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Ask Slashdot: Cyber Patrol Censorship? 336

Posted by Cliff from the censoring-gone-overboard dept.
John R. Johns II submitted this issue which many of us might be faced with in the future: "I found out today that my entire ISP's primary web server is blocked by Cyber Patrol. Cyber Patrol blocks the web server because a few users have adult content, but the result is that all accounts on the server are blocked regardless of content. Cyber Patrol won't remove the ban (I guess they have no method of only partially blocking a server), and my provider won't boot the users with the adult material. I support my ISP for keeping the users with the adult materials, because it is a matter of freedom of speech, but I believe it is wrong for them not to provide a separate web server for the stigmatized users, so that not everyone is blocked due to the content owned by a few. What can you do when faced with a situation like this? Click below for more.

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?
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Ask Slashdot: Cyber Patrol Censorship? More

Ask Slashdot: Cyber Patrol Censorship?

Comments Filter:
  • A new way to find the best web sites, like the sticker on music letting you know "good stuff within" :-)

  • Anti-Censorware Proxy (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not a permanent solution... but try https://lesser-magoo.lcs.mit.edu/s/ [mit.edu]

  • CyberPatrol Lies? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 [sorehands.com]
    Injured working fights back against Mattel.

  • Re:Conjecture, etc. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The best solution would be move all porn stuff to a top level domain like .sex

  • Censorship (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

  • Re:Censorship in General is Bad (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:Freedom of Speech in the US of A (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:Adult Material and the Internet (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:It's unfortunate... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Adult Material and the Internet (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:15PM (#1782459)
    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.
  • No....

    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.

    ----
  • 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
  • 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?
    --
  • CyberPatrol is knowingly selling a faulty product, since, by their own admission (apparently) their product blocks non-obscene content rather indiscriminately. I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that your case is weaker than someone who has purchased CyberPatrol, and has discovered that it blocks non-obscene material.

    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.

    --

  • 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!

    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.

    --

  • All you people out there that are anti-Cyber Patrol because your employer or parents or whatever uses it are just not cool.

    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.

    --

  • 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.

    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.

    --

  • I disagree. Cyber Patrol is, in essence, libeling the fellow's content. They are falsely suggesting that his content is not suitable for all ages, because of their rather imprecise methodology.

    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 [w3.org]. 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 [rsac.org], 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 [now.org], for christ's sake.

  • In other words, give in to CyberPatrol's censorship attempts by hurting an ISP who still allows freedom of speech. Great idea.

    CyberPatrols definition of "adult" content is likely to contain everything from your latest holiday pictures to a commercial for deodorants. And let's not start to talk about "objectionable" or "questionable". The only resonable approach I see is to lobby the various web censors to provide a reasonably fine-grained access mechanism and to lobby the ISP's to allow easy circumvention of content filters (which really should run on the users computer, not on the ISP's).

    An even better solution would be to change society in a way that makes it the norm for parents to spend enough time with their children to be able to explain things to them and to enable the kids to deal with the occasional naked breast on their own...

  • Hah. (Score:1)

    by Shanoyu ( 975 )
    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 [witchvox.com]. 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?

  • 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.

  • Oh, Wah.

    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...
  • 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.


  • 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.

    Excuse me:

    My machine at http://978.org/ does not offer free web hosting to anyone as you claim. Web site service and DNS hosting are extended only to personal friends, business associates, and family. This claim is false, and I urge you to stop making it at once.

    Furthermore, there is no objectionable content in the "loophole" category at the URL http://978.org/. These claims are false and I urge you to discontinue them at once. My attempts at verifying your unblocking claims using publicly accessable bess proxy servers have hinted that these claims are also false.

    I have contacted you in good faith to resolve an issue regarding inappropriate blocking. Because n2h2 is unhappy with the nature of one particular web site I maintain (because it basicly renders your product useless), I feel you have blocked every other web site I am involved with. Evidence of this prejudicial blocking includes the entire 978.org domain, Drum Hill Ford http://www.drumhillford.com/ car dealership, and all hostnames in other domains that point at my machine. I urge you to discontinue this overzealous blocking at once and only block URL's that have been verified by a human and found to meet your criteria.

    Automated blocking of entire hosts (which may carry dozens of domains), blocking of DNS registries (even private ones like 978.org), and personal targeting of individuals like myself make it clear to me that you may have been less than honest with your customers and people who have contacted you regarding the current situation with *.978.org and drumhillford.com. If definite, verifyable steps are not taken to resolve this problem, I will be forced to pursue it through other channels. While I understand you have obligations to your customers, these obligations do not grant you a license to be deceitful to customers and business contacts, nor a right to defame my services or me personally by reporting falsely to these people.

