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Library Censorware Blocks Own Site 388

Posted by timothy from the poignant-and-fleshy dept.
A user writes "The Daily Dayton News reports that a demonstration of a new website for a library in Piqua, Ohio, went horribly wrong when the site was blocked by the library's own censorware. Why? Because the library, founded by and named after businessman Leo Flesh 70 years earlier, had the domain name www.fleshpublic.lib.oh.us. And that key word, 'Flesh,' was a no-no as far as Flesh Public Library's copy of Net Nanny was concerned." And for an extra dose of tragicomic priority reversal, the library actually decided to change its domain name rather than have Net Nanny fix the erroneous blocking. I hope no one at the library wants to read about the fleshpots of Egypt.
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Library Censorware Blocks Own Site More

Library Censorware Blocks Own Site

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:43PM (#4739459)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Our library was worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bobulusman ( 467474 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:48PM (#4739479)
    When I was in middle school, I didn't have the 'net at home, so I had to use the library's. You would not believe the trouble I had looking up the Trojan War. (Really.)
    • I tried to look up some auto-biographic info on Ron Jeremy. Didn't work at all. Even non-lude sites would have the word "porn" on there somewhere. Made it very hard so i just gave up.

    • Well, what do you expect? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Subcarrier ( 262294 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:01PM (#4739542)
      You would not believe the trouble I had looking up the Trojan War.

      That's a story about men entering a horse.
    • I remember back in the IE 3.0 days, if you turned their very weak content rating all the way up, you couldn't get to Microsoft.com, or more importantly, the now defunct RSAC (It's now the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) - because neither site was rated! Unfortunately, filtering hasn't improved much, and this story is a sad testament to that. Just a few months ago our school filter not only blocked out many school web pages, including one school who had just installed it, but it also blocked many sites about protecting your kids online. The process is very clunky - you can't get to it at work, so you go home and check and find there is nothing at all wrong with the site. So you go back to work and submit to them that they should unblock it. It takes days and the interest is long gone - thus censorship happens. On one site they unblocked for me, they couldn't unblock just the one site, because many web severs have 1 IP with multiple names, so they unblocked the whole IP. I wonder how many 'inappropriate' sites they unblocked in the process?

      I'm sure the ALA [ala.org]would be interested in this (and if you don't want censorware to become federal law, we should all bombard them with this one).
    • In Topeka, Kansas, there are two high schools which compete with each other in several sports and other events.

      Typical headline reads "The Topeka High Trojans Overcome Topeka Seaman".

      I can only imagine their censorship problems.

  • Wrong kind of fix (Score:4, Insightful)

    by smnolde ( 209197 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:48PM (#4739481) Homepage
    Fixing software by changing a domain name is a horrid solution. It's almost as bad as using software to fix porrly designed hardware.

    • Re:Wrong kind of fix (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:00PM (#4739536)
      I disagree. If I search for a "flesh library", I don't want to find the web site of a library founded by some guy named "Flesh", I wan't nudity, and a lot of it. Fixing the domain name was the right thing to do. You have to think of the perverts too.
    • It's almost as bad as using software to fix porrly designed hardware.

      That's a stupid assertion. What's better, a software workaround to fix an FPU bug in millions of Pentium chips, or sending every customer a check for $200 to go out and buy a new one?

      Unless the software fix has penalties, like reduced performance/features, or a massive development effort to implement it, it is always better to fix hardware with software, and save all the hardware fixes for the next rev.
      • No, it's better to do a recall and give all those customers properly working chips!
        • No, it's better to do a recall and give all those customers properly working chips!

          Why?

          As the customer, I'd rather get the software fix than take the time to mail my CPU in to Intel and wait for a replacement while my PC is down. Also I'd like to not pay 2x as much for my hardware because they're doing unnecessary recalls.
          • And as a person who's done a fair bit of hardware programming, I'm sick of broken hardware that requires software to go through contortions to get it to work :)
    • Would you then object to software that could read "copy-protected" CDs?

    • Just ban "free" (Score:5, Funny)

      by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:17PM (#4740095) Homepage Journal
      Banning the word "free" would be a much more reliable way of blocking porn.

  • "We banned ourselves" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AsparagusChallenge ( 611475 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:48PM (#4739486)
    That is the point where most people learns that they have gone too far. But did they? No, of course not. May this serve as a lesson for future generations.

