Re: [OS:N:] Re: School Filtering

[Evan Leibovitch <evan telly org>]

The issue of whether or not content filtering is a Good Idea or not seems
beyond the scope of this group. Nonetheless...

> For those who have different filtering goals and objectives than the
> schools I support, Dan's Guardian (www.dansguardian.org) is a popular
> alternative. Dan's Guardian web site (another GPL web filter, a
> "competitor" to squidGuard) has links to my squidGuard blacklists,
> which users of Dan's Guardian can use to enhance that product.  They
> won't even get slapped with the DMCA for such an offense ;-)

Actually, Dan's Guardian and squidGuard don't really compete. DG can use
the squidguard blacklists, but its main strength is that it does dynamic
on-the-fly checking of content of pages as they are downloaded. This makes
DG effective for dynamic sites which can't be really handled well by
blacklists.

Using DG is a more complex -- but more thorough -- solution compared to
squidGuard. In some ways it is superior to *any* of the services --
including the commercial ones -- that simply provide blacklists.

There's a testimonials page on the dan's guardian site:

http://dansguardian.org/?page=userfeedback

which specifically has some references from people who used it to comply
to CIPA requirements. There are also some comparisons between DG and using
squidGuard alone.

And while you're at the filtering game, don't forget about AdZap:
http://www.zip.com.au/~cs/adzap/

- Evan