominent feminist organizations like NOW are all blocked by most censorware programs, as are any websites that criticize censorship, especially if they criticize whichever piece of censorware you're using.
Frankly, I would be more pissed off at your ISP if they DID create a "clean" server to avoid it getting blocked. Being Pagan myself, I would be pretty offended by the idea that I couldn't create a homepage that made reference to my religion on the "clean" server, but a Christian could. That would simply be wrong. In fact, your ISP could probably get sued for discrimination if they did that.
I don't see how any supporter of free speech can justify bowing down to censorware. That's giving them power over you, allowing them to dictate not only what people who choose to use their services see, but also allowing them to dictate what YOU put on the Web because you're afraid of being censored.
I say fuck censorship. Put the seven dirty words on your website, and say they're there just so you'll be banned by censorware. Then get all your friends to do the same thing. And monitor the ban lists of products like NetNanny and CyberPatrol. Once your site's banned, you can put a banner up: "This site banned by (censorware product)." Banners that say such things are available for download, though I don't recall where from.
See http://www.peacefire.org/ for more info.
These arguements are invalid. You're discussing completely different situations, because the people watching the Disney channel are not paying to know that other people are watching it too. They're paying so that they can watch it.
A better analogy would be whether or not the Disney channel has an obligation to tell their advertisers, who are actually paying to have people see their ads, that certain religions boycott the Disney channel. Personally, I would say they aren't under any obligation to do so, except possibly if the commercial is clearly aimed at a religious group that Disney knows doesn't watch their channel.
But even then it's really a matter of opinion.
CENSORSHIP: Denying someone the right to express his or her opinion.
NOT CENSORSHIP: After someone has expressed his or her opinion, examining it and attaching a label stating, "this opinion sucks."
A note to all the lame website hackers out there
Gasp!
Replace all the "hack"s with "crack"s in the previous post.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
personally I find the notion that filtering software is "broken" because it doesn't keep a list of all pages on a server ridiculus... who here wants a program running in the background that maintains a list of all web pages on the internet?... the lack of feasibility of that should be apparent to most of the readers of this page so maybe we should forgive them just a little
Unfortunately, we have to take such situations with good the good ones in trying to make a free market society. The point here is that yes, it's unfair that your website is blocked and yes, the blocking software is voluntary. In using Cyber Patrol, you are, in essence, asking the company what web sites it thinks you should go to. You're not asking WHY, and you're not even allowed to know their criteria; but you pay good money for it and you run their program.
It's not libel to label a website or domain as bad, it's simply an error that happens. Remember that when you run the program you're trusting your browsing experience to Cyber Patrol.
It's an unfortunate situation you're in, I won't disagree. The problem is, as a customer, there's not much you can do to make your ISP pay attention and tell people, nor can you get Cyber Patrol to remove your block.
The point is, this is a competitive economy. We pay for services, and if we don't _like_ them, we go elsewhere to get the same service at a different quality. Hence if you don't like your ISP's policy, oops, you're SOL, but now you've learned, and now you can post the name of the ISP so we all put them on our do-not-patronize list. You also realize that Cyber Patrol isn't so great at blocking, and again, you probably won't buy it after this.
This economy that we have in America is based on a "take the bad with the good" stance. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere. There's not much suing you can do, because you didn't do any kind of research before making your purchase. I'll agree it's a bad position you're in and you can't be expected to have thought that your site might be blocked, but the point is that if you want an economy in which we have competitively low prices and relatively good quality services, you have to also take the fact that bad things might happen, and move on. Remember your position as the money-spender, you're the most powerful of all.
These censorship companies are almost worse then microsoft. They pray on the fact that most parent don't fully understand the technologies that their children use and market it to them as if it is an answer for keeping kids from pornography. All the while they block site for political and personal choice. They block certain religous site, they block many political sites and they block site on things such as breast cancer and they even block the sites of women's rights groups. If someone posts information about these occurences then they just add the site to their blocklist. One of these companies has even gone so far as to mailbomb one old lady because she complained. For more information on the subject try going to http://www.peacefire.com/info/letters.html
or peacefire.com to learn how to disable the software if your blindly using it.
We need to do something about these companies, but......what?
SPAM openly welcomed. I do charge a 500$ proof-reading fee though. Any complaints may be directed to the brick wall to y
Certainly, there are some things worth going to court over, but this is not one of them. My advice is to just get over it. If you feel it's essential that your résumé be accessible to headhunters who are inexplicably using CyberPatrol, change ISPs. If your bacon is really burned over it, write a letter to the ISP and tell them why you're dumping them. But the idea that somebody owes you something because of this is simply ludicrous.