  • I guess these are next... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mbogosian ( 537034 ) <matt&arenaunlimited,com> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:49PM (#4739488) Homepage
    The University of Essex [essex.ac.uk]
    Cosmic Pussycat Designs [cosmicpussycat.com] (okay, maybe this one should be banned)
    you get the idea...
  • Billy Idol (Flesh for Fantasy) Vegetarianism ("I'm not a flesh eater") Ebola (flesh eating bacteria) Religion ("this bread is my flesh") Do I really need to go on? TW

  • Not Serious? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Handpaper ( 566373 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:53PM (#4739503)
    Does Net Nanny have no user-variable settings? No equivalent of the Cyber-Yes list in Cyber-Patrol? Even if it were not possible to de-filter the url this way, what about direct IP addressing (the library must know their IP address). As a last resort, ask Net Nanny for a minor mod on pain of switching censorware providers.

    • NASA pornography (Score:5, Informative)

      by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:35PM (#4739698) Homepage
      Net Nanny is reputed to be one of the most brain-dead filters. My favorite example was its blocking "marsexplorer.org." You'll have to study that a little to figure out why. They had to set up a mirror.

      Also (in)famous was AOL blocking discussion of "breasts" as in "breast cancer." another software package blocked women's political groups like NOW, for reasons unknown other than perhaps some twisted political agenda. When this was announced by ahacker, the publisher went ballistic with charges of reverse engineering, etc. Scary but true.

  • Currently before the Supreme Court (Score:5, Informative)

    by Remik ( 412425 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:57PM (#4739524)
    American Library Association v. United States (01-CV-1322) is the latest case to challenge mandatory internet filters at public libraries. The Library Association brief in a lower court case can be found here [ala.org]. The Pennsylvania court recognized the proper weight of the First Amendment issues in the case, finding that the CIPA [ala.org] (Children's Internet Protection Act) infringed on protected speech. The government appealed and the Supreme Court granted certiorari [supremecourtus.gov]. Arguments are expected to take place this winter or early spring.

    -R

    • The Pennsylvania court recognized the proper weight of the First Amendment issues in the case, finding that the CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) infringed on protected speech.

      I think that they should censor vulgar words of pornographic nature also in other languages, unless they only want to block English pornography. My first suggestion would be the word "cipa," which is "pussy" in Polish. If you don't believe me, search Google for "cipa" on .pl domains [google.com] or "cipa" in Polish language websites [google.com] -- almost nothing but porn. Enjoy.

      I think C.I.P.A. should add "cipa" to its pornographic filters and finally censor itself, while I'm going to start a similar anti-porn organization here in Poland, which I will name P.U.S.S.Y. Of course, the interaction between C.I.P.A. and P.U.S.S.Y. will be somehow limited, as we will keep censoring each other -- but it's maybe better that way, since such a kind of interaction could be described as a lesbian sex and we could all go straight to hell.

      (By the way, imagine my laugh when I first read about CIPA protecting children from porn...)

  • Websense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosonowski ( 250492 ) <rosonowski.gmail@com> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @02:58PM (#4739525)
    I think websense is the worst of all, considering some of the categories it puts things into.

    Archive.org [slashdot.org] is a "proxy avoidance system"

    everything2.com [slashdot.org] is "Tasteless"

    Among other categories: Non-Traditional Religion, Drugs, Alternative Journals, Political Groups, Financial Services, and Activist Groups.

    Makes doing research on anything hell.

    • Re:Websense (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dogfart ( 601976 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:06PM (#4739833) Homepage Journal
      Yes, and the problem is a company (or a government entity like a school district) buys this software to block "porn", sees these other categories, and decides to activate them as well. I've done projects at a number of places like this, and have noted the strangest sites blocked. I mean, sites on finite state machines blocked, mainly because they were affiliated with a non-US university domain (my best guess). What is scary here isn't the blocking but the fact the blocking list is proprietary and undisclosed. The blocking companies can restrict whatever they want, get use of their software mandated by the government, and suddenly we find environmental organizations' Web sites are unreachable by a huge part of the population. I am very uneasy with government money spent on secret content filters censoring public resources. If libraries want to block sites - fine. They should acquire blocking software with an open, published blocking list and be prepared to publicly defend each site they are blocking. Heck, why not just set up a "Censorship Board" and have it meet periodically to get citizen input on what is being blocked? If the sites you are blocking are so evil, then you should have no problem with ordinary citizens reviewing the ENTIRE blocking process in the open. Or, why should a company like Websense be allowed to make public policy in secret?
  • Wait,

    if the library's censorware censored the library's own site, how did the librarians find out about the censoring without bypassing the censorware?
    • The librarians would've found out immediately. As soon as they tried to visit their own website, the censoring software would've popped up an alert page saying that it was censored. They wouldn't have needed to bypass it at all.

