Walt Crawford "Cites & Insights" on Kaiser censorware study
Walt Crawford has some insightful censorware comments in his excellent "Cites & Insights" publication for January 2003: Vol. 3 No. 1, regarding the Kaiser Family Foundation censorware study "See No Evil" (and a nice mention of me too :-))
While some media accounts - and the rapid claims from David Burt and the filtering fraternity - touted Kaiser's study as proof that filters are fine, just fine, some journalists took the time to read the study itself. Ellen Edwards' December 10 story in the Washington Post is headlined "Filtering software may block access to health information, study finds." She quotes David Burt, "This shows us that filters do work," and ALA's Emily Sheketoff, "We're gratified once more that there's a study finding that filtering doesn't work." Paul Eng of ABC News posted a December 11 story, "Filtered finds: New study shows how net porn filters block online health info." Unfortunately, he stuck with the "1.4%" figure, not digging deeper into the study - but then, this is network TV news.Seth Finkelstein took the opportunity to excerpt some cases from SmartFilter, because he'd been studying SmartFilter for a previous censorware project. He cites some examples of health sites that SmartFilter bans as "sex": Alliance of the American Dental Association, ActiveHealthcare.com, Eyeshealth.com, Professionals for women's health, and the site for the adult primary care nurse practitioner. See sethf.com/anticensorware/smartfilter/damage6.php , and note that sites may have been unblocked after he posted the list.
[Ed note - SmartFilter finally caught up with them all, a few days ago]
By Seth Finkelstein |
posted in censorware
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on January 11, 2003 06:24 PM
(Infothought permalink)
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