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

[Evan Leibovitch <evan telly org>]

On 23 Sep 2002, Jeremy Hogan wrote:

> Open Source in education and *legislative* issues. Not that hard to
> connect the dots. If they are forcing them to use filtering, I want
> that filtering to be Open Source. There, now it fits *both* of the
> main criteria.

If we're on this track, we should go further.

The data most blocking companies use (ie, the 'blacklist' sites) is highly
proprietary, since it's their bread and butter revenue producer... the
client software that applies the blacklist should be fairly trivial.

Now, since this info is proprietary, end-users almost never have direct
access to the list. How do you know if breast cancer organizations are
being ranked as pornographic?

Anyone who is interested in this issue is recommended to have a look at
the site http://censorware.net where The Censoreware Project offers a
fairly current and detailed look at the current state of filtering
software.

It seems fairly ignorant of open source technologies. I recognize the name
of one of the Project members as someone I once worked with; I'll contact
hom and see what the Project says or knows about stuff like squidGuard or
DansGuardian.

- Evan