Fw: X-Stop blocking software

Tue Oct 14 12:04:40 EDT 1997

Guess I've been living in a cave.  First time I've seen any mention of this
X-Stop product...

Shirl Kennedy

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Agre <pagre at weber.ucsd.edu>
To: rre at weber.ucsd.edu <rre at weber.ucsd.edu>
Date: Tuesday, October 14, 1997 3:23 AM
Subject: X-Stop blocking software

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>Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 07:44:02 -0400
>From: jw at bway.net
>Subject: The X-Stop Files
>
>THE X-STOP FILES
>
>Self-proclaimed library-friendly product blocks
>Quakers, free speech and gay sites
>
>By Jonathan Wallace jw at bway.net
>
>FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>Contact: Jonathan Wallace
>Day: 212-513-7777
>Evening: 718-797-9808
>
>New York, October 5, 1997--
>"You bless the lives of those you care about
> when you remove temptation." LOG-ON Data Corporation,
>distributors of X-Stop blocking software, have adopted
>this quote, attributed to John Patterson, founder of
>the National Cash Register Corporation, as a company
>slogan. It appears at the top of each of the product-related
>White Papers  on the Anaheim, California company's web
>site (http://www.xstop.com).
>
>LOG-ON claims that its X-Stop product is superior
>to other blockers on the market today,
>which include Safesurf, Surfwatch,
>Net Nanny, Cyberpatrol and Cybersitter.
> First of all, its Mudcrawler spider is,
>it claims, more effective at locating pornographic
>material on the Web than the teams of college students
>employed by some of its competitors. Secondly,
>the company claims that its  "felony load" library
>version blocks only obscene material
>illegal under the Supreme Court case of Miller
>v. California. This, LOG-ON says, makes the
>product the best option  available today
>for libraries, which wish to block only hardcore
>materials and not deny controversial literary,
>artistic or political sites to their patrons.
>
>The privately-held, for profit company has had
>some success  interesting libraries in X-Stop.
>Witness the dispute currently underway to Virginia's
>Loudoun County, where the decision by the library trustees
>to buy and install blocking software is currently being
>challenged by a local organization, Mainstream Loudoun.
>The group, composed of local parents and others concerned
>about what they perceive as fundamentalist influence in
>the county's libraries and schools, have appealed to the
>library board to reconsider. Meanwhile, another
>group, led by a member of the pro-censorship
>group Enough is Enough, is pressing
>the library to install X-Stop, based on its claim that
>it blocks only obscene sites.
>
>The American Library Association has come out against
>the use of blocking software in libraries in a
> statement made in July. The American Civil Liberties
>Union agrees that  the First Amendment bars the use of blocking
>software in public libraries, and is monitoring
>the situation in Loudoun County and elsewhere.
>
>Does X-Stop promote a fundamentalist world view? The
> company boasts on its web pages that
>X-Stop has been endorsed by
>the following organizations, all of which supported the
>Communications Decency Act and have
> taken pro-censorship positions in disputes
>invlving offline and online speech:
>the American Family Association,
> Enough is Enough, Family Friendly Libraries,
>Focus on the Family, Family Research Council,
>and Oklahomans for Children and Families. (This
>last is the organization that recently got the
>film The Tin Drum seized by Oklahoma police.)
>
>LOG-ON's claims that X-Stop is tailored for library use
>have apparently been accepted by some librarians
>and journalists. Boston Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray,
>in a piece published on July 24, repeated LOG-ON's
>claims about the effectiveness of Mudcrawler. On
>August 29, Karen Jo Gounaud of the pro-censorship
>group Family Friendly Libraries, posted a message
>to a mailing list for librarians in which she
>said, "I was witness to [a] report and information
>this week that convinced me there
>is no equal to the X-Stop program.
>It's even better than I thought."
>
>How do LOG-ON's claims about the scope of its software
>and its appropriateness for libraries measure up?
>Of great interest to free speech advocates is the
>company's claim that X-Stop's "felony load" version
>only blocks materials held to be legally
>obscene under the rules set by the Supreme Court in
>Miller.  The Miller standard defines obscenity as speech which
>is prurient, patently offensive and lacking in serious
>scientific, literary, artistic or political value.
>
>Here's what LOG-ON claims on its web site:
>
>"Our 'librarian' blocked sites list is
> created according to the 'Miller'
> standard as defined by the Supreme
> Court: blocked sites show sexual acts,
> bestiality, and child pornography.
> Legitimate art or education sites are not
> blocked by the library edition, nor are
