Anonymous Coward wrote: "I see nothing in this article that the DOJ is about to do anything. This is just a review of a a product that can block some images that would be useful for some families."
If you haven't been keeping up on the whole controversy between google and the DOJ, demonstrating the ineffectiveness anti-porn filtering software to the courts is precisely the reason the DOJ wants google (and all the other search engines) to divulge information about their search results.
See http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70407-0.html? tw=wn_politics_firstamendment_1
The effectiveness of this anti-filtering software is of critical importance to the DOJ's censoring efforts because the Supreme Court upheld the injunction against the Child Online Protection Act in part on the ground that filtering software, as opposed to legal sanctions, might prove to be a more effective way of protecting children while preserving the first amendment rights of other internet user to post and find porn. In other words, there is already a censoring statute on the table. The DOJ is already intimately involved in defending this form of legal censorship.
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZS. html
As the Supreme Court explained, "[i]n the absence of a showing as to the relative effectiveness of COPA [Child Online Protection Act] and the alternatives proposed by respondents, it was not an abuse of discretion for the District Court to grant the preliminary injunction [rendering the Act ineffective]. The Government's burden is not merely to show that a proposed less restrictive alternative has some flaws; its burden is to show that it is less effective." The DOJ has now been trying hard to gather evidence to show that legal censorship is more effective than filtering software. If this specific software is indeed as effective as it claims to be, then DOJ's job -- and therefore its attempt to save this Act -- would be substantially more difficult.
Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Coward wrote: "I see nothing in this article that the DOJ is about to do anything. This is just a review of a a product that can block some images that would be useful for some families." If you haven't been keeping up on the whole controversy between google and the DOJ, demonstrating the ineffectiveness anti-porn filtering software to the courts is precisely the reason the DOJ wants google (and all the other search engines) to divulge information about their search results. See http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70407-0.html? tw=wn_politics_firstamendment_1
The effectiveness of this anti-filtering software is of critical importance to the DOJ's censoring efforts because the Supreme Court upheld the injunction against the Child Online Protection Act in part on the ground that filtering software, as opposed to legal sanctions, might prove to be a more effective way of protecting children while preserving the first amendment rights of other internet user to post and find porn. In other words, there is already a censoring statute on the table. The DOJ is already intimately involved in defending this form of legal censorship.
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-218.ZS. html
As the Supreme Court explained, "[i]n the absence of a showing as to the relative effectiveness of COPA [Child Online Protection Act] and the alternatives proposed by respondents, it was not an abuse of discretion for the District Court to grant the preliminary injunction [rendering the Act ineffective]. The Government's burden is not merely to show that a proposed less restrictive alternative has some flaws; its burden is to show that it is less effective." The DOJ has now been trying hard to gather evidence to show that legal censorship is more effective than filtering software. If this specific software is indeed as effective as it claims to be, then DOJ's job -- and therefore its attempt to save this Act -- would be substantially more difficult.