Cyber Patrol blocks access to Yahoo...

[CMUNSON]

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: Cyber Patrol  blocks access to Yahoo...
Author:  "Shirl Kennedy" <sdk at mindspring.com> at Internet
Date:    11/17/97 8:22 PM


Did not snip out explanation deliberately.  Snipped out explanation to avoid 
posting entire article to list.
     
My point being...this technology is still dicey.  It's too easy for a 
"mistake" like this to happen.  Naturally, hoards of folks will notice if a 
site like Yahoo is blocked, even temporarily.  But what about other, less 
mainstream/popular sites that get cut out of the loop by one of these 
filtering products..."accidentally."
     
     
     The problem is that this technology doesn't work and even if it did, 
     it doesn't belong in libraries. I don't see why we should allow an 
     extreme minority, with known censorial tendencies, to set any of the 
     terms of this debate. I say that we should set some professional 
     standards and take an activist approach towards these attacks on 
     public libraries.
     
     There is abundant evidence that censorware will block sites that it 
     isn't designed to and will miss sites that it should block. What's 
     frightening is that there are librarians who think that there is a 
     place for such censorial technology in our libraries. 
     
     I think we should stop being wussy librarians on this and stand up to 
     these nutcases like Gounauld and her "Family Friendly Libraries."
     
     Chuck0
     Anti-Filtering FAQ (under construction)
     http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/1672/censors.html