Even more interesting than the Peacefire study, arguably, are the responses
to it from blocking software vendors when I asked them why they apparently
have double standards. And conservative groups weren't happy about excerpts
of their pages being blocked as "hate speech" or whatnot:
http://www.treas.gov/fincen/infinc.html#dir
-Declan
At 00:33 5/28/2000 -0400, Matthew Gaylor wrote:
>Date: Sat, 27 May 2000 20:40:48 -0700
>From: Bennett Haselton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: study: censorware companies use double standard
>
>
>*******************************************************
>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.
>(Surprise.)
>
>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 that the
>companies are using a double standard for organizations that have money.
>
> -Bennett
>
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