Passing Porn, Banning the Bible

Please read this press release from The Censorware Project. Their target today is Bess, a new piece of protect-the kiddies software from N2H2 that seems to be even more defective than some of its competitors. Look at the list of sites Bess bans (it's in the Censorware Project press release), and at some of the ones it allows to pass. Then laugh. I did, but sadly, because many U.S. legislators want this kind of software installed in all public schools and libraries. I could go on and on here, but why bother? Read the Censorware Project press release for yourself. It may lead you to a few porno sites, but at least they're ones that have passed Bess's scrutiny, and that's all that counts, right?

Comments

Porn is the wrong thing to ban.

[Shoeboy]

If my employer restricted my ability to visit www.footfetish.com, it wouldn't really make a difference to me (although they wouldn't have to steam clean the carpet as often.) This is trivial. Now if they blocked slashdot, productivity here would go through the roof! Of course we'd all quit after a couple of weeks, but we'd be able to get a lot more work done in those 2 weeks. This only applies to the techies, but if you replace slashdot with ebay or investor.msn.com it would apply to the sales and marketing department as well. Why don't we see blocking software that filters out popular time wasting sites?
--Shoeboy

The WWW isn't a babysitter ...

[wuzoe]

I wish someone would stand up and tell the schools government, and parents that even with software, the www isn't a babysitter.

Now, having said that, considering how people use it as a baby sitter, maybe filtering software isn't going in the right direction ...

When I was learning to ride my bike, I was only allowed to ride on certain streets. My parents simply told me what streets I *could* ride on, they didn't try to list every street that I *couldn't* ride on. If filtering software worked this way, it would IMHO be better for corporations and libraries that want their net connected computers to be information appliances (no need to go to most sites) ... also parents would be able to set up their kids on a certain for-kids site and know they can't wander off ...

I realize that this leaves most of the net unaccessable, but for the 12 year olds, and the libraries that want online news access, book reviews, etc. wouldn't this be "better"?

Personally I believe that everyone should grow up and learn to live without censorware, but that isn't going to happen any time soon ... 8-(

Re:The WWW isn't a babysitter ...

[remande]

There are a couple of big differences between the site lists and the current blockers. First off, you could choose multiple site lists, and add your own. Secondly, you choose your list independantly of your software. Currently, if I don't like the access I get with one site blocker, I have to buy new software to hook up with another one.

As far as letting someone else decide, I don't deny that you would do that by buying lists. But we constantly let other people make important decisions in our lives. Many of us let accountants do our taxes, let doctors diagnose our illnesses, let mutual fund managers do our investing for us.

This is not counter to keeping control. This world is extremely complicated; you simply cannot properly make all the decisions that need to be made in your life. That is why we submit to experts; we have doctors figure out why we're sick, mutual fund managers to handle our investments, lawyers to sue the idiot who ran into your car, geeks to keep our computers running.

So long as we have a large population of competent experts, we can use them to keep as much control as we can stand. We find an expert that makes decisions the way we would if we had the time and skill (for example, we pick our mutual fund managers based on our agressiveness in investing). We may have several experts (split our money up between funds; have specialist doctors), and we still have final say. If we disagree with an expert, we take our business elsewhere.

So it would be with lists. You could buy multiple lists (very good for special interests; NASA could make a smallish list of nothing but "safe" space exploration sites). You would also be able to add your own sites, or remove one that came from a list vendor. It all comes down to the question of "who do you trust?".

I'm horrified by what they ban

[konstant]

I can't believe some of these restrictions. It's... almost inconceivable. Consider their ban on "Message/Bulletin Boards" - "Sites that permit semi-permanent messages to be posted and read by others." Heaven forbid the little kiddies should have a free discourse of any kind. Posted and read by others? Why, who knows what those ravening internet users might post! Swear words! Heretical leanings! Thoughts! I wouldn't be surprised to discover /. is banned under this clause. Too free.

