LISNews: Librarian News

Jean Armour Polly sent an email to the NYLINE List with a link to Bill S2298- The NYS Public Library Filtering Bill. It was introduced into the NY Senate last month, "in relation to requiring filtering software on computers in public libraries and schools to prevent minors from viewing indecent materials." John A. DeFrancisco is the man with the plan to protect children from Internet predators, child pornography, exploitive "child modeling" web sites, and child prostitution. His call is in response to a report issued by the Senate Majority entitled "Protecting Children in the Internet Age."

I don't seem to be able to link directly to the text O' the bill, but you can start Here and search for bill # S2298. It's current status "REFERRED TO EDUCATION"

Follow Up from Raochester, NY, where, like any good library board, a new committee was formed! Wednesday morning a joint board meeting brought together trustees from the county library system and the Rochester Public Library. They passed a resolution creating a task force which will spend the next 30 days studying the issue to figure out what they can do to balance child protection and first amendment rights. More

Slashdot: From Bess to Worse. An unusually long essay over at Slashdot takes a look at filtering, Bess in particular..

"...result? I'm still tabulating data, but it looks as if the accuracy rate is roughly the same as it was in 2000, when about 30% of blocked sites were obvious errors. Then and now, I found most of the errors by starting with a large list of URLs culled from search engines and other sources, and simply running them through the software to see what was blocked."

Seth Finkelstein writes "Far Eastern Economic Review —
The Geopolitics of Asian Cyberspace (Ronald Deibert): "The increased sophistication of Internet content filtering practices
can be attributed, in part, to the services provided by Western
(mostly U.S.-based) software and Internet service firms. Whereas once
the best and brightest of Silicon Valley were associated with wiring
the world, and opening up access to vast stores of information, today
they are just as likely to be known for doing the opposite. Although
Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo!, Skype, and Google have all come under
scrutiny for colluding with China's Internet censorship practices,
perhaps the most significant, serious, and yet overlooked contribution to Internet censorship by Western corporations comes from the manufacturers of the filtering software used to block content.""