Tuesday, June 24. 2003
Sites you won't see from your local public library
These are some sites that I have heard that, at various times, been blocked by Internet Filter software (Some I can attribute, some you'll have to take my word on):
- Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Online (Seth Finkelstein)
- All Anonymizer Sites
- Babelfish
- Gay.com. (NPR Report) Go ahead, try it. it won't bite, it's just a community portal. The kind of thing someone might really want to see, if they're looking for support.
- Affirmation - Gay and Lesbian Mormons (Seth Finkelstein) That's right - Mormons.
- An oldie but a goodie. Cyber Patrol blocked The American Family Association for "Intolerance". (c|net news, 1998 ). I love irony.
- Algeria Watch, a human rights monitoring site in Germany, was blocked by SurfWatch as "sexually explicit" in 2000. (peacefire.org)
- Amnesty International Israel
- Here's one that will make you think. Peacefire.org took quotes DIRECTLYoff of 4 conservative web sites, including Dr. Laura's site, posted those quotes onsome GeoCities web pages, and reported themselves to 6 filtering companies using Hotmail accounts as "hate speech".The companies blocked the newly created sites. However, when told where thequotes came from, none of the filtering companies would respond, and noneof the original sites was ever blocked.
- How about a site dedicated to giving honest answers to tough questions - the kind of questions a teen might go to the library to have answered, if they felt uncomfortable at home (Ben Edelman)
Also, on an NPR report this morning, a librarian admitted that she had noidea whether she could disable the filtering for an adult patron, ifasked. She said she would have to "look in to that".
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