Pot Calls Kettle Censor

In the red corner, SafeSurf is the original wacky band of labelling nuts. If you've posted anything to the net without labelling it, they think you need to be sued good and hard, and if it was inappropriate for an 8-year-old you need to go to jail. In the blue corner, MAPS continues to unashamedly blacklist websites for just sharing a network with sites that "support" spam. The fun began when MAPS blacklisted SafeSurf, ensuring millions of TeleGlobe customers were silently kept off the SafeSurf site. The victim has posted a beautiful, pained whine about "stealth censorship" which includes some really awesome metaphors. It's an epic battle of ideologies. Who will win? I say... the audience.

Here's an actual quote from SafeSurf's legislative proposal, I just love this:

"Negligence [failure to label] in the absence of damages may be a civil violation of the rights of the receivers of that data, but it shall not be a criminal offense unless the data is deemed to be harmful to minors. ... Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child..."

Note: since SafeSurf's press release, their site has been taken off the RBL. But for some reason TeleGlobe is still blocking them (click "trace", type "safesurf.com", and wait several minutes for the blocked pings to time out inside TeleGlobe's network). I thought this was supposed to be the realtime blackhole list. Anyway, TeleGlobe is the same ISP that promises it will not "review, censor, or edit the material that is accessible through Teleglobe's network," and adds:

Q. Does Teleglobe support blocking access to ISPs and their non-spamming customers as a method of curtailing spam?

A. No. Teleglobe believes that advocates seeking to punish unwitting collateral ISPs and users who may be tenuously linked to a spam source are acting against the best interests of the Internet community as a whole.

TeleGlobe is one of the few backbones or major ISPs that still uses the RBL to censor websites, since I think AboveNet quit doing it. Anyone know of any others?

At least ..

[Eloquence]

.. SafeSurf has changed their old SS-style logo [humanist.de], which was quite reminiscent of the nazi SS logo [adl.org]. Their new logo [safesurf.com], however, still looks pretty creepy.

If websites causing damage get sued ...

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

let's start with cnn.com ... they are at least partly responsible for the average united states IQ and that is responsible for ... well ....

precision bombing [yahoo.com] (AGAIN)

[yahoo.com]
terror laws (well, one cannot argue that the name isn't accurate)

[yahoo.com]
they're firing on our invasion force !!! THE BASTARDS (ok you didn't do it, but you provided the invasion force)

America's online losers [aol.com]

Microsoft Stupidity Network [msn.com] (this is slashdot, and there was no mention of microsoft in this post, I'm no karma whore, but I'm not stupid ;-) )

Re:Am I the only one...

[Todd Knarr]

Naw, you want it passed. When it passes, you immediately sue SafeSurf for publishing information (their blocked-site list) that you feel harmed your child (by preventing them from finding information on various topics that could save their life). Then watch SafeSurf try to worm out of their own legal language.

How do I mod the article up?

[pigeonhed]

Cause that was so funny I just ruined a keyboard.

Mod Article: +1 Funny

Hyperbole

[jayhawk88]

Thousands of family friendly Web sites, for no fault of their own, are being rendered inaccessible by "stealth censorship" and it may be putting people's lives at risk, warned SafeSurf, the online safety organization.

That's pretty good, but what they really needed to do here was say that it put children's lives at risk. Orphan children. Orphan children who have been raising money for their local church community center. And who own puppies.

You don't want to see church fund raising, puppy owning, orphan children be put at risk, do you?