{"id":3966,"date":"2003-03-05T16:16:06","date_gmt":"2003-03-05T21:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=3966"},"modified":"2003-03-05T16:16:06","modified_gmt":"2003-03-05T21:16:06","slug":"filtering_tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/03\/05\/filtering_tips.html","title":{"rendered":"Filtering tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supremes today heard arguments regarding CIPA, the latest attempt by Congress to mandate Internet content filtering<\/a> at libraries and schools.<\/p>\n

Congress tried to get around two previous judicial rejections by simply saying that libraries were only required to use the filtering if they accepted federal funds to buy PCs and Net access in the first place. Given that libraries almost never have enough money, the pressure to accept is almost impossible to resist.<\/p>\n

But given that Internet filters still, frankly, suck at blocking just <\/i>porn, using filters is highly problematic. On the radio this a.m., one of the reps of a filtering software company was bragging about how their product coiuld catch 90% of the adults sites (meaning one out of ten sites get through) and “only” 1% of sites blocked is a legitimate site. <\/p>\n

Making things worse, the filtering companies refuse to reveal what material they block, using what criteria. On the one hand, that makes sense, since adult sites would love to reverse-engineer how to avoid detection. On the other hand, it means that legitimate sites have no way of knowing why they might be blocked. <\/p>\n

Sure, maybe the library can set up rules to let an adult come and ask a librarian to override blockage on a given site. That’s fine, as long as the adult in question doesn’t mind letting the librarian know that she’s looking up material about breast cancer, or he’s researching material about homosexuality, or …<\/p>\n

Would you want to have to ask the librarian permission to read all the books you’ve ever read? Would you like to let anyone know about what you want to look up on the Internet?<\/p>\n

What’s most irksome about the Bush Adminstration’s case is that they’re presenting CIPA as empowering the libraries. Say what?<\/p>\n

Ted Olson, the Justice Department’s solicitor general, told the justices on Wednesday that librarians “are simply declining to put on their computer systems the kind of content they have chosen not to put on their bookshelves…The First Amendment does not require libraries to sponsor the viewing of pornography.”<\/p>\n

That’s true. But libraries aren’t getting a choice here, are they? It’s not that Congress is offering them filtering software, it’s mandating it. If libraries want to pursue a different route to keeping kids from downloading skin pics (like, say, requiring kids to use Internet stations in view of librarians), they don’t have that choice.<\/p>\n

(And I’ll note, parenthetically, that while I never visited a public library that stocked pornography per se<\/i>, I certainly, ah, found books in my youth with rather, um, racy scenes that quite appealed to my adolescent prurience, both fiction and non-.)<\/p>\n

Justice David Souter suggested that CIPA was different, because it turns over decisions about which Web sites to block to software companies that view their blocklists, or lists of off-limit sites, as trade secrets. “The companies that do prepare them (blocklists) will not even disclose what they are blocking,” Souter said. “When libraries have historically made these decisions, they have known what they’re blocking.”
\n“Libraries have known that they don’t stock pornography,” Olson countered.<\/p>\n

Puh-leaze<\/i>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supremes today heard arguments regarding CIPA, the latest attempt by Congress to mandate Internet content filtering at libraries and schools. Congress tried to get around two previous judicial rejections…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zt-pc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9659,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/17\/dumb_filters.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":0},"title":"Dumb Filters","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-May-06 2:23pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If it weren't that so many schools and libraries are required to use Internet content filters, as opposed to dumb, set-and-forget home users, this sort of thing would be funny....","rel":"","context":"In "Hi-Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Hi-Tech","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/hi-tech"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4330,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/09\/23\/thats_a_lot_of.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":1},"title":"That’s a lot of, er, nooky","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 23-Sep-03 9:22pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A new study estimates that there are about 260 million porn pages on Internet. The amount has grown by 1800% since 1998. Granted, the study's from a web filtering company,...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9401,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/07\/15\/spamdammit.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":2},"title":"Spamdammit","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 15-Jul-06 8:15am","format":false,"excerpt":"I am getting godawfully tired of spam on my home account. I'm spending 10-15 minutes every day just filtering out the crap. I need to look at a solution beyond...","rel":"","context":"In "Spam"","block_context":{"text":"Spam","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/computer-security\/spam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2569,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/06\/03\/book_em.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":3},"title":"Book ’em","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 3-Jun-02 3:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A federal appeals court has thrown out the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which would have mandated that libraries use Internet filter software or lose their federal funding. I'm certainly...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3419,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/11\/25\/fleshpot.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":4},"title":"Fleshpot","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Nov-02 3:55pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If you're the Flesh Public Library (named seventy years ago after local business man Leo Flesh), you shouldn't be surprised when your (federally mandated) Internet filtering software doesn't let you...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":458,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/04\/10\/filter_tips.html","url_meta":{"origin":3966,"position":5},"title":"Filter tips","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-Apr-03 3:14pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Google is under fire for its opt-in porn filter. A new study says that it blocks a lot of non-porn sites. Some of the URLs listed in the listings below...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}