Schneider Letter to Meeks and Berry (fwd)

[SHERYL DWINELL]

Again, I ask, where is your own body of research on filters?  Karen 
should get credit for at least taking on such a massive project, as 
unscientific as it may be.  Besides complaining about ALA , ACLU and 
anti-filtering librarians, what sort of practical work are you doing on 
this issue, Mr. Burt?  Are you actively involved in working with 
librarians and vendors to produce useful, easy to maintain filters that 
the libraries who want filters can use?

As someone who was involved in TIFAP I take offense at your 
characterizations of the project.  You weren't privy to many of the emails 
exchanged between project participants and Karen.  There are many of us 
who indicated on our forms that we found things we thought should be 
blocked for young children.  I think you'll be surprised when her book 
comes out that she's more fair-minded and objective than you may believe 
her to be.

As someone who tested Cybersitter 97, where you cannot turn off keyword 
blocking and know of libraries that are using it, your claims that no 
library uses filtering software where keyword blocking cannot be turned 
off is wrong. Cybersitter also blocked an article by Declan McCullough in 
a recent issue of Time online that made a mildly disparaging remark about 
CS. This wasn't second hand information from an anti-filterer. It 
occurred on my own PC with CS enabled.  I can't be absolutely sure why it 
was blocked, but it seems a bit odd.  Amongst the usual assortment of 
naughty words, it also blocks the words "pleasure" and "hotlinks" on web 
pages.  Clearly software that doesn't belong in libraries, right? But 
it's there.  

Further, with keyword blocking turned off on filters, their ability to 
block offensive material diminishes to various degrees.  I think this 
sort of information is important for libraries who install filters.

I think what Karen is trying to do is provide some information that 
librarians can use as ONE aid in making decisions about filters. 
Ultimately, it will be left to the library and their community to decide.