UNBlocked by Cyber Patrol

[Jamie McCarthy]

Looking at what I just wrote, it was a lot of verbiage to try to make
a simple point:  that we need to understand that blacklists are
inherently flawed.

I think I can make that same point more directly.  Can anyone explain to
me why http://gaydaze.com/ and http://www.stonewallinc.com/ were on
Cyber Patrol's blacklist as FullNude and SexActs?  They are a gay online
"soap opera" and a gay coffeehouse;  neither had any nudity or any
sexually explicit material on them.

The obvious explanation is that they were on the blacklist because they
were gay sites.  Somehow, somewhere, someone put these sites on the
blacklist, either because of outright bias or because the humans working
at the company do nothing but scan for porn all day, and when they see
another site pop up that mentions something about being gay, they
clicked the "blacklist it" button without thinking much.

So, how could we ever come to believe that bias will never be part of a
secret blacklist?  That it won't happen again, and that there aren't
still many surprises like these lurking in every censorware product,
because of their inherent nature?

In short:  what were those sites doing on the blacklist?

(P.S. our report's page on libraries has just been put up moments ago.
http://www.spectacle.org/cwp/libraries.html )

--
 Jamie McCarthy                                     jamie at mccarthy.org
 http://www.absence.prismatix.com/jamie/