Then there's their block on unfiltered searches. Consider this corrupting search string:
"http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=women". Egads, cover their sweet little eyes! They might be looking up such horrendous topics as women in the military, or the accomplishments of women! All, no doubt, in a sick demonic attempt to see nude bodies - we all know that women have no interest apart from the sexual.

Of course, they also ban "Free pages". Because of course, unless you have Big Money behind the site, you know it will all end in tears. The entire geocities complex is blocked, including such appalling sites as my blood-and-lust-centric Lucy Test. I don't like the banner ads either, but how many times have I been shunted to a geocities page when researching something that intrested me? Not for Bess users, though. Good old Bess, she doesn't have time to spend, say, THINKING about the worth of certain sites. She'd rather toss a pure white blanket over the lot and be done with it.

Frankly, I can't imagine the distorted hairy-palmed little trolls who rate sites for companies like this one. They spend their days looking at a good sight more porn and dementia than I ever do. Straight-backed Christians of the world - if you believe that information corrupts, then do you really want these polluted individuals deciding what your children see?

This has ruined my day.

-konstant

Damned Facts about N2H2/Bess

[RobotSlave]

I interviewed at N2H2 before taking my present job at a Large Internet Retailer in the same city. So here's a load of irony for you:

1) Bess runs on Linux. Exclusively.

Yes, the whole system. When a company or school (they have a near-lock on the academic market) decides to buy Bess, N2H2 sends out a tech to install a linux box (or boxen). Those boxen all talk to more linux boxen to keep the URL lists current.

2) N2H2 funds free software projects.

They paid for outside developers' time to get ipfwadm finished, and they are active in the perl circuit.

3) Most of the people who work there don't think that censorware should be installed for anyone older than 12, but they can't say no to a client.

4) Robots go out on the net and flag suspect sites, and the call on whether or not to block a flagged site is made by a human. So if something is being blocked, then someone decided to block it. The converse, of course, is not the case.

5) They drag their feet when making offers to perl hackers, and the perl hackers go to work for Large Internet Retailers instead :).

I'm sorry I came to this discussion late-- hopefully this post will bubble up a bit.

What these folks *should* try to protect kids from

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I have no kids of my own, I've volunteered for the Big Brother's organization, and had the following experience. My "Little", as they're called, will simply refer to as johnny. His mother will be referred to as Jane.

Now, knowing that I'm a computer geek, Jane asked me to monitor Johnny's surfing if I let him access the internet from my computers. She, like the creators of BESS along with it's users, wanted to protect him from obscene material. No problem, I thought, I'm not exactly the irrisponsible sort, that's why I volunteered in the first place.

So one day, Johnny and I are over at my house, and he asks if he can get on the internet. I proceed to fire up my FreeBSD *blatent plug* gateway's ppp connection and a browser app for him to use.

Out of curiousity, I didn't make any mention of monitoring, or restricting his destinations. I just let him go, and watched quietly. What I saw absolutely horrified me! No, it wasn't porn, or a gay rights site, or subliminal satanic messages... It was the most blatently grotesque commercial site I'd ever seen. Run by the General Mills Corp, and targeted at impressionable young children, the http://www.yourschoolrules.com site - Johnny's favorite - is nothing but pathetic brain-washing type kids games and puzzles and stories. Strewn throughout each are the cartoon characters of all of GM's breakfast cereals.

If you ever thought Saturday morning kids TV shows were bad, with the constant barrage of kid-targeted commercials - check out this site! To access the "full" site, the kids have to "sign up" and give GM a bunch of info about themselves. This helps them market their products better. Of course, they have the standard "be sure to ask Mom or Dad if it's ok to tell us this" message. But since you can't access anything without complying, I can't see kids really worrying about such a detail. Johnny sure didn't, and my PC was filled the GM cookies like you wouldn't believe.

This exploitation of children, knowing full well how impressionable they are, is far more of a threat than seeing words like shit and ass - or God forbid... a REAL breast!