  • Uhh... (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:01PM (#4739541) Homepage
    After three months of work by the staff, Oda was justifiably proud of the site.

    Three months of work? Are you fucking kidding me? [lib.oh.us]

  • ARGH (Score:4, Funny)

    by Doomrat ( 615771 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:16PM (#4739611) Homepage
    Reminds me of when I was a lot younger and the only net access I had was from the school library. I was banned, my parents were phoned, and I had to see the principle because they would log every hostname resolved and if they found anything suspicious, they would ban you. I explained at least 10 times that it isn't my fault if a perfectly reasonable site on a free host had a porn advertisement on it.

    I argued with the principle for 15 minutes. He'd just repeat "You were accessing bad Internet numbers.". I tried so hard to explain about the concept of images residing under different hosts being shown in innocent web pages, yet he wouldn't listen. I then explained that he should probably learn to understand the technology before punishing me for using it. That didn't get through to him at all. I soon found myself explaining to him that I was amazed that somebody so ignorant, arrogant and most of all retardedly stupid could become the principle of a high school. So I got suspended.

    2 months later I had to see the principle again. "Please design the school webpage for us..".

    • Re:ARGH (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jester99 ( 23135 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:44PM (#4739733) Homepage
      2 months later I had to see the principle again. "Please design the school webpage for us..".

      Well, come on. Don't leave us hangin' like that... Did you?

  • It's not a terrible thing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Snoochie Bootchie ( 58319 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:18PM (#4739622) Journal
    The implementation is awful, but the intent is acceptable. Why can't you go to a library and checkout/read Penthouse? Because Penthouse does not fit in with the mission of a library. The protecting our kids thing is great politics, but little more. I don't buy it and I don't like having others tell me what I should think is something my kids shouldn't see. However, I don't have a problem with a library using some form of control to block access to sites that lie outside of the mission of a public library.

    • Re:It's not a terrible thing... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:26PM (#4739654)
      I don't see why Penthouse wouldn't fit within the mission of a Library. I can be quite political at times. Same with Hustler and Playboy. Libraries archive knowledge and like it or not, these periodicals actually contain reasonable amounts of knowledge.

      Now, I can see them requiring an ID to see the magazines, but shouldn't you be able to get past Net Nanny with an ID too?

      TW
      • Agree 100%. I have not read Playboy since the early 90-es, but 12 years ago it was having brilliant political essays (amidst all the tits of course) that were giving Bush senior a shelling that was way heavier than any of the conventional press. It was a very good read and it was worth every single penny you payed for it.

        Similarly another "entertainment" magazine at the time, namely Rolling Stones had the best anti-gulf war analysis I have seen. AFAIK they are not stoked by public libraries in the US either.

        Dunno about now though. I stopped reading it after Hafner's daughter took over in mid 90-es because one of the first things she did was to cut down on such material. As well as go for more "motherly" model shapes and methinks that I do not suffer from Aedipus sindrome.
    • The problem is that the control system is actively interfering with the mission of the public library. It wouldnt be acceptable for the library to remove every book on architecture because they contained the word "penthouse" and that also happens to be the same name as a skin mag.

      The blocking software is ineffective and blocks massive amounts of legitimate content and protected speech. It also hides how the blocking is done and who is being blocked so there is no oversight to ensure that political or social bias isnt involved in the banning process. That's why it should be abandoned.
    • What about "The Joy of Sex?" Almost every library has that book. If there was a "perfect filter" it still would not be able to cope with social changes. "The Joy of Sex" caused (and still causes in some places) a stir when it was released but in the end it was deemed library worthy.

      So your local library doesn't stock Penthouse. Well, that's their perogative, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Ideally, the library is about free access to information and what is considered approriate is always in flux.

    • Re:It's not a terrible thing... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:49PM (#4740196) Homepage
      Why can't you go to a library and checkout/read Penthouse?

      You can.

