Pot Calls Kettle Censor 206
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?
Quit your whining and use the marketplace (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's an idea: instead of wasting their time whining about how awful MAPS is, why doesn't SafeSurf simply take their business elsewhere? Quit using TeleGlobe's service, tell them why you are leaving their service, and set up shop elsewhere. If using the RBL is so evil and dangerous, ISPs will quit using it when enough customers leave because of it.
Finally, raise your hand if you've ever been in a life-threatening emergency and chose to dial-up and check a disaster relief site as opposed to getting somewhere safe and calling 911. SafeSurf's use of that analogy (Think of the children! Think of the children's lives!) to further their point is sickening.
IP-less virtual hosting victim? (Score:5, Interesting)
$ host www.safesurf.com
www.safesurf.com. is an alias for safesurf.com.
safesurf.com. has address 63.107.146.25
$ host 63.107.146.25
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer ustoyou.com.
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer safesurf.com.
25.146.107.63.in-addr.arpa. domain name pointer us2you.com.
WARNING: Browse the 'us2you.com' sites at your own risk. Porn pop-ups abound.
Their analogy of MAPS blocking an entire telephone prefix isn't very sound. It's more like safesurf.com using a party line, and MAPS blocks access to their very specific phone number. It's not their fault you chose to get your site connectivity with a shared IP address.
*shrug* I personally think this is pretty amusing. I would definitely be asking my provider for a new IP address, though, one that wasn't being used by the types of people the MAPS RBL targets.
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Interesting)
"... Publishers may be sued
but
"...The parents
So the publishers can be sued by any parent, and they will AUTOMATICALLY LOSE the case because the parent's don't have to prove any wrongdoing?
Where's my passport? If this shit gets passed, I'm outa here.
Re:Libertarian Parent (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, what are you teaching her about how to deal with the sort of material you have chosen to censor? How is she going to know how to react to it when she encounters it when you're not there to censor it? She will eventually encounter it without you there, even if she has to wait until she's 18 to do it. You would really rather prevent her from seeing it now and prevent her from having the benefit of your wisdom on the topic?
I talked to my aunt about it once. She's a conservative Christian, and I figured she'd be as conservative as possible about her children's use of the net, and I was concerned about it. I was surprised: she lets all three kids use the net uncensored... but not unsupervised. She'll let them look at whatever they want to, but they have to do it when and where an adult family member can see them to provide guidance about what they're looking at. She told me she knows her children will all have to face the world without her someday, and she wants them to have the knowledge, ability, and background to help them deal with it well.
Consequently if one of her kids accidentally encounters adult material (which is a far less common thing than people make it out to be, but it can happen) they're merely uninterested and just find another page to look at.
There is one case where I think the government should come down hard, fast, and without mercy. I want to hurt those scumbags who use urls that are common variations of sites kids might go to, but are really porn sites, e.g. whitehouse.com and disny.com.
Thank God we have the constitution to stop people like you.
The net is like the world: not designed for small children, but capable of being useful to them. If you want your children to be able to use the net, you have to supervise their use of it yourself, just as you supervise your child living in the world. If you can't take the time to fulfill your parental responsibilities regarding the net, you shouldn't let your child on the net. It's not everybody else's responsibility to make sure your child is safe and/or not exposed to what you don't want your child exposed to by changing the net, just as it's not our responsibility to ensure that your child is always safe everywhere on earth by eliminating all sharp objects.
And I'll remind you of something else: it is not only your responsibility as a parent to protect your child and see to their well being, but also to see that they aren't a nuisance to everyone around them and that they are socialized properly. So, even if you could get perfect censorware software (which we know can't exist, but let's pretend), it would still be your obligation to monitor your child's internet usage to ensure that they don't annoy everybody else on the net. So, why should we go changing the net to accomodate your tastes given that it's your responsibility to be there anyway?