My experience with CP is that sometimes they will block the entire IP address *at first*, but if you email them they are more than willing to allow access to the non-offensive directories. Sometimes it takes a while for them to respond, but at the rate that porn sites proliferate it's understandable that it might take them a while.
While CP has it's problems (if you turn the "bad word" filter on it'll block any site that has "love" in the URL), most people who use it (including myself) would rather have it go too far than not go far enough.
Besides, it sounds more like a problem with the ISP than Cyber Patrol.
I looked in to various filter products about six months ago. Be careful of your facts and assumptions. CyberPatrol can block by URL, IP, long-integer IP, and domain. As a concrete example, I recall at one point that they made it block some geocities porn sites but not all of geocities. Cyberpatrol's block list is also generated by hand, not automatically. It does not default to censoring automatically by finding bad-words in the URL/HTML/TCPIP stream. (It can be configured to do so, with a wordlist built by the customer, for those who want it, although that can obviously lead to various unintended automatic blockage of innocuous pages.)
So the problem isn't with CyberPatrol's technology, it's with a Cyberpatrol policy and/or employee's decision to filter the whole domain first, rather than poking through the domain and separating "OK" from "non-OK" content. So raise the ruckus with CyberPatrol for that.
You can request that Cyberpatrol remove your page(s) from their blocked list at their website. I'd recommend trying that first.
My company (Fortune 100) uses CyberPatrol on our Internet access. I can't hit anything on Geocities (include technical references). Complaints to our IS department are fruitless...
---- "Why does a bird? I dont know why..."
I suppose if you're going to be really fascist, you need to block the workarounds, too
---- "Why does a bird? I dont know why..."
Porn from, say, "www.seagate.com"? "www.fbi.gov"? "www.acm.org"? Whatever.
My suspicion is that with a lot of pages (e.g., hm, business pages, most home pages, etc), you aren't going to be able to find porn until you click *many* *many* times. It's just not *that* common unless you're either searching for pr0n, w4r3z, or anything else that tends to be spelled with annoyingly-mixed letters and digits. It's fairly tough to randomly stumble upon.
Actually, you're idea about the links might be interesting, if you only take it one level deep. In particular, you could probably figure that any site with advertising from various banner companies is almost certainly porn, or doing nothing except linking to porn pages and providing the luser owner money per click (in which case it's equally pointless, and possibly more offensive).
There's that, plus checking to see who owns the domain name. I have no numbers on this, but it frankly wouldn't surprise me if a lot of pay porn sites were really aliases for each other, owned by the same people (presumably to catch those who "guess" random domain names?). That could at least be a warning flag. "Hmmm, this domain name could be considered obscene, and it's owned by the self-proclaimed king of 'net porn..."
And a keyword search might be more effective than you'd think -- probably a lot of pages embed hordes of keywords in order to get flagged in the less discriminating search engines. Any heuristic, though, should still have a list of exceptions just in case some page generates a false positive, in addition to a list of known positives.
That should be far easier and more reliable than image analysis...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I'd rather my kid have access to everything than to not have access to something useful. There are a lot of very good websites that are blocked by CyberPatrol.
Perhaps Cyberpatrol and their ilk could comprimise with ISP's like yours by requesting something akin to the robots.txt file that resides (or is supposed to reside) on servers at the url http://www.hosthere.com/robots.txt. See slashdot's for an example. It contains paths that robots aren't supposed to traverse (i.e., dynamically generated pages, sensitive material, infinite black hole url-spaces, etc.).
Perhaps, if an ISP had mixed content on their server and did not want their host to be entirely blocked they could create a pr0n.txt (or something) file containing paths with objectionable materials that Cyberpatrol would want to block. Hell, this would also eliminate the need to store a lot of hosts locally...instead, they could just store all-porn sites locally and disallow those entirely, while keeping sites with mixed content subject to the pr0n.txt file.
Not that they'd take the trouble to do that. Considering their current course of action, they're pretty frickin lazy.