      Because Penthouse does not fit in with the mission of a library.

      It certainly does.

      If your local library has an inadaquate collection I suggest you try a bigger library. Worst case you can always get it at the Library of Congress. [loc.gov] (Enter PENTHOUSE as search title and check the second result. I'd give you a direct link but their search engine uses moronic web sessions with temporary URL's that time-out.)

      LC Control Number: 73640721
      Type of Material: Serial (Periodical, Newspaper, etc.)
      Uniform Title: [Penthouse (New York, N.Y.)]
      ISSN: 0090-2020
      LC Classification: AP2 .P413
      Dewey Class No.: 051

      I don't have a problem with a library using some form of control to block access to sites that lie outside of the mission of a public library.

      I agree 100%, chuckle. Therefore libraries should have unrestricted access to the entire internet and carry as much printed material and other media as physically possible. INCLUDING access to Penthouse.com and a copy of Penthouse Volume 1 Issue 1. I may as well piss off a few Europeans while I'm at it and specificly include Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.

      If you think you the right to say some material is offensive and not within the mission of a library then you better damn well expect ME to have the same right. I'd start with the Bible, it's filled with sex, violence, even incest! Can't get much more offensive than incest! After that I'd ban all the other religion's holy books too. (It wouldn't be very fair to discriminate against just one religion.)

      -
      • If you think you the right to say some material is offensive and not within the mission of a library then you better damn well expect ME to have the same right. I'd start with the Bible, it's filled with sex, violence, even incest!

        Not to mention condoning terrorism... What else do you think the 10 Plagues were? What else would you call killing innocents (the Slaying of the First Born) in order to achieve a political objective (free the Hebrews)?
    • However, I don't have a problem with a library using some form of control to block access to sites that lie outside of the mission of a public library.

      The difference is between (a) not buying books you don't like, and (b) ripping pages out of the books you already have. (given to you free, indeed)

      Libraries are there to store and provide information. As much as possible. Any site incorrectly blocked reduces the amount of information available at the library, thus "reducing the ability of the library to perform its mission" in your vocabulary, whereas leaving "non-core" sites unblocked does not reduce the amount of information available at the library.

      --
      The flesh library might have more categorisation problems in store with their new adult arrivals [lib.oh.us] pages.

  • Home of Jerome Hurwitz Elementary School! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by isdnip ( 49656 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:20PM (#4739629)
    Piqua, of course, is the literary (?) home of the Jerome Hurwitz Elementary School and its Principal Krupp. Never heard of them? Ask any third grader! Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants books are set there. Kids love this stuff, and it puts Piqua onto the same map as, say, Bedrock. I assume that their Net Nanny would censor Pilkey's site

    http://www.davpilkey.com/ too.

  • Cencorship is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vga_init ( 589198 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:20PM (#4739630) Journal
    Net Nanny might be good software for uptight parents, but I don't see why a libarary has to use censorship. As the demonstration proves, most cencorship efforts end up going horribly wrong, usually censoring things you don't want cencored and then not cencoring things you do.

    If I were running a library (which I'm not), of course I wouldn't cencor the internet...I would let the people look at whatever they wanted. I would moniter their activities preiodically, and if I suspected the resources were being abused, I would simply stop the service for that individual.

    Anyway you look at it, cencorship is a crackpot solution to problems that should be dealt with using more care than people are willing to put forth.

    • ... and if I suspected the resources were being abused, I would simply stop the service for that individual.

      So, you'd not censor that person's use of the internet, you'd just not allow them to do certain things with it. Hrm..

      • Re:Cencorship is wrong (Score:5, Interesting)

        by PatientZero ( 25929 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:08PM (#4740061)
        That's not censoring; it's refusing service. If the library computers are set up in such a way that everyone can see what everyone is surfing, then it isn't appropriate for people to be surfing pr0n, based on our cultural standards of not allowing minors access to it. Therefore, if you want to use the public computing resources, you must adhere to the public rules and standards. That's called living in society.

        Similarly, while I believe various soft drugs should be decriminalized, I also feel that it would be inappropriate to use them in certain instances. I wouldn't want to see people snorting lines of coke at the library, for example. That's called being personally responsible, and as long as we make the State responsible for enforcing good behavior, we will never learn to be responsible ourselves.

        Freedom includes the right to learn to be personally responsible, often by making mistakes.