    Your prompt response and action will be appreciated.

    --
    Brian Ristuccia
    webmaster@drumhillford.com

  • /. blocked? (Score:1)

    by j ( 2547 )
    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
  • I think that this would still help everyone if widely deployed.
    • 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?

  • A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. -- William Shakespere
    We could always call it adult_content.txt or parental.txt or whatever.
  • Take a look at a company called Trusted Net ( http://www.trusted.net [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
  • Cyberpatrol CAN block individual URLs/directories/whatever, it's just that they choose not to.

    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 [censorware.com], 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?"

    -----

  • Re:hmmmm... (Score:3)

    by Andrew Lockhart ( 4470 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:53PM (#1782495) Homepage
    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?
  • 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!
  • 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).
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 [idworld.net], check em out) and contact your attorney.

  • 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

    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?

  • 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! [...] 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.

    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.

  • As far as I am concerned being barred by one of these cyber censors would be a bonus. Of course I'm not job-hunting!

    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!

  • This problem with CyberPatrol seems almost exactly the same as the one presented by Paul Vixie's Realtime Black Hole List [vix.com]. 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?
  • But suppose you believe (and this isn't nescesarily what I believe but I know people who do) that it is not your right as an isp to tell your customers who they can and cannot send email to, solicited or otherwise? In that case, how fair is it to the other hundreds of subscribers of such an online service to have their mail blocked because the owner of the ISP won't compromise his principles to what Vixie wants by censoring his/her customers?
  • 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).

  • ...though I crafted that sentence pretty poorly

    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).

  • I understand your argument completely, but you haven't swayed me.

    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 :-)

  • You want to work at a place that censors? (Score:3)

    by MagicMike ( 7992 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:17PM (#1782512) Homepage
    Seriously, I would probably use that as a litmus test for employment. If you have to ask /. what to do when you're just getting in the door with this person, what is it going to be like working there?

    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

    --
  • 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.
  • What a ridiculous definition. That would make editing your own work censorship. That would make abridgement for running length censorship.
  • > CyberPatrol and the like are perfectly legitimate parenting tools, when applied intelligently.

    Go to www.peacefire.org (if your blocking software lets you) and read about what they block. Across the board, not only are there blocks that are creeated by the blind stupidity of simple pattern matching, but also blocks that appear quite deliberate and fall nowhere within any accepted definition of obscenity. Information about birth control or abortion for example. Some have started a bit of left-wing censorship, blocking out "hate" content. Cyber Patrol did, possibly still does block Focus on the Family as a hate site. I found this screamingly ironic. But still unacceptable. Criticism of blocking software is of course determined to be obscene, as any good repressive dogma would have it. CyberSitter will block you for even linking to www.peacefire.org. I could dismiss CyberSitter as the product of a raving infantile kook, but some libraries and schools are still using it.

    I submit that no filtering software can be applied intelligently. Furthermore, when this software becomes mandated for schools, libraries, even universities, it becomes a very clear-cut action of censorship.
  • > 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.
  • > If they don't, I start using a (non-Cyber-Patrolled) headhunter :-)

    Whaddya mean, "start"? This is a headhunter, not your wife. You don't have to be faithful to them alone, and it's not expected. Go and find another headhunter, get a dozen of them working for you. It's their job to compete with each other. Yes you hear about deadlock where two headhunters won't cooperate in placing you in one company so you lose the opportunity. You don't want to work in a place that organizationally clueless anyway.
  • 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.
  • 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.

    This is not "censorship" any more than the /. 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.

    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.

  • Perhaps that's because "nakid" isn't an actual word? I think you want "naked" ;)

  • I checked out their web site [cyberpatrol.com] and found this gem:

    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.

  • 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...

  • Cyber Patrol and Ignorance (Score:3)

    by lee ( 17524 ) <lee@pyrz q x g l .org> on Tuesday July 27, 1999 @04:09AM (#1782559) Homepage
    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.

    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 .de. All reall addresses end in .com, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil."
  • 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.
    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 /. to people who request it.

    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?
    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.

    ...a company had blacklisted our mail-servers...
    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.

    ...most ISPs have themselves covered...
    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.
  • It is not the ISP's responsibility to tell you that random private company 'A' is blocking them.
    I believe it is every seller's responsibility to disclose known nonobvious flaws in their product. When someone is renting something to me (which is a more apt description - you "rent" part of their internet connection), I expect that nonobivous flaws which develop over time will be disclosed to me as well.

