Seth - You didn't quote my whole post. I said that Secure had made a bad decision, in the initial categorization, and how they handled it subsequently.
I also don't believe, and never have believed that countries should legislate Internet access. That's why we spent a lot of time, and money, to defeat the Communications Decency Act.
That said, it has always smacked a bit of colonialism for the US to try to determine what is and is not right for other countries. We can have an opinion, but in the end, we should not force *our will* on other nations. That's my *personal* political opinion. Nothing whatsoever to do with past professional affiliation.
Posted by Susan Getgood at March 2, 2006 01:03 AMNo confusion meant, post updated for clarification. I was focusing on your view "This will become a business nightmare."
Someday, I want to find out the whole story of the CDA court battle money. I've heard bits and pieces. Yes, I know that position. Very well. I got quite personally extensively smeared in the *political* payoff for that, after the defeat of the Communications Decency Act.
The topic of universal human rights vs. cultural relativism is a whole different discussion.
Posted by Seth Finkelstein at March 2, 2006 01:18 AMSeth,
How does one know if their blog was included in any censorware? Do I look into my raw stats? Do I call the company? I have noticed a decline in hits coming from places like India and the US military and I wonder if it is because we have Sex as a category even though the topics usually revolve around sexual politics and reproductive rights.
Posted by liza at March 3, 2006 11:43 AMliza: There's no simple way. Some companies have an online lookup that can be used for a few URLs at a time. The difficulty is a reason my decryption work was important, but sadly, I couldn't get the necessarily legal and journalistic support to continue it.
For SmartFilter, when I checked,turns out that CULTUREKITCHEN.COM is "Sexual Materials" in one version, and "Mature" in another version.
URL1: HTTP://WWW.CULTUREKITCHEN.COM
List Current Categorization Suggest Change
V4 Politics/Opinion, Sexual Materials
3.x Premier Politics/Religion, Mature