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 PreludeIt should come as no surprise that members of the Censorware Project have been working behind the scenes with the lawyers for Mainstream Loudoun and ACLU since before the Loudoun County lawsuit was filed, which is why it has been over a year since our last public report on X-Stop. We have given the lawyers hundreds, maybe thousands, of "bad" blocks, and many (though certainly not all) cited in the legal papers resulted from our work. Since X-Stop updates its blacklist every day, we looked at it several times, and each time, we found scores of new bad blocks, bans of sites which under no circumstances should be excluded from a public library. One would think that, with all the bad publicity which X-Stop got a year ago, and all of the scrutiny which comes with first of its kind litigation, X-Stop would have learned to clean up its act. In fact, it has tried to do so, but its utter failure to do so successfully illustrates the broader point that there is no perfect, or even near-perfect censorware. Ridiculously blacklisted sites, once finally discovered and exposed, can be removed relatively simply, but it isn't nearly as easy to avoid the addition of new bad blocks when the censorware vendors rely predominantly on machines to make decisions, as most all do. Think about the fact that all the major blacklisters have lists ranging in size from more than 50,000 entries to more than 200,000 entries, with the lists being changed at least weekly, often more frequently. Think about the work which would be involved if the vendors were to actually take the time to systematically review their "old" blacklists to purge blocks of sites whose contents no longer meet their criteria. It simply can't be done. This is a report on X-Stop Librarian II, but its lessons apply to all the censorware products we have ever analyzed. - The Censorware Project
IntroductionIn the Summer of 1997, X-Stop, the new kid on the censorware block, made its splashy debut in the news. Although the product was originally developed for home use, Log-On Data, the makers of the product, began offering a so-called "Felony Load" version of its censorware, specifically designed for use in public libraries. According to X-Stop's own website, the Felony Load blocked only that which would be deemed legally obscene under the test articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. California. The censors flocked to the product like moths to flame. David Burt, an advocate of using censorware in public libraries, quickly endorsed the Felony Load. On at least one mail list, Karen Jo Gounaud of Family Friendly Libraries, an organization which advocates book-banning as well as internet censorship, wrote on August 29, 1997: "Great news for librarians truly in search of technology that will block ALL porn sights and ONLY porn sights. With such glowing accolades, it came as no surprise that, when the Loudoun County Library considered which censorware product it should employ, X-Stop was at the top of the list. Not all, however, were so easily taken in. Members of Mainstream Loudoun, an organization of local parents, educators and other residents fighting the censorship attempts of the religious right, and the group which later sued the Loudoun County library over its internet policy and use of X-Stop, were among those who would not be fooled. Indeed, although the Censorware Project did not formally exist at the time, one member of Mainstream Loudoun contacted a member of what later became CWP, and asked if he/we could help. Up to a point, we did. On October 5, 1997, Jonathan Wallace published "The X-Stop Files", a piece contributed to by several who would later become members of CWP. Taking a rather critical look at the claim that X-Stop blocked only Miller obscenity, we found that, among many others, the X-Stop Felony Load blocked:
For the most part, "The X-Stop Files" had its intended effect. Burt, Gounaud and others fled from X-Stop like rats from a sinking ship. Endorsements vanished as quickly as they appeared. Even Michael Bradshaw, then the CEO of Log-On Data, publicly admitted that the product could not block only Miller obscenity. At least for public library use, X-Stop was stopped dead in its tracks. Except in Loudoun County, that is. There is a certain Teflon-like quality to censorware, one which Seth Finkelstein, a since-retired member of the Censorware Project, wrote about in "THE X-STOP FILES: The Truth Isn't Out There", an October 1997 companion piece to Jonathan Wallace's. Seth wrote, among other things: "So another censorware product has been found to have secretly been blacklisting gay and lesbian material, anti-censorship sites, feminist resources and an incomprehensible scattershot collection of totally innocuous organizations. We can treat this as yet another 'bad apple' in the endless search for the magic anti-porn program. Or we can use it as a basis for examining why such a program won't ever exist. Seth was more prescient than he knew. Michael Bradshaw made a public mea culpa, claiming that what we had found were just some test sites on the list, and that all the bad blocks would be purged. And as is so often the case with censorware Teflonites, the Loudoun County Library bought the claim, hook, line and sinker. On October 20, 1997, the Library Board implemented one of the most restrictive internet policies in the land, and the library staff chose the Felony Load to implement the policy. Mainstream Loudoun filed suit on behalf of library patrons on December 22, 1997, and shortly thereafter, the ACLU, on behalf of content providers whose speech was being blocked in Loudoun County (including CWP's Jonathan Wallace) intervened in the case. Thus, X-Stop's software gained the dubious distinction of being the first (and to date the only) censorware to be directly involved in First Amendment litigation. After the lawsuit was filed, a comprehensive image-enhancement program began. The Felony Load was magically transmogrified into "Librarian II", purged (by a name change, not by anything of substance) of its guilt, this time claiming: "Librarian II is a version of the X-Stop client software whose library consists of sites identified as containing gross pornography, bestiality and child pornography." Filtering Facts re-endorsed the product and David Burt was retained as an expert witness on behalf of the Library Board defendant. In his July 14, 1998 expert witness report, he wrote: "Therefore, it is my opinion that X-Stop is likely the least restrictive filter for blocking obscenity, while at the same time, at 86% effectiveness, is reasonably effective at blocking what are clearly hard-core sites." And: "[M]y brief survey does indicate that X-Stop tries to avoid blocking sites displaying simple nudity, and appears to be focused on blocking 'hard-core' pornography, as the company claims." Some of what follows is written seriously, some light-heartedly. But whether you like our attempts at humor or not, always keep in mind three facts: 1. X-Stop Librarian II itself claims to block only gross pornography, bestiality and child pornography. 2. The Library Board's expert witness claims that "X-Stop tries to avoid blocking sites displaying simple nudity, and appears to be focused on blocking 'hard-core' pornography, as the company claims." 3. After all the litigation, and all the unblocking of sites revealed by Plaintiffs, X- Stop still blocks all of the sites we write about in this report, plus untold more we do not include here. We could list hundreds of sites in X-Stop's blacklist which contain nudity quite comparable to that in Playboy -- which X-Stop says is below its banning threshold. (Remember, X-Stop swears that Librarian II bans only gross or hard core pornography.) Instead, however, we focus on a sampling of sites which have little or no relation to X-Stop's stated criteria. Assuredly, we could have written about far more than the 50 or so bad blocks discussed below, but our examples should be more than adequate to demonstrate our point. Are any of these sites fairly classified as gross pornography, bestiality, child pornography, or hard-core pornography? (Whatever those terms may mean.) If, as the Library Board's expert says, "X-Stop is likely the least restrictive filter," is there any censorware which belongs in a public library? You be the Judge.
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