    The ISP's site is perfectly open-- if someone else chooses to block it, your problem is with the blocker, not the ISP.
    My problem is with the ISP misrepresenting their product. The blocker is doing exactly what they said they'd do.
  • 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).
  • Ah yes, but family-friendly harassment lawsuits are not so nearly expensive as sexual-harassment suits. ;-)

    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 :-( ). 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).

    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.
  • 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)
  • And shall Disney tell its cable customers, resort guests, etc. that they have been boycotted by certain religions? More to the point, do Linux distributors have a responsibility to their customers to tell them that Microsoft will make their products gratuitously incompatible with Linux?

    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.

  • Coffee? Coffee on the Web? People are complaining about porn and there are caffeine references out there?

    That's disgusting!

    The stuff stunts your growth. It shorts out your circuits. It's behind the thrtow-away, get-ahead culture we have today! It turns ordinary God-fearing people into programmers!.

    How many people realize that Starbucks has a Web site? [starbucks.com]

    We need new blocking software, or a new service. I'm going to talk with the guys at Cyber Patrol to see if I can't license their software and make a caffeine-blocking service. Anybody wants in on this fast-growing industry, I'm accepting venture capital. The first two sites to be blocked are Starbucks and Javasoft [javasoft.com]

    Excuse me, I've got to refill my espresso...

  • The fault are those who censor. (Score:3)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:21PM (#1782613) Homepage
    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
  • CyberPatrol is essentially a retail product for home users. For home users it works fine -- it is 'override-able' by a master password... not a bad solution for parents as they can [if need be] let their kids into all those holocaust/aids information etc sites that are erroneously blocked.

    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:

    In evaluating a site for inclusion in the list, we consider the effect of the site on a typical twelve year old searching the Internet unaccompanied by a parent or educator.


    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
  • 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.

    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 ... 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.

    --Mark

  • Freedom of Speech in the US of A (Score:4)

    by SlashDread ( 38969 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @11:46PM (#1782639)
    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
  • Go check out the link from my previous post on this thread. Or try going here, [neopagan.net] 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. :)

    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. :P

    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. :)

  • Junk, junk, junk (Score:3)

    by fable2112 ( 46114 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @08:43PM (#1782646) Homepage
    Filtering software is in general a Bad Idea [within.com].

    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. :P
  • Noone likes CyberPatrol, they are always missing the mark. Here's another complaint. [efa.org.au]


    Abraham Lincoln said "no main is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent."

  • Cripes..."what sort of compensation?" (Score:4)

    by grot ( 57003 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:30PM (#1782671)
    It's bad enough that us 'merikans are the laughingstock of the civilized world for our idiotic prudishness, but you had to go and tie in the other thing (well, one of the other things, anyway) that will be our downfall: litigiousness. Sure, in today's legal climate, you could "seek compensation" -- sue the bastards at your ISP. Sue CyberPatrol, too. Hell, you could even sue the job hunter (I assume you actually mean headhunter) for failing to have the technical savvy to access your résumé, thereby discriminating against you in some convoluted way. For that matter, why not sue me, too? I probably have some money, and I might settle just to avoid the stupendous legal bills you could threaten me with.

    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.

  • 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 [cyberpatrol.com] at their website. I'd recommend trying that first.
  • 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.

  • 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.

    Why? Did your ISP take down your site? Did the ISP block it? I don't think so. The site was viewable, only not to people who use the Cyberpatrol software. This is not the ISPs problem nor responsibility, though they in a perfect world they should've told their users.

    Where I live, in the Netherlands if you were to go to court over this, you'd probably get fined by the state for wasting a judge's time. You can go to the TV Consumer's Guide, which is a program on TV which brings these things into publicity and probably works a lot better!

    Anyways, I work at an ISP and yes, sometimes I get customers on the line who try to blame our company for things like this. An example of a while back, it turned out a company had blacklisted our mail-servers, due to spammers sending mail from these IPs. This meant all mail sent from our smtp servers was simply bounced. Now about all an ISP can do about this is contact the company and ask them why, and to see if it can be resolved. However, if they refuse to remove us from their blacklist, then that's not our responsibility anymore. I believe it has to do with 'circumstances not under the control' of the ISP.

    As for sueing, take a good look at your 'license agreement'... read it word for word, I believe most ISPs have themselves covered against this stuff.

    Big, bad, evil ISP employee,

    Jashamel
  • You misunderstood; the person trying to look at my resume was a headhunter at a placement agency.

    I'm more interested in: Since my ISP *knew* I was being censored and didn't tell me about it, are they liable to refund the money I've paid them for the time I've been censored?

  • Clarifications (Score:4)

    by John R. Johns II ( 72489 ) on Monday July 26, 1999 @07:42PM (#1782694)
    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

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