Monday, July 1, 2002

Censorware Blocks SourceForge -- 4:05 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

SmartFilter, a content censoring/blocking system, blocks access to all sourceforge.net pages. Slashdot is running the story. The reason given is that sourceforge.net is an "MP3" site. Ummm, yeah. For those of you not in the know, Sourceforge offers hosting for open-source projects. This is precisely why I am against these kinds of "filters." They just don't work. "Smart"Filter indeed.

J.t.Qbe comments: If it's truly a smart filter, it'll be updateable so that sites like this can be allowed once the company is notified. The Slashdot writeup has conspiracy overtones (the filter allows Microsoft sites, but not Sourceforge), but the truth is that Slashdot has an axe to grind on filtering. Yes, this is a misstep--but does that mean that all filtering should be thrown out? Definitely not: I don't want the local libraries providing access to internet filth to anyone who wants it. Period.

News for 07/01/2002

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