If disny.com is a porn site, though, you might contact the Disney company about it, which might take perfectly legitimate (and constitutional) legal action of their own about the matter, such as for trademark violation.
Re:MAPS is a democratic process. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Libertarian Parent (Score:2, Interesting)
I am a fairly young teenager. I've been using the Internet since I was 5, when all we had was a link through Compuserve as a gateway.
Back when we first got the WWW (1995) my Dad used to sit with me while I used the Internet, although he never really paid attention. I wasn't allowed to go into WWW chat rooms, and that was it. There was a similar policy for books I read. Occasionally he would leaf through a book I was reading, but almost always just to see what I was reading at the time.
I must say that the lack of censorship enriched my life immeasurably. I highly doubt that I would have been allowed to read Heinlein if my Dad had actually censured my reading material, yet from many of them I learned important principles and read great literature. Same on the WWW. I doubt I'd be reading Slashdot right now if my family had had a policy of censureship. I sincerely doubt that I'd be typing this now on a computer I built had I been censured; my elementary teachers had a thing about me reading at an appropriate grade level (a.k.a. lower than what I could). My father did not. And when I finally came across what I decided was improper, I decided not to because of ideas I'd learned from Socrates, not out of a fear of Big Brother. As far as I can tell, I have not been traumatized.
So do what you want. I suppose you are a parent, and your decisions take precedence over mine (at least for now). But I can only say that you are detracting from your daughter's life. Enrich it. Let her run free.
Re:What am I missing? (Score:2, Interesting)
While that may be the effect, that is not the fact. MAPS is not blocking anyone. All MAPS is doing is publishing information about spam. They are providing a service. How other people use that information is not MAPS's responsibility. More importantly, if MAPS misbehaves it will be ignored.
And the purpose of putting SafeSurf (and other websites) on the RBL was to get them censored so that MAPS could throw its weight around to further its goals.
In this case SafeSurf shared an exact IP address with a spammer. There was no way to to block just one. In most cases it is nessasary to list an entire block of addresses because of dynamic IP's and/or the ISP will allow spammers onto any of it's addresses. And MAPS will have no weight to throw around if it misbehaves.
I'm hoping, like me, you disagree with the means used to achieve them.
While the means may not be perfect, it's the best I know of. If you'd like to suggest an alternative I'm all ears. I only know of two other options. End user filtering or laws. End user filtering would consume almost as much time as the spam itself, and would be futile. Spammers would always work to get around filtering. Laws are futile because it would require a law in every nation, and spammers would break the laws anyway. The worst part of spam laws is that we do NOT want to encourage internet laws. Lawmakers have no clue, and have done too much damage already.
We're better off letting the internet police itself.
I hate to say it, but Just say NO to spam laws.
An "open letter". (Score:2, Interesting)
As opposed to blocking sites that use one word you don't like. EG: 2600.com has nothing but news reports and an online store, but using the word "hacking" got them banned by this and similar systems. Several history sites were also banned because "nazi", "hitler" and "kill jews" were all used...so now 'the children' can't even do their homework. Guess they'll go play Diablo instead, since their computers are useless for that homework thing.
MAPS may claim that their actions are in the interest of good, but in reality they would easily trade in the good of children to achieve their goal.
...and you claim you actions are in the interest of good, but in reality you easily trade in the good of people as a whole to achieve your goal.
Censorship is a broad brush that drips paint on the pure, as well as the tainted.
Imagine trying to connect to a crisis assistance site after a devastating earthquake, only to find its among a vast IP group being blocked by
You? Imagine being in an internet cafe and trying to check emergency sites or news sites after the WTC attack, only to find that cafe uses your product, thus banning sites with words like "terrorist/ism" "bombs" "kill americans" and "fuck america". Sound too weird to be true? Sorry...it happened!! But since you love analogies so much here's one: Just like I complained to the owner of that internet cafe who uses your software, maybe you should be complaining to the ISP's who chose to use MAPS.
People sicken me more by the minute.