This is a list a FEW sites that are blocked by different types of censorware according to PeaceFire. Censorware is often called blocking software. This is exactly what it does. It blocks all sorts of web pages, whether they are offensive to the user or not. There is often a great difference between what one person finds offensive compared to what another finds offensive.
A recent poll taken by the American Civil Liberties Union finds, according to hormones and blood pressure levels in test subjects, that many more people are offended by the word spit than are offended by the words sex, crap, Gay, or lesbian. This really astounded me and even made me laugh. However, when a company selling an internet censorship program goes out to make a study of the market, they include all of the things that offend anyone, plus the sites that get accidentally blocked like the Mars Explorer site.
When a censorware program goes to open a page, it will first look through the page for any offensive words, like: censorware, whooo-boy more censorware, censorship, PICS, labeling, labelling, labels, labeling systems, ratings, rating systems, civil liberties, school, schools, library, libraries, first amendment, 1st amendment, free speech, freedom of expression, bill of rights, filter, filtering, blocking, banning, filterware, censorware. g, safesurf, cyber patrol, cyberpatrol, cybersitter, net nanny, bess, websense, x-stop, rsaci, rsac, tools, censorware project, the censorware project, sims, tyre, finkelstein, mccarthy, haselton, wallace, freedom, liberty, review, report, reports, reviews, criticism, utah, or smartfilter. These are the keywords that a censorware program would find if it went to Censorware. org, Peacefire. org, or FreedomForum. org.
The underlined words are those that are considered offensive by Cybersitter and Cyberpatrol blocking softwares (the kind that certain libraries use to protect people from offensive material). And of course, nudity and sexual text – unless declared legally obscene – are still protected by the Bill of Rights. Neither simple nudity nor sexual text can be banned by law, as the CDA experience has re-proven, but censorware is being used in public institutions which ban items solely for a single sexual word, or graphic, or for no reason at all.
The irony of this is described by what an essayist wrote about his local library, Even though they have three copies of my book on the shelves of this place, they dont allow me to visit the web page for it, the web page about social disorder patterns in children! That was a creative person speaking, not a pedophile or a child molester, or a photo opportunist. Creative people should never be bored or have to drudge at stupid repetitive work. When this happens it means that they aren’t doing what only they can do — solve new problems.
This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore, boredom and drudgery are not just unpleasant but actually evil. Nobody who can think should ever be forced into boredom. When a type of censorware is employed on a computer that you have no other alternative but to use, you are forced to reinvent the wheel to get at the information that you might need to have in order to finish your term paper, a long business project, even your mail or message boards. “If it weren’t for the Internet, I’m sure that I would have killed myself by now.
I met someone [Online] who always had an open ear to listen. ” — Shaun, 18 The CensorWare Project. Shaun found the help he needed at sites where he could talk to other people about his problems, but when his local library started using CyberPatrol, he could no longer get to those sites. Shaun did not have a modem or the money to buy one, and pay for the ISP charges on his old computer. He now has no place to go. He now has to spend about fifteen minutes of the half-hour time limit he has to crack the software.