  • Local pronounciations will get you... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeepliberty ( 624159 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:24PM (#4739645) Homepage Journal
    I went away to college. The city's entertainment center was named after it founder, Herman Heyman (pronounced hy-men).

    When I went home that year for Christmas my parents got all embarrassed when I announced in front of family and their friends that I would go to the Heyman Center for a good time.

  • Think of the Children! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maul ( 83993 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:26PM (#4739657) Journal
    Sure, the censorware doesn't work very well at all and will probably prevent people from accessing necessary information that contains words that could be used in a "naughty" context.

    Sure, people who want to access porn will probably still find a way to do so, rendering this software useless.

    Sure, censoring information for any reason is one of the first steps to becoming a facist state.

    BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!
    • "BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!"

      Not trying to flame or troll you. I know you ment it sarcastically. I just figured I'd mention whenever I see this argument actually used by people, I wonder what makes them think that keeping children ignorant of the truth won't make them suseptable to lies. Don't question your elders; Don't ask questions; Don't talk back; Just do what you are told. It gives me chills to think of how many kids are taken advantage of because of this by people with sinister intentions. People that are ignorant, and have no problem remaining so, make good sheep for the wolves.

  • This is crazy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geek ( 5680 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:31PM (#4739671)
    It reminds me of the time my mom found a hustler magazine under my bathroom sink (you do it too damn it). She tossed it in the trash (censored it), so I walked down stairs and outside the next day and took it out, put it back under the sink.

    Honestly people are making a much bigger deal about this stuff. Porn was easy enough to get when I was a kid a decade and a half ago, the fact that the net makes it a tad easier is moot. What do these folks think, seeing a nipple or the occasional double entry will mutate their kids into criminals?

    Please, boys have hormones, they will get access to this stuff one way or another. It's when you force them to supress it and repress their emotions and hormones that they start acting out and punching chicks rather than chasing them. It's perfectly healthy for kids to know about sex, how it's done and more importantly why. The more these leftists fight it the worse off our kids are.

    • You were looking at porn in the privacy of your own bathroom. That's "normal." Looking at porn in the public library (whether it's on the 'net or not) is seriously messed up. The kind of people who do that are the kind of people that probably shouldnt' be allowed to be in public unescorted.
      • Why is it messed up? It's just sex, the human form, fantasy. I bet half the books in the library fluff drama section have sex scenes in them. Where does it stop? You can read about sex but you can't look at it?

        It's people that say "it's seriously messed up" who basically don't have a sex life and have been told since infancy that sex was bad. To me that is seriously messed up.

  • Libraries are for kids to explore (Score:4, Insightful)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:32PM (#4739678)
    Netnanny like softwares may flubb. but I think really this is like google-wacking: it's fun to see where they flubb because it is so rare. And these can only get better with time. Do we need netNanny's for kids. Absolutely. THere is no reason why kids should have unfettered internet access. There's plenty I want to keep away from my kids while they are kids.

    However supervision or trust is not the answer either. What I remeber most about the public library as a kid was it was a place for me to explore. ANd more specificall explore on my own without hovering supervision. freedom for me in a place my parents knew was safe. See what I could find that was new and interested me. Sometime it was a way to find out about things I'd hear about. Even with a very guilty feeling, try to look up a book about sexual reproduction.

    I think having a benign (i.e. safe) place for children to roam a bit and explore things at the fringes of their limits is a great idea. Libraries already fill this role well. They are a well controlled but very open environment.

    the problem is the internet lets in a less well regulated world. A world without curation or librarians. And that is something for parents to fear. I dont want to curb adults but I certainly do want to curb my children and to protect them from the evils of the world. THis is common sense.

    • How will they know about the "evils" and thus be protected from them if they can't learn about them. Knowledge is power and protection. You said it yourself you looked up things you felt guilty about include sex. Would you deny this to your own children? Lets face it. How can they feel free to explore when they are censored. If its not you looking over their shoulder, its the computer. Blocking them. You're raising you kids with holes of needed knowledge.

      Also, no matter how much any one does this, it will never work. By nature the internet is free. Anyone can access it from anywhere to get the information. Fine, you've done a "great" job of locking down the library (lets face it, how many kids these days really go to the library) and you've probably locked down you're home. With "luck" even your child's school will be locked down. But really, how hard is it to find an access node that isn't. Kids have friends. One of them will have full access, and guess what. All the kids will just go there. This method is innefectual unless you lock down the whole internet which is impossible (but being tried any way care of the US). As long a it exists, the information on it will be free and people will find ways to access it.

