From: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 8f4c8f5a6faf829463dd74d323b4069a889546a355cb468cf23e6e1ef6a33d22
Message ID: <v01510103ae1062fbecc1@[204.62.128.229]>
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UTC Datetime: 1996-07-16 16:38:16 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 00:38:16 +0800
From: declan@well.com (Declan McCullagh)
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 00:38:16 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Washington Post -- "Block but Verify"
Message-ID: <v01510103ae1062fbecc1@[204.62.128.229]>
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[An editorial in today's Washington Post, about blocking software and the
CyberWire Dispatch that Brock and I sent out earlier this month. --Declan]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1996-07/15/006L-071596-idx.html
Editorial: "BLOCK, BUT VERIFY"
Monday, July 15 1996; Page A18
The Washington Post
THE NEXT generation of highly publicized Internet products may have
less to do with what you can get from the Net than with what you can
protect yourself against getting. In the wake of the concern over
pornography that sparked the now-overturned Communications Decency
Act, vendors have rushed to market software with names like SurfWatch
and NetNanny.
[...]
Some incidents of what might be called over-screening are accidents
resulting from the overzealous use of keywords or other sweeping means
by the inexperienced. Others are exactly what the products' makers
intend...
An on-line article by cyberjournalists Brock Meeks and Declan
McCullough reported on a product called CyberSitter, marketed by the
conservative group Focus on the Family, that blocks access to any
discussions of homosexuality. It's advertised as a product for
families who want just that: a relatively G-rated version of
cyberspace.
The feasibility and ready availability of such products is, of course,
a strong argument that the government needn't meddle. Anyone, not just
those worried about porn, should soon be able to find software that
edits what a family wants edited and lets through what it wants to
read. One pitfall, though, as Messrs. McCullough and Meeks observe, is
the commercially inspired reluctance of many of these producers of
software to specify exactly what they are blocking. Though
understandable, this raises obvious dangers that products meant to
block one type of transmission -- violence, for example -- will in
fact muffle wider areas of debate. Smart consumers will want, and
demand, to know what they're not getting, the better to make use of
the information they have.
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