FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: What CyberPatrol doesn't want you to see

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:15:44 -0800 (PST) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu Copies to: mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca, srm_dfr@hotmail.com Subject: FC: What CyberPatrol doesn't want you to see Send reply to: declan@well.com

So I took a look through the CyberNOT list and was pleasantly unsurprised by the program's zaniness, idiocy, and sheer lunacy. Incompetence and prudishness are still alive and well in the censorware industry!

To be fair to CyberPatrol, the bulk of the verboten-links are sexually explicit, or at least may have been at some point in the last five years. But parents and libraries might want to think twice about installing something that can't tell a quilting club from sexybabes.com.

For instance, CyberPatrol blocks all student organizations at Carnegie Mellon University, including (you guessed it) the Carnegie Threads quilting club, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, and robotics clubs: http://loiosh.andrew.cmu.edu/org/ (Sexual Acts / Text, Intolerance)

For no apparent reason, it blocks the entire corporate site of Golden West Companies ("serving the communications needs of South Dakotans for over 40 years"): http://goldenwestcom.virtdomain.nortel.net/

What Usenet newsgroups Cyberpatrol's morality crusaders find objectionable is arguably even more interesting. For instance, journalism discussions are off-limits because of "intolerance," which might be a just criticism of some corners of the industry, but certainly doesn't seem enough to ban discussions of newsgathering:

alt.journalism:
alt.journalism.music:
alt.journalism.newspapers:
alt.journalism.print:
alt.journalism.photo:
alt.journalism.freelance:
alt.journalism.moderated:

Some others include discussions of Philip K. Dick's science fiction (alt.books.phil-k-dick is sorted into drug/drug culture), feminism, Jungian psychology, food, Chinese culture, and chess and bridge.

More info: http://www.politechbot.com/p-00994.html http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=censorware http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=loudoun

-Declan

alt.abuse-recovery:
alt.answers:
alt.cybercafes:
alt.feminism:
alt.feminism.individualism:
alt.multimedia.toolbook:
alt.multimedia.director:
alt.psychology.personality:
alt.psychology.help:
alt.psychology.person:
alt.psychology:
alt.psychology.jung:
alt.psychology.adlerian:
ba.motss (same-sex issues and discussions)
fj.rec.food:
fj.soc.culture.chinese:
misc.activism.progressive:
news.groups.reviews:
news.groups.questions:
news.groups:
ont.general:
princeton.general:
rec.games.chess.analysis:
rec.games.chess.misc:
rec.games.pinball:
rec.games.backgammon:
rec.games.board:
rec.games.bridge:

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