The Censorware FAQ is an attempt to answer some frequently asked questions about censorware or "filtering products". These are the answers that the software companies and pro-censorship groups aren't going to provide. There is a "Filtering FAQ" at http://quark.cpsr.org/~harryh/faq.html which concentrates more on technical descriptions of the programs available. I've chosen to avoid duplicating those answers here.

Feel free to suggest any additions or changes to this document.

1 - Basics and background

1.0 - Do you guys make censorware? Can you put this site on your blacklist, it's got porn. Can you review our new censorware product for us, we're a fledgling company and we've got this really great algorithm...

No. No. No. You'd probably be surprised how many people have emailed US asking us these questions. Either their reading comprehension scores are really low, or... I just don't know. Maybe some PR people are so used to just contacting a computing magazine to arrange for a favorable review (put in a big advertising buy, get a favorable review - this is known as "business as usual" for the computing magazine world) that they see our site and just whip out a form letter. I honestly can't explain it. But if you're about to ask one of the above questions, you're asking the wrong people, okay?

1.1 - What is censorware? Why don't you call it filterware like some people do?

Censorware is "software which is designed and optimized to prevent another person from sending or receiving information." To censor them. Contrast this to sortware, "software which can only be used to determine what information that you personally send or receive." I'd like to get away from calling things "filters", since both sortware and censorware are varieties of filters, and pro-censorware advocates have taken to blurring the boundaries between them. One example of sortware is a personally configured mail filter which allows you to pre-sort your email. Another example of a sorting filter is your telephone answering machine, which you can use to pre-screen incoming calls. But when others are doing it to you, such as when military censors go through your mail with a black marker before you get it, that's censoring. As I write this, ALL, every single one, of the products designed to limit access to World Wide Web sites are censorware. They all come with password-protection and various other features to make sure that the person(s) being censored can't bypass the censoring. That's not voluntary. Censorware proponents are trying to whitewash the software by calling it filtering, but it's not an honest usage or description. Someday someone will make a product which, perhaps, warns users that they're about to access a possible "bad site" but has no password to prevent anyone from seeing anything - that could earn a sortware designation as well.

1.2 - Why do people want censorware installed on public computers?

Mostly, because their religious leaders told them so. Actually, there are initiatives to censor both from the far right ("The Bible says sex is evil") and the far left ("We must censor this to protect you"). Both are rather silly. There's never been a single case of information leaping off the screen and beating someone to death or hitting them with a car. Hundreds of people die daily in car accidents, none die as a result of viewing playboy.com. When will the U.S. get its priorities straight?

1.3 - What gets targeted by censorware?

Anything the censors think people don't want to see. Nude and partially nude human beings, of course. Also safe sex information, any mention of homosexuality, pagan religions, violence, profanity, criticism of censorware products, etc. Due to the incredible overbreadth of censorware products, your site can be banned even if it doesn't have ANY of these items - for example, if your site was hosted on Tripod.com (along with the other 700,000 people who have webpages there) you would have been banned as if your pages contained Full Nudity and Sexual Acts, regardless of its content. Targeting is only one step up from completely random.

1.4 - Aren't you interfering with parental rights?

It's not a parental right to censor everyone else who uses a public computer, for one. That's not a parental right, that's an abrogation of other parents' rights.

Even in the home, parents would be foolish to rely on censorware. See "Why Censorware Can't Work" for a fuller explanation of why censorware is incredibly "holey", why most of the "porn", violence, or whatever will NOT be stopped by any product because the web is simply too big to examine. You are bringing in a program of unknown bias - CyberSitter, for example, leans *heavily* to the right-wing, bigoted, burn-the-heathens-and-gays side of the spectrum - but they won't mention that on their web site. You don't know what you're getting. Are they banning porn? Or are they banning the National Organization of Women and pro-gay groups and sites which criticize that company? You don't know. You can't know, because the lists of blocked sites are *secret*. So let's review:

Why would anyone buy ANYTHING under those conditions? Would you buy a car you couldn't examine in advance?

1.5 - But I thought these things were completely voluntary...

They're voluntary.... in a mandatory sort of way. Congress is currently considering various methods to make censorware on library and public school computers mandatory, through the power of the purse and the power of the police. See http://www.aclu.org/congress/cybmarch.html. From the beginning, some people saw that these tools, "Our Saviour From the CDA", would be immediately used to create censorship both broader and more dangerous than any act of Congress. Nobody believed them. Today, those fears have come true in spades. The world faces a mandatory global rating system combined with massive censorship of the online medium, facilitated by corporations who believe that a bland net is a profitable net. If you think your "right" to access information freely is somehow guaranteed, you need to think again.