Who watches the watchers?
Boing Boing has gone to war with censorware in general and SmartFilter in particular. At the bottom of it all is the decision to classify Boing Boing as a "nudity" site, and when the team at Boing Boing made the case for re-classification SmartFilter, unwisely in my opinion, stuck to their guns.
Not a group famed for taking it lying down, Boing Boing have struck back with a guide to defeating censorware. The issue is important because of the number of readers and potential readers who are no longer able to access Boing Boing content, and given that Boing Boing is ad supported there is a revenue implication.
The thread has been interesting to me because of my own problems at work with Websense, which was implemented at the beginning of the year. Don't get me wrong, I understand why we would use a product like Websense. I don't mind that I can't get to adult rated material at work. Keeping us away from gambling sites seems like common sense. As we should get our entertainment fix at home. That all seems kind of right.
And then something like this happens:
Kent Newsome is a blogger I've mentioned a few times in recent weeks. I enjoy his blog and in the weeks I've been reading him he's picked up links from some A-listers, including Robert Scoble.
Newsome.Org is the site that hosts his blog and in my view it's been incorrectly classified, but what can Kent do about it? Kent's blog isn't ad supported so there is no revenue implication but this will impact his readership. If you argue it won't impact his readership then my question becomes why Websense would classify it at all. The fact is that when I hit the restriction today, it affected his readership today.
The decision to classify Kent as entertainment has been made by a Websense appointed censor. And here we get to the nub of any censorship argument. What qualifies this person to act as a censor? Not everything is black or white and what happens to all the sites caught in the grey area if the censors act in a heavy-handed way.
Who watches the watchers?
Tags: Boing Boing, SmartFilter, Websense, censorship, Kent Newsome
Not a group famed for taking it lying down, Boing Boing have struck back with a guide to defeating censorware. The issue is important because of the number of readers and potential readers who are no longer able to access Boing Boing content, and given that Boing Boing is ad supported there is a revenue implication.
The thread has been interesting to me because of my own problems at work with Websense, which was implemented at the beginning of the year. Don't get me wrong, I understand why we would use a product like Websense. I don't mind that I can't get to adult rated material at work. Keeping us away from gambling sites seems like common sense. As we should get our entertainment fix at home. That all seems kind of right.
And then something like this happens:
Kent Newsome is a blogger I've mentioned a few times in recent weeks. I enjoy his blog and in the weeks I've been reading him he's picked up links from some A-listers, including Robert Scoble.
Newsome.Org is the site that hosts his blog and in my view it's been incorrectly classified, but what can Kent do about it? Kent's blog isn't ad supported so there is no revenue implication but this will impact his readership. If you argue it won't impact his readership then my question becomes why Websense would classify it at all. The fact is that when I hit the restriction today, it affected his readership today.
The decision to classify Kent as entertainment has been made by a Websense appointed censor. And here we get to the nub of any censorship argument. What qualifies this person to act as a censor? Not everything is black or white and what happens to all the sites caught in the grey area if the censors act in a heavy-handed way.
Who watches the watchers?
Tags: Boing Boing, SmartFilter, Websense, censorship, Kent Newsome
posted by Steve Newson at 7:44 PM
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