      By comparison, you are acting like the much "hated government of Chine.

      • This method is innefectual unless you lock down the whole internet

        Dont be silly. Of course its effective. A system does not have to be 100% perfect to be effective. I can try to supervise my kids at other times or ask other parents to help. But I like the idea of having a place where its safe but kids can explore a bit and find the naughty but not the nasty.

        Do you drive a car? Did you know that was dangerous and you could have an accident? but you drive right. But you probably might think again if there were no road rules at all. A system does not have to be 100% perfect to be effective.

    • Sorry, a library is not a daycare that you can dump your kids at and ignore. It isn't a Disneyland created to keep your children safe at all costs. Libraries exist to help create a well educated public, to encourage the spread of information and to support the spread of new ideas necessary to keep democracy flourishing. To support these goals, information that you may object to your children seeing must be available to adults. Any restriction on this information for adults is unacceptable.

      There's plenty I want to keep away from my kids while they are kids.

      And somewhere there is someone who wants to keep your kids away from things you think are perfectly safe. When the paranoid religious group decides to bar links to Harry Potter fan sites as "Occult" or breast cancer information sites as "Sexual". It's not possible for a library to come up with a perfect filter for everyone. Unless you filter to the extreme, some parents will be horrified that their child has access to to information about halloween. Unless you have no filter, some parent will find some information filtered that they want their child to have access to. (And do you think a child that encounters a "Access Denied" is going to ask the librarian to unblock it? Heck, most adults would be too embarrassed to do so!)

      No system will work for everyone. Heck, no system will work for most people. And any system will irritate many patrons doing legitimate research.

      Ultimately responsibility for filtering what you child sees is your responsibility. If you're not confident that you child is mature enough to handle whatever he comes across, you are responsible for keeping your eye on him. Even before the internet, you could find novels with graphic descriptions of sex and violence and books encouraging racism and violence, yet you don't seem to worry about that.

      Your child is your responsibility. Just because you're too lazy to keep an eye on your child is no reason that my library experience should be diminished.

      ...it's fun to see where they flubb because it is so rare. And these can only get better with time.

      Censorware can't work. It simply can't. The internet is growing too fast to restrict. New pages with "bad" content are being added rightnow, and new pages with "good" content are being added. Censorware has no hope to keep up. Search engines with an easier job (find everything, and try to find everything) can't keep up. How can a censorware manufacturer accurately make all of those decisions? Deciding that a given page is "reasonable political commentary" or "hate speech" is extremely difficultt, even for humans. A computer has no hope. Check out Michael Sims' "Why Censorware Can't Work [censorware.net]" article for more details. Furthermore, censorware must filter any web site that could possibly redisplay content from another web site. This means that all censorware must always restrict translation software web pages. There are a number of articles documenting this problem, here are just a few: "BabelFish blocked by censorware [peacefire.org]", "SmartFilter's Greatest Evils [sethf.com]", and BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censoreware vs privacy & anonymity [sethf.com]"

  • Parents (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fire-eyes ( 522894 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:33PM (#4739681) Homepage
    You know, I'm assuming this is done for The Children (tm).

    Just more of the same old stuff: Let something/someone else do parenting duties. Anything but the actual parent, please!

    Seriously, the internet isn't a good place for children to begin with. Supervise them yourself. If you can't, don't let them on, because clearly filtering software is garbage. And the internet is NO place for kids!

    Quit being shitty parents.

    • I posted this in my livejournal [livejournal.com] a couple weeks ago:

      Finrod's First Rule of Politics

      If a political candidate mentions children in his campaign ads that he did not personally sire or adopt, then he is evil.

      This could also be known as the Kyle's Mom Rule.

  • Poor USA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:40PM (#4739719) Journal
    Censoring at the library, and of course only for your own good. Monitoring at the library, only to track down terrorists. A truely free country! Somebody should suggest to cross out all the dirty words in the book with a black marker though, otherwise children could get in a situation where their poor innocent souls actually see the word "flesh" written before them! Motto: "Dont think, we do it for you, because we do it better!" And: "The earlier you get used to somebody else thinking for you, the easier it will be later on"

  • This happened at the main public library in Austin, Texas, too. The library was using a filtering product that used a "three-letter" algorithm -- you can guess the letter combinations -- to block sites.

