PC World Reviews Filters -Reply

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

This was an interesting article (and the word "tweaking" seems to
have filtered [pun intended] to the nonlibrarian crowd). 
However, the article is oriented to parents (as you would expect,
since home users are probably a big audience for PC World) and
thus, not surprisingly, oriented toward what the tools block.  The
potential impact of filters on information services, addressed in
TIFAP, was raised only incidentally.  

One other nit.  Pasnik talks about Cyber Patrol's complexity of
configuration, which I'll second, but it's not at all  clear how Cyber
Patrol was configured.  It sounds as if RSACI or SafeSurf was
enabled, and that she evaluated CP with and without access
blocked to unrated sites (an interesting PICS exercise).  It's hard
to tell, and I wish I knew.  

Finally, Pasnik mentions that Cyber Snoop will soon offer
keyword blocking.  I hope this product allows you to disable this
feature (from my familiarity with the Cyber Snoop control panel, I
am pretty sure they will, since their real market is monitoring).  As
TIFAP ably demonstrated,  keyword blocking is not a plus.  It will
play devil with any serious information query.  And tools that
Pasnik said "blocked all adult sites" (Cybersitter and Surfwatch)
rely heavily on keyword blocking.  

On the other hand, it's great to see discussions about filtering
software that are not addlebrained pap extolling its virtues, such
as the review of Cybersitter that appeared earlier this year in a
computer magazine--a review so unrelated to the reality of this
product that my eyebrows were arched for the entire reading.  (A
systems person emailed me to explain that their choices had been
driven by this review, so don't assume that the average computer
person is savvy about filtering.)  Pasnick's article was overall
quite sensible, and emphasized that filters cannot "replace adult
supervision."  That's a message library customers need to hear,
particularly the crowd seeking the handy-dandy Netscape
plug-in that will make the Internet instantly compatible with their
own values.  Whether or not you use filters, y'all know it's not that
simple.

My thanks to the Chucks and to Jian for mentioning the Times
article.  I think it captured the flavor of TIFAP and of my
forthcoming book.

Karen G. Schneider/schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
Contractor, GCI/Director, US EPA Region 2 Library
http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/
Author, forthcoming: A Practical Guide to Internet Filters