Art Alexion on 21 Oct 2008 13:26:10 -0700


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Re: [PLUG] MBSFW Happy Soon To Be Halloween


On Tuesday 21 October 2008 3:13:10 pm brent timothy saner wrote:
> perhaps you are not familiar with how 90+% of EDUCATIONAL and CORPORATE
> filtering/blocking software works.

I share in the administration of our corporate firewall.


>
> 1. via keywords.
> "satanic" alone would be enough to get the site blocked in most
> institutions. do i agree with that policy? no, not necessarily but it's
> reality.
>
> 2. via flags
> some of the bigger companies have employees hunt down websites that
> contain potential offenses. that one image of a nude model? that's
> enough to get the entire domain blocked.
>
> 3. association
> if something links to a blocked/flagged site within X many hops, that
> can get the ENTIRE DOMAIN blocked. even if it's not related, and is
> submitted via end-user (i.e. a comment on a blog).

<raised eyebrows> on #3.


>
>
> i don't know if you were aware of this, but PLUG PUBLICLY ARCHIVES
> posts. webcrawlers for blocking companies will see the link in that post
> (hell, this thread) and will block www.plug.org.

That would be the Provo list? ;^)  

Our archives are at http://lists.netisland.net/archives/plug/ if you need 
them. Google seems to index them well.


>
> congratulations; in your endeavor to defend a collection of questionable
> themes, you've now blocked the entire archives. which is a shame,

Well, I'm not sure that my defending a post some find offensive would be the 
cause of blocking by an overzealous firewall administrator.

Hey, I realize my perspective may be different.  The very large non-profit 
human services agency I work for is much more liberal (in the literal sense, 
not the political one) than most entities our size.

We block things like youtube.com and phobos.apple.com for bandwidth, and 
rarely block for content.

Again, I am sorry if my over-reaction to this caused any grief.  It just hit a 
raw nerve.  

By the way, the school district where my wife works frowns upon teachers 
reading any personal mail at their desks; you don't even get to judge 
content.



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