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Links: Librarians Take Filters Into Their Own Hands
Posted by Steven Wu on Friday, July 04 @ 00:35:40 EDT Free Expression
Sure, public libraries are now required to have porn filters. But, as the New York Times reports, librarians aren't taking this lying down. Officials of the American Library Association are planning a meeting with filtering software companies to discuss what the librarians want from the filters. In particular, the librarians want to make sure that the filters can be easily turned off. The best line from the article comes from the ALA: "If we can't get what we want from the filtering companies, I say let's make our own."

Read the article here.

 
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Suggestion (Score: 0)
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Re: Librarians Take Filters Into Their Own Hands (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, July 04 @ 08:38:51 EDT
Professor Edward Felton modestly proposed this [www.freedom-to-tinker.com] last week. It seems like a good idea to have a Free Software CIPA compliant filter that the librarians can use. Ed points out that there are four problems with commercial censorware:
  1. They block some unobjectionable material.
  2. They fail to block some material that is obscene or harmful to minors.
  3. They try to block material that Congress does not require to be blocked, such as certain political speech.
  4. They don't let you find out what they block.
Obviously, 1 and 2 are limitations of the filters, but 3 and 4 are not problems that a Free Software implementation would have.


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Difficult to find motivation (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, July 06 @ 14:07:02 EDT
It seems like a relatively simple project but I find it hard to get motivated to create a lesser evil. I fear that it might actually be counter-productive by lessening the pressure against government censorship.


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Re: Librarians Take Filters Into Their Own Hands (Score: 1)
by Josh (josh@causingeffect.com) on Tuesday, July 08 @ 18:50:22 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.causingeffect.com/blog
If librarians do take it into their own hands and find a non-proprietary solution, what requirements would they have to meet in order to satisfy the requirements of CIPA? Is it based on success rate?


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