    The name of the main library site is the John Henry Faulk Memorial Library.

    Local civil libertarians picketed the Austin Library Commission with signs that read "Free the Ducks!"

    That method of filtering was discontinued at the Austin Public Library.

  • This gives me an idea... (Score:3, Funny)

    by lelitsch ( 31136 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:49PM (#4739752)
    Let's compile a list of bible verses that get blocked by censorware, publish it on the web and have someone at every place that installs NetNanny write a fundamentalist letter to the editor along the lines of "NetNanny censorware blocks our children's access to the WORD".
    Do the same with compassionate conservatism lingo, pro-life web sites, NRA... and see how fast NN get's brabded as part of a vast left wing conspiracy.
  • It has gone from tool for supervising internet access to a replacement for said supervision. When my stepdaughter is old enough to actually use teh internet, we will use some form of blocking software- But no form of censorware will be put on our system that does not a) Allow us to override false positives and other sites we think she should be able to see and b) Allow us to add sites to the blocklist.

    Censorware that can do both of those things can be a major help to parents and educators. If it misses either capability, it is worse than useless.

  • Block my website as well? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rai ( 524476 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:14PM (#4739871) Homepage
    I was planning to open the Dr. Samuel Skinflick Memorial Online Museum at www.skinflickmom.com

    Damn the luck. :)
  • This is a perfect example of censorship biting itself in the ass, and is why I stand against it. Yeah, keep away from the porn sites, but don't do it with Net Nanny, you nits!

  • An Idea Made Flesh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Peahippo ( 539266 ) <peahippoNO@SPAMmail.com> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:31PM (#4739928) Homepage
    Does it have to be actually said?: Keyword filterings of internet searches are just moronic. The censorwareans have yet to demonstrate that keywords bypass the highly integrated nature of Human knowledge. "Flesh" can be sexual, but also medical, religious and generally metaphorical for many other things, like the "substance" of an object or idea.

    The only thing that "works" with stopping inappropriate Internet browsing in the public library is the common control of citizens. If you see a kid surfing for pygmy lesbian cheerleaders (which he should do at home, like I do), stop him from doing it. If the confrontation gets awry, just resort to a librarian and perhaps a security guard. Problem solved.

    My local library system has browsers that always come up with the same startup page, which is a yes/no statement of understanding. It says that if you surf for the nasty stuff, the library can boot you off the computer and even out of the library, and perhaps can even confiscate your first-born child when you get one.

    That the library that censored its own website -- and then changed its domain name to avoid being filtered -- was in deep Ohio, is hardly surprising. It's in the flyover. Don't expect much to come out of Ohio but tomatoes, corn and grapes. (Oh, and also call centers to handle support and billing calls before an Indian company is found to handle the work at 1/2 the price.)
  • Tux [lib.oh.us] on the library website. *shrug*

  • Why not an opensource solution? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fname ( 199759 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:36PM (#4740158) Journal
    Color me idealistic, ignorant, misguided or deluded; but why not create an open-source filter for libraries to use? This would solve a lot of problems.

    1) The list of blocked sites and algorithms is available.

    2) The community would probably make available separate levels of filtering. Like, maybe a whitelist appropriate for little kids, something else for schools and a narrow list for purposes like libraries.

    3) It would be freely available, so politically motivated censorware like NetNanny would see its market eliminated.

    Yes, I know this proposal is evil, because it is caving into a bad law. But guess what, the law ins't that unreasonable, it's just that the implementations are downright awful. Most libraries would probably choose to have a modest filter (known porn sites for the most art, maybe all-numeric IPs) than nothing.

    Many parents would like to have moderate filtering to kill things like obscene links hidden in slashdot discussions. I mean, even if you're surfing the net w/ your kids, how does it help with stuff like that?

    This NetNanny keyword based, politally motivated filtering is A Bad Thing. And a law requiring libraries to install filtering software is A Bad Thing. But, a good, user controlled, community built filtering software is absolutely, positively, a good thing.
  • The UCLA main research library used to be officially named the "Hugh G. Dick" library -- everyone called it the university library. If the CIPA case [slashdot.org] gets reversed by the Supreme Court, all libraries will have to think hard about their names (and anyone else who wants to be found by people in libraries).

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