Anyway, just had to share this. I tried to explain to Johnny why *I* didn't approve of that site. Jane, she wasn't much help, as long it wasn't "obscene", it was ok with her. Frankly I find the commercial brain-washing of children far more "obscene" than a breast!

Bess goes Woof.

[RimRod]

My entire school district, which thankfully I graduated from a year ago, used Bess as their net filter. This included at the public library, where I worked for quite some time as a Technical Handyman, for lack of a better term, in the children's computer room.

It was positively the worst net filter I've ever seen--and that's saying something, considering the rather pitiful quality of even the best ones out there. More often than not, all it did was hinder students from finding information for school reports (I've seen everything ranging from abortion topics to the Emancipation Proclimation be blocked by Bess.)

First of all, putting filters on the computers within the high school always seemed a bit silly to me...who is actually going to look at porn in the middle of a large room that is almost constantly filled with students and teachers? It was such a non-issue it became somewhat of a joke among those of us who actually understood the system.

Second, it became SO MUCH of a hinderance that the librarians (because they didn't know how to use the damn thing themselves) actually enlisted my help on more than one occasion to teach the class how to turn Bess off so that they could finish their reports. No one ever said they were the brightest librarians in the world :)

Third, at a public library...well, it's all been covered before. The only new idea I have to add is that in two and a half years of working there, not once did any kid actually come in with the intention to surf the web and find porn. As amazing as this may be to the bureaucrats back in DC, most children do not like going to the library. Therefore, they're only going to be there when they actually have valid work to do. The few kids who actually do enjoy being in libraries are not the ones you have to worry about. That leaves......no one. Again, I had to turn off the damn thing numerous times so that students could actually do their assigned work.

Filters just suck.

That'll teach 'em.

[pb]

Ooo, maybe we should let people decide what content they should view, after all, at least some popular censorware does a worse job than they would, themselves...

Actually, your average elementary school student either has no concept of "porn", or is disgusted by it. And if they aren't, is that so bad? Maybe they're just a little ahead of their time...

Which brings us to our third point. Let's look at a scenario here.

1) User: I want to go to www.foo.com.
2) Stupid Proxy: www.foo.com is blocked. Sorry.
3) User: Why? I want to see it.
4) Stupid Proxy: Sorry, www.foo.com is blocked.
5) User: Well, I'll just find another way to get there, then, I really need to see that.
6) Stupid Proxy: ???
7) User: There, see, I knew it was okay.

Now, I'm all in favor of teaching children how to *hack* at an early age, I just find it pitiful when you have to do that to get *work* done. I had to in High School, because of the excessive, draconian security measures. I wasn't really popular with the computer administrators, but I could save my files to a disk, or use a DOS command if I wanted to, and that's what counted.

Where does it say in the Constitution, that students or children aren't people, and therefore don't deserve those basic rights that everyone else has? ...that's what I thought. And we know that the extreme right wing moral majority is all in favor of the Constitution, and at least the Second Amendment... why not the First Amendment?

My advice: if you don't like the First Amendment, then shut up. :)

Effect of the Bible :)

[Improv]

This is meant as mostly humor, but the people I
know who spend a lot of time with porn generally
tend to be a lot more pleasant than people who
spend a lot of time with the bible. Certainly not
all bible thumpers are like this, but I've never
heard porn drive people to go door-to-door and
irritate people, advocate execution for violation
of the 10 commandments (or sexual 'deviancy'),
etc.
As Tom Lehrer says "I do have a cause, it's
obscenity. I'm for it"

Re:Glad someone is banning the bible

[Trepidity]

The problem is that the Bible itself has many morally "bad" passages, especially the Old Testament. You'll find God commanding His followers to rape, murder, pillage, etc. Despite saying in one place that killing is bad, God commands His followers to kill all the male children prisoners, and keep the female children prisoners for sex slaves. (I posted one of the relevant quotes in a separate reply to this article) Nice morally uplifting book there.