> so-called 'soft porn' or 'R' rated sites
> like lingerie, sex toys, and nudity where
> no sexual act is shown."
>
>"This is a completely absurd claim," says First Amendment
>attorney James S. Tyre of Bigelow, Moore
>& Tyre in Pasadena, California.  "LOG-ON is setting itself
>up as judge, jury and executioner when it makes
>unilateral decisions about what is obscene under
>the Miller standard -- and there is ample reason to
>believe that the owners of the company have little
>knowledge about how to apply the standard. The X-Stop
>'felony load' blocks a great number of sites which no
>reasonable person would consider obscene, including
>websites for print publications carried by most all
>public libraries."
>
>Indeed, X-Stop blocks numerous sites that cannot possibly
>be obscene under the Miller standard, because they contain
>no explicit sexual material of any kind.
>
>Here are a few examples of sites blocked by
>X-Stop (from a version distributed by X-Stop at the
>end of July):
>
>-- The University of Chicago's Fileroom
>project, which tracks acts of censorship around the
>world (http://fileroom.aaup.uic.edu/FileRoom/documents);
>
>--The National Journal of Sexual Orientation Law,
>which describes itself as devoted to
>"legal issues affecting lesbians, gay
>men and bisexuals" (http://sunsite.unc.edu/gaylaw/);
>
>--The Banned Books page at Carnegie
>Mellon, which gives a historical account of the travails of books
>such as Candide and Ulysses
>( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/people/spok/banned-books.html);
>
>--The American Association of University Women,
>which describes itself as a national organization
> that "promotes education and equity for all women and girls"
>(http://www.aauw.org);
>
>--The AIDS Quilt site, for people interested in learning
>more about HIV and AIDS, with statistics on the disease
>and links to other relevant sites
>(http://www.aidsquilt.org/aidsinfo);
>
>  --Portions of the "AOL Sucks" site dealing with
>criticism of the America OnLine terms of service
>(TOS) (http://www.aolsucks.org/censor/tos);
>
>--The Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank
>whose mission is to "formulate and promote
>conservative public policies
>based on the principles of free enterprise, limited
>government, individual freedom,
>traditional American values, and a strong national
>defense" (http://www.heritage.org);
>
>--A number of political sites hosted by the progressive
>ISP  IGC.APC.ORG, including
>the "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting" site
>(http://www.igc.apc.org/fair");
>
>--The Religious Society of Friends, better known as
>the Quakers (http://www.quaker.org);
>
>--Quality Resources Online, a clearinghouse for books
>and other materials relating to quality in business
>operations (http://www.quality.org).
>
>  "They're saying that Mudcrawler can
>automatically determine the merit of text and images,
>that it can make a complex legal decision. That's
>an utterly ridiculous and absurd claim. Just
>look how people argue all the time over literature
>and art," said Seth Finkelstein, a professional software
>developer who maintains an on-line collection of resources
>against blocking software  at
>http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/labeling/summary.html.
>"Instead, they seem to blacklist anything they dislike,
>such as gay and lesbian material or anti-censorship
>organizations, or whatever innocent sites
>happen to fall victim to the scattershot rules behind
>their bans."
>
>Bennett Haselton, a college student who is founder
>of the anti-censorship student organization Peacefire
>(http://www.peacefire.org) agrees.
>Haselton said, "Maybe X-Stop's intentions
>were originally to block only 'obscenity,
>bestiality and child pornography', but
>positive reviews from Family Friendly
>Libraries and OCAF should pertain to the
>actual product, not the manufacturer's intentions.
>If I can find a collection of safe sex sites
>that are blocked by X-Stop just by experimenting
>with the program for an hour, then the groups who
>support the program either haven't looked very
>hard for such examples of blocked sites, or they
>think it doesn't matter."
>
>"X-Stop is an excellent example of why public libraries
>shouldn't purchase blocking software," said attorney
>James Tyre. "Under the
>First Amendment, librarians should be making the decisions,
>not private commercial operations like LOG-ON. Like the
>other products out there, this one blocks a lot
>of sites no reasonable librarian would ever exclude."
>
>------------------------------------------------------
>Jonathan Wallace, jw at bway.net,
>is a software executive, attorney and
>free speech activist based in New York City. He is
>publisher of The Ethical Spectacle, http://www.spectacle.org,
>portions of which are blocked by X-Stop, and co-author
>with Mark Mangan of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace
>(Henry Holt 1996), a book on Internet censorship.
>
>-END-
>
>
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