From: "WebWarrior3@InfoWar.Com" <WebWarrior3@InfoWar.Com>
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 12:23:46 +0800
To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@sirius.infonex.com>
Subject: RE: Cyber 'Nannys"
Message-ID: <34DF87FE.611AA4EF@InfoWar.Com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



An anonymous person wrote, in reference to CyberSitter type 'blocking'
software:

"These companies are attempting to provide the services desired by
their customers... They give concerned parents a sense of safety..."

While I do not disagree that these companies should be able to market
their products, I wholeheartedly disagree with the fact that often their
customers (the adults who bought the software or subscribed to he
'service') are not allowed to have a list of what is actually blocked,
and decide for themselves if they want their kids to have access to any
of these sites.  It would be beating a dead horse to describe, here,
the potential value of some of the information that is blocked by these
packages; one only has to take a look at any of the published news
reports (or actually use one's sense of reason) to see that there are
many web sites that contain some of the words that are automatically
bloked by these 'services' that are absolutely not...smut <for lack of a
better term>, hate speech, or illegal/illicitly oriented.

On another, perhaps more severe (to you, Anonymous poster,) angle, they
DO NOT, NOR CAN THEY provide a genuine saftey zone for the children who
are to be 'protected.'  They are providing a false sense of security to
parents who, for one reason or another, feel that they are not able to
provide their children with direction on what to, and what not to, view
on the internet as well as what to do if the instance arises that
something that is deemed taboo happens to pop up on their monitor when
they click on the 'Chutes and Ladders' web site <for example, I don't
know if there is one...trying to be safe and guess that there is not>.

I am assuming that there is no latent support for the use of these
packages in public libraries, so I won't go into that issue.  In
general, these programs are flat out crap.  They purport to do something
that is impossible to accomplish and they often refuse to even inform
their customers what they actually ARE doing.

Scott R. Brower
http://www.infowar.com
http://www.efflorida.org