IT: Follow-up to Websense - free sex sites and "blacklist wars"

[Seth Finkelstein]

	A little while ago, I noted how Websense, a censorware
company, is distributing daily lists of sex sites supposedly not
blacklisted by other censorware companies. See:

http://sethf.com/anticensorware/websense/free_sex.php

	MSNBC picked up the story, and there's an excellent article
about it at:

http://www.msnbc.com/news/774905.asp?cp1=1
"Filter firm's Web site bares all"
"Websense links to X-rated sites that it says rivals didn't block"

	Websense remains unrepentant:

 "Meyer said that company executives were not concerned that kids
  would use the tool to access objectionable content that that might
  otherwise be blocked by their parents, teachers or librarians because
  the company's site caters to corporations and government entities
  rather than the public."

	I'm quoted in the article:

 "Seth Finkelstein, a civil libertarian computer programmer adamantly
  opposed to such "censorware," said the double standard apparently
  arises out of fear that an internecine feud would highlight the
  shortcomings of filtering technology."

 "If somebody else had done this, they would ban it immediately," said
  Finkelstein, who won the Electronic Freedom Foundation's 2001 Pioneer
  Award for his work in monitoring the filtering field.  "They do ban
  directories of such sites, but they're not doing it for this one."

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf[at-sign]sethf.com  http://sethf.com
Anticensorware Investigations - http://sethf.com/anticensorware/
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought list - http://sethf.com/infothought/
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/19/technology/circuits/19HACK.html