Journalists discover being censorware'd
Preface: A while back, I had long-running (private) argument with an activist who is far better known than me. His view was that I could be much better known myself if I just worked harder (I found this very offensive). My rebuttal was that he had gotten some very good press, for complicated reasons, and basically didn't realize how lucky he was (he found this very offensive).
Well, [redacted], if you're reading this, here is another proof that what matters is press-reach, far more than anything else.
Background:
A censorware program typically has many blacklists, not only "pornography". One common blacklist is for pages on free hosts - such as big blog services. Many organizations ban such pages indiscriminately, on a batter-safe-than-sorry theory. This has been known for almost a decade. It's now news.
Dan Gillmor has two links that provide information that may well be crucial to everybody who like me uses Blogger or Typepad to host a blog. The bottomline is there appears to be more than a few corporations that don't want employees to be able to access blogs hosted by Blogger or Typepad. That of course won't be the end of it. Credit Robert Ambrogi with breaking this story.
Sigh. There's just no point to my ever doing censorware investigations ever again (yes, I am bitter). If it's not noticed by the gatekeepers, it might as well not exist. And conversely, if it is noticed by the gatekeepers, legally risky, difficult, decryption, is far more than necessary. That's simply the facts of the matter.
[Update: Note James S. Tyre gives an explanation of censorware to other lawyers]
By Seth Finkelstein | posted in censorware | on April 15, 2005 05:20 PM (Infothought permalink)
I'm sorry to hear about the foul taste that your work on censorware has left you. I heard about you when you started doing this and your efforts were well-respected by me and my kind.
Thanks for trying anyway. I appreciated it.