Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
had thought to add a URL for one of these to the list of acceptable
sites, but no one had thought to add the other. Of course, relying on
a table of objectionable sites has the opposite problem, as new ob
jectionable sites likely appear with the same frequency as new ap
propriate ones.
Screening based on the occurrences of groups of letters, words,
or phrases typically ignores context and almost certainly cannot de
termine literary merit, and thus often fails to provide appropriate
screening. For example, on September 28, 2000, the Digital
Freedom Network published the following as the two winners of
their “Foil the Filters Contest.”
Grand Prize:
Joe J reports being prevented from accessing his own
high school's Web site from his own high school's li
brary. Carrol High School adopted filter software
which blocked “all questionable material.” This in
cluded the word “high.”
RunnerUp:
You wouldn't think someone named Hillary Anne
would have censorware problems, but all attempts to
register hillaryanne@hotmail.com. were rejected be
cause censorware spotted the hidden word “aryan.”
Hillary says “I had to email and fight the system like
crazy to actually be able to use my registered nick
name again.”
Filtering based on authorprovided keywords or information
has at least three problems. First, the filtering software depends on
the accuracy of the information provided, but authors may not be
forthright or they may follow different standards than those ex
pected by the software. Second, only a small fraction of the total
material available on the World Wide Web contains keyword in
formation. Without this background material, filtering software
either would have to block a vast amount of reasonable pages or
let pass much clearly objectionable material. Third, without inter
national standards with universal legal penalties, any laws enacted
by one country to mandate keywords or the authorbased classifi
cation of materials would be unenforceable for much of the World
Wide Web.
