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F R E N D Z of martian
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----- Original Message -----
From: Hans C. Masing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 6:40 PM
Subject: GeeK: Censorware companies use double standard
> {From a mailing list I am on - interesting - and disturbing... - Hans}
> --------------
>
> Peacefire conducted an experiment to see if blocking software companies
> would hold all Web sites to the same standard in determining what to
block.
> What we found was that, in every case, the company will block certain
> content hosted on a personal home page, but will not block *identical*
> content on the home page of large, well-funded organizations with lawyers
> and PR departments and rented Congresspersons leased in their name.
>
>
> Explanation: Most of the censorware companies have a blocking category for
> "hate speech" sites, which, according to definitions published on the Web
> sites of the companies, usually include something along the lines of
> "discrimination or denigration based on race, gender, national origin, and
> sexual orientation".
>
>
> Obviously many Web pages of religious conservative organizations contain
> statements that "denigrate" gay people based on "sexual orientation". But
> we assumed that most censorware companies would never block these sites
> even if the anti-gay quotes were pointed out to them, so Peacefire
> conducted an experiment, "Project Bait And Switch":
>
>
> http://www.peacefire.org/BaitAndSwitch/
>
>
> Peacefire collected some of the anti-gay quotes from the home pages of the
> Family Research Council (FRC.org), Concerned Women for America (cwfa.org),
> Focus on the Family (family.org) and Dr. Laura (drlaura.com) and put these
> quotes on "bait" Web pages which were set up on free home page sites, with
> each "bait" page corresponding to one of the original religious
> conservative sites, except that attributions for the quotes had been
> removed. For example: "All Americans should shudder when homosexual
> activists routinely use the tactics of threats, intimidation, blackmail
and
> deception to strangle a free and open exchange on homosexual behavior,"
> from Family.org. We then submitted these sites (using anonymous HotMail
> accounts) to the review staff at SurfWatch, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, Bess,
> SmartFilter and WebSENSE.
>
>
> All of them took the bait; almost all of them blocked all four of the
> anti-gay "bait" pages (WebSENSE blocked only three of them, and
SmartFilter
> blocked two). At
> http://www.peacefire.org/BaitAndSwitch/
> we have links to the archives of all correspondence with the censorware
> companies, showing that they agreed to block the "bait" pages as "hate
> sites", since they obviously met their criteria for "denigrating people
> based on sexual orientation". (We also have links to attributions for the
> anti-gay quotes, showing where they came from on the corresponding "real"
> organizations' home pages.)
>
>
> Once we told the companies what we did, all of them started backpedaling
> and refused to block the original sites that were the source of the
quotes.
> Of course, we do not advocate censoring these pages from students, but
> only because we are against Internet censorship in general. If blocking
> software companies are going to block anything, these sites do meet their
> criteria.
>
>
> So, the censorware companies may have avoided a short-term disaster by not
> blocking the home pages of the large, right-wing groups that traditionally
> support them. But in the long term, we think this incident will come back
> to haunt the censorware companies, since it serves as evidence of a double
> standard for organizations that have money.
>
>
> -Bennett
>
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.peacefire.org
> (425) 649 9024
>
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