N2H2 Censorware Blacklists Oregon Libraries Network

Seth Finkelstein writes “According to the
the Oregon libraries network‘s
staff information blog, the
censorware company
N2H2 has blacklisted the entire
Oregon libraries network as “Pornography“: screenshot.”

January 25, 2005 by rochelle Uncategorized 7

kylere says:

January 25, 2005 at 7:37 pm

Great Example!!

This is a perfect example of why all automatic filtering systems are heavily flawed. Parents who rely on filtering software are poor parents, and requiring libraries to use them via legistative mandate is ridiculous. Sites containing terms like “breast cancer” are blocked without need. Most corporate filters hand done are not much better, many companies block ebay.com and leave ebay.uk open which can be used interchangably (also ebay.ca for our northern friends).

Great articles can be found at
http://www.electronic-school.com/0198f1.html
http://cc.uoregon.edu/cnews/summer2002/filters.htm l

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djfiander says:

January 25, 2005 at 8:33 pm

This doesn’t surprise me

I’m fairly certain that most of the libraries in the Oregon Libraries network contain smut.

I do have a cause though: obscenity. I’m for it.

– Tom Lehrer, “Smut”, live recording

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jackinga says:

January 25, 2005 at 10:19 pm

Sheesh! I can EASILY beat that…
Ironic Product name: â€œSmartFilterâ€?
http://www.securecomputing.com/index.cfm?skey=85

Forbidden, this page (http://www.bluehighways.com/) is categorized as: Chat. – Librarian Owned and Operated – K. G. Schneider, Proprietor

Forbidden, this page (http://www.educationlibrarian.com/) is categorized as: Sex. – The Education Librarian – intended for librarians working with students and faculty in post-secondary education – by Anna Lewis, UW-Madison

Forbidden, this page (http://eclibrary.blog-city.com/) is categorized as: Chat. – Elmhurst College Librarians – News and insights from the A.C. Buehler Library at Elmhurst College

Forbidden, this page (http://www.schoolblogs.com/judithsviews/) is categorized as: Chat. – judithsviews – by Judith Van Noate, Humanities Librarian, J. Murrey Atkins Library, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Forbidden, this page (http://www.mostlymusic.blogger.com.br/) is categorized as: Chat. – Mostly Music – Laura Ronai, professor of flute, and Tom Moore, music librarian, The College of New Jersey

Forbidden, this page (http://blogs.salon.com/0001959/) is categorized as: Chat. – Observations from the front line – Nancy Wilson

Forbidden, this page (http://openstacks.net/os) is categorized as: Sex. – Open Stacks – Promoting information access and literacy for all – by Greg Schwartz

Sex & chat, sex & chat,
no wonder I love my job so much…

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Redcardlibrarian says:

January 26, 2005 at 1:48 am

Re:This doesn’t surprise me
That would be because all of us Oregon Librarians have smut on the brain. 😉

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Cyberpunk Librarian says:

January 26, 2005 at 2:01 am

Re:Sheesh! I can EASILY beat that…

Forbidden, this page (http://openstacks.net/os) is categorized as: Sex. – Open Stacks – Promoting information access and literacy for all – by Greg Schwartz

Sex & chat, sex & chat,
no wonder I love my job so much…

Open stacks. Open legs. What’s the difference? Hrmm, that librarian was sure stacked? Nahh, that’d probably get by the filter.

Long ago, in a reality far, far away there was a local BBS that had filtering technology. This must have been, oh late 80s. So yeah, a local town called Toppenish wouldn’t log in. Why? Because you can’t spell TopPENISh without penis. So people from that town had to lie about where they lived. Going further, it’d disallow the word wristwatch too, since you can’t spell wrisTWATch without the word twat.

This was the late 80s. It’s good to see filtering tech has come so far in twenty years. Oh wait a sec, no it hasn’t.

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Greg says:

January 26, 2005 at 6:11 am

Re:Sheesh! I can EASILY beat that…
Well, what could possibly be more naughtily suggestive than “access”?

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deborah says:

January 27, 2005 at 1:46 am

substrings
A mailing list I run about the author Diana Wynne Jones had one site which regularly bounced email with subject lines such as:

“Young Adult series…”
“Diana’s adult novels”
“Jane Austen and Charles Dickens”

See the offensive substrings in them? My favorite is the third.

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