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Henry,<br>
<br>
Thank you for your thoughts and examples. This is exactly why the XS
installer does not contain any content filtering software. It is very
much a cultural and deployment specific issue. <br>
<br>
As Anna said, in their case and in the case of every public and many
private K-12 schools in the US they must implement a CIPA compliant
content "filter" in order to continue receiving important
telecommunications (e-rate) funding. <br>
<br>
Again thank you for your thoughts and the litmus tests you provide.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Reuben<br>
<br>
<br>
Henry Edward Hardy wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:bd1d2b380904270803l284689e0maac4690d83c8389@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Dear friends,
I'm a bit disturbed when I hear people using the euphemism "filtering" for
automated, computerized censorship. I understand there may be legislative or
political mandates. However, we should never talk about this as though it is
a good or desirable or acceptable thing.
I realize this may be seen as off topic from the merely technical discussion
of how to implement computerized censorship, but when we calmly discuss
technicalities of something which is obviously wrong without questioning it,
then the discussion needs to be aired.
"Filtering" is what you do to the water in a fish tank. "Censorship" is when
a state or quasi-state agency proscribes and limits access to certain
classes of written material.
Here are a few tests we should apply to any such proposed system.
Does it allow access to information about "Romeo and Juliet"? (Underage sex,
gang-oriented violence, suicide, murder)
Does it allow access to "Huckleberry Finn" (Slavery, frequent use of the
word "nigger")
Does it allow access to "The Catcher in the Rye" (Use of "fuck", blasphemy,
drinking, smoking, lying, promiscuity, implied pederasty)
Does it allow access to "Heather has Two Mommies" (Lesbianism)
Does it allow access to "Our Bodies, Ourselves" (Information about human
health, sex and sexuality)
Does it allow access to "Slaughterhouse-Five" (Genocide, strategic bombing,
sex)
Does it allow access to "Of Mice and Men" (Retardation, sex, rape, murder)
Does it allow access to "The Handmaid's Tale" (Sexual roles, patriarchy,
racism, and theocracy)
Does it allow access to "The Kite Runner" (Homosexuality, rape)
Does it allow access to "His Dark Materials" (Anti-state, anti-catholic,
magic and witchcraft)
Does it allow access to "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (Alchemy, murder,
debauchery)
Does it allow access to "1984" (Torture, illicit sex, anti-state and
anti-party politics)
Does it allow access to "Canterbury Tales" (Promiscuity, anti-clericalism)
Does it allow access to "The Decameron" (Anti-state, anti-Catholic and
general ribaldry, such as the Third Day, Tenth Story, "How to put the Devil
in Hell")
And in terms of websites particularly,
RateMyTeachers.com
Peacefire.org
Facebook
Myspace
Orkut
Google
YouTube
Sites which criticize the ruling party or government.
Sites which criticize or parody the predominant religion.
Blogs, in general
And classes of internet services such as
Usenet
FSP
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as Bittorrent, EMule, Gnutella
In general, censorship is bad and morally wrong; and automated, computerized
censorship especially so; and we should never refer to it by a purpose-made
and innocuous-sounding term like "filtering" or treat it as though it is
morally or pedagogically acceptable.
IMHO,
Henry
"What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.
Now they are content with burning my books."
--Sigmund Freud, 1933
also posted to my blog at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://scanlyze.wordpress.com/">http://scanlyze.wordpress.com/</a>
On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Anna <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:aschoolf@gmail.com"><aschoolf@gmail.com></a> wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Reuben K. Caron <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:reuben@laptop.org"><reuben@laptop.org></a>wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap=""> A free and simple solution, while not bullet proof (no content filter is
that I am aware), is Open DNS. They are even CIPA compliant in the US:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opendns.com/solutions/k12/">http://www.opendns.com/solutions/k12/</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap="">That's what I set up for our pilot school, which was very easy as the XS's
DSL connection has a static IP. OpenDNS provides different filtering
options, which you can customize as necessary. Being in the US, CIPA
compliance is absolutely vital to retain certain federal funding, and
OpenDNS was the quickest and easiest way to accomplish that. Dansguardian
can be CIPA compliant, but there are other steps involved and I was wary of
unintentionally running afoul of the rules.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://dansguardian.org/?page=faq#15">http://dansguardian.org/?page=faq#15</a> Not to mention Dansguardian consumes
server resources. OpenDNS doesn't use any server resources and you can
easily configure the filtering to be CIPA compliant.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.opendns.com/solutions/k12/cipa/">http://www.opendns.com/solutions/k12/cipa/</a>
As far as limiting the internet connection to authorized XOs, that's an
issue we're probably going to run into at some point once we broaden the XS
deployment. So far at the pilot school, the staff members connect to the
internet with their personal laptops and iPhones, but I haven't really heard
any complaints of abuse yet.
If your deployment is relatively small, it should be easy enough to add the
hardware addresses of the trusted XOs to dhcpd.conf and disallow unknown
machines (or play pranks on them as suggested at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html">http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html</a><a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="http://www.ex-parrot.com/%7Epete/upside-down-ternet.html"><http://www.ex-parrot.com/%7Epete/upside-down-ternet.html></a>
).
Anna Schoolfield
Birmingham
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</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Reuben K. Caron<br>
Country Support Engineer<br>
One Laptop per Child<br>
Mobile: +1-617-230-3893<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:reuben@laptop.org">reuben@laptop.org</a><br>
<a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Deployments_Support">
Deployments Support</a>
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