"h3y 1c3 kr34m!! 4r3 j00 3r33+!?" "y3z crackd, 4nD n0w 3y3 w1lL h4xx0r j00r m0u+h! h0h0h!!0"
It's unfortunate that a situation like this is happening. It only goes to show that today's "child-protection software" has a long way to go in the matter of "intelligence". As for the solution to your problem, perhaps the best thing to do for now would be to move your resume and other important stuff to one of those free places like GeoCities. The advertising would annoy some people, but at least your content would still be accessible... or does Cyber Patrol block GeoCities too? *sigh*
Some clarifications:
The person who could not access the resume is a headhunter working for a placement agency. Apparently, this agency does not trusts its' headhunters not to look for porn during lunch break, and I told the agent as much. The agency wouldn't have been the company where I'd have gone to work. This particular headhunter didn't even realize that their company had installed blocking software - they just told me, "I can't see your web page. It gives me an error." I asked what error, and that was when I found out what was going on.
So you see, claims that it's the user's fault, or that it's a voluntary product, don't really hold up to this situation. I did tell the agent that I'd be concerned if I worked for a company that distrusted me so, as her company apparently does not trust her.
To be honest, most headhunting agencies aren't filled with the most technical people - they rarely understand the very jobs they are helping to fill - and so I wasn't terribly surprised.
A lot of people have said, "Don't blame your ISP."
Although it isn't the ISP's fault that Cyber Patrol is blocking my site, it is my ISP's fault that they KNEW ABOUT IT and didn't tell me, or any of their users! They just wanted to keep it hush-hush. I think that was wrong. It was a shrewd business move... As in: "Customers might leave if they know they're being censored, and we're not willing to do anything about it!"
Anyway, I'm figuring I should just ask my ISP for my money back for the whole time they've known my pages were being banned. That should be fair enough. I'm moving on to DSL anyway, so the account will be thing in the past by the end of August.
- John
What you say is rigth for you only.
Priorities are personal choices, you explained yours and they're rigth FOR YOU. You cannot maka a rule that applies to everybody with that. Why should you decide who is the "real enemy"?
If you are more afraid of porn than of loosing your free speech rigths, probably you should learn to control yourself before you think of controlling what people should or not see.
If you don't sweat you don't enjoy
Give them a week to resolve it. If they still won't, find yourself a non porno-hosting ISP and you won't have to worry about it. Above all, let them know what they did by not telling you about the ban was wrong and unfair to you and that if they don't resolve it, they'll lose more customers. pair.com is always cheap, fast, and open. If they don't keep their users happy, someone else will. The Internet is a big place, after all.
It's not your fault of course. Censorware companies will silently block entire sites. Did you know that approximately 65% of web sites hosted by free hosting companies are pornogrpahic? The simple issue here is, what will it take to block the porn ONLY. We here at ClearSail do that every single day. Censorware or Filtered Internet Access is not BAD altogether as some here think. It is valuable to parent's and companies. Let's ask some of the corporations who have been sued for millions of dollars for sexual harrassment and people in marriages who have divorced over pronogrpahy what THEY think of filtering. I want those people who feel censorware is not valuable to let me know what they think about THEIR children and THEIR employees viewing pornographic material. The definition of pornogrpahy is clearly stated in any Webster's dictionary. I believe most web filtering companies provide an override for the account or software owner. People have a choice---children and employees do not.
I have to confess, I honestly believe that the idea behind CyberPatrol and similar systems is fundamentally sound, however inconvenient they may sometimes be.
The situation on the internet is not, as a few people have posted here, analogous to a bookstore or a library. Libraries and bookstores are organized in such a way that people (such as myself) who want to avoid material that they consider offensive can easily and effectively do so. I do not support censoring offensive material from said institutions-- to do so would be a major infraction of freedom of speech.
On the internet, however, there exists no similarly effective mechanism for avoiding offensive material. Rather often as I am searching through the internet, I come across material that I consider highly offensive. Now, my point here is not that offensive material should be censored from the internet. Again, that would be an infraction of freedom of speech.
However, in the absence of an effective mechanism for sorting through the information on the internet, relying on services such as CyberPatrol, however flawed their implementation might be, is entirely justified.
I also acknowledge CyberPatrol's right to block out entire domains, if necessary. It is certainly inconvenient when other files become inaccessible, but it is an important distinction to realize that freedom of speech is in no way the same as the freedom to be heard. If people decide for themselves that it is important to them to avoid offensive material at all costs, then losing access to an entire domain with a few questionable sites is a reasonable expense to pay.
Certainly it would be better if CyberPatrol were equipped to use a finer-toothed comb in sweeping the internet for offensive material. If I were to subscribe to such a service, I would certainly be willing to pay more for one that blocked as few innocent sites as possible. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons this is far from a simple task.
So basically what I'm saying is this: Services such as CyberPatrol are not at all wrong in blocking their subscribers' access to entire domains, if necessary.
-- Mark Lewis lewis@byu.edu