 | | | | by Alan Docherty |
The internet was supposed to trump censorship. So how are users denied information about Emily Dickinson, John Hancock … and even Scunthorpe?
| Filtering software, or 'censorware', is becoming increasingly popular among internet cafes, employers and public libraries. The technology is designed to block access to certain websites based on secret 'black' lists or complex rating schemes, and allows the computer's owner to permit users to surf the net in the knowledge that the sites they can visit are carefully controlled. The software excises 'offensive sites': and, by default, some rather less offensive ones. The 'Dick' in Emily Dickinson causes work about the great writer to be filtered out. The 'cock' in John Hancock makes his contribution to history disappear. A recent report by the anti-filtering organisation Peacefire found that for every pornographic site blocked by SurfWatch as 'sexually explicit', four non-pornographic sites were blocked (1).
| In September the Digital Freedom Network announced the results of its 'Foil the Filters' contest (2). The winner found that he was blocked from accessing his high school's website - even when using the very same school's library. Carroll High School adopted filtering software which blocked 'all questionable material'. This included the word 'high'. Meanwhile, one of the most filtered words on the net is Scunthorpe: the second to fifth letters cause filtering programmes to hit red alert. One company secured a contract with a firm in Scunthorpe. The IT manager had implemented a mail filter which intercepted the Scunthorpe mail and this wasn't noticed for four days. The IT manager - not the software - was sacked.
| | | Carroll High School's software blocked 'all questionable material': including the word 'high' |
| Other acts of censorship are more self-conscious. SafeSurf and CYBERsitter both deliberately rated, and hence blocked for its users, the Starr report into President Clinton's White House sex scandal. It caused an extraordinary situation, while newspapers and TV stations discussed the allegations surrounding the possible impeachment of the President of the United States, net users with filters experienced a void of information about the future of the world's most influential statesman.
| In September a US survey found that 3711 (almost 25 percent) of public libraries used filtering (3). According to the forthcoming report 'Public Places' by Jonathan Willson and Anthony Oulton of the Department of Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University, 60 percent of UK public libraries use filtering or blocking controls on public access computers (4). The argument for filtering is that it is supposed to protect children. But as the figures for public libraries show, filters are increasingly used to block access by adults.
| This child-friendly censorship on our PCs is celebrated as empowerment. In truth, it ensures that power is transferred from the user to the manufacturer of the censorware. David Kerr, chief executive of the self-appointed (but government-backed) UK net regulatory body, Internet Watch Foundation, claims filtering will 'advance the cause of free expression by reducing the pressures on democratic governments to pursue censorship' (5). It might not be censorship carried out by the nanny state, but it is censorship all the same. Fans of filtering claim that it not only removes undesirable websites but also it reduces censorship by the state. Except that, on the internet, initiatives like filtering are even more dangerous than state censorship.
| | | 60 percent of UK public libraries use blocking controls on public access computers |
| Filtering developers operate their secret lists with no legal accountability and are under no obligation to explain why or how or to whom they block access. If a site is filtered out or banned, you will probably never know and have no right to appeal or review. Censorship has no place in a democratic society, but at least when it is subject to review, it is possible to see who is taking liberties with our rights. So when the British Board of Film Classification bans a film it has to report the details and can be subject to appeal through, for example, the Video Appeals Committee or the new Human Rights Act. In 1998, when West Yorkshire police attempted to force the University of Central England in Birmingham to destroy copies of American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's book of homoerotic art, the university at least had the possibility of fighting the ban in the courts.
| By contrast, the users of filtering software never know the substance of material that is blocked. In an attempt to provide sanitised visits to the internet, users are left in the dark as to which sites they are refused access to and why.
| Judgement is not being exercised by the users as they surf the net: it is being exercised arbitrarily by filtering software. This is already causing website owners to self-censor their material to accommodate the restrictions imposed by the censorship technology. Filtering software now means more of us travelling in the slow lane of the information superhighway. If that slow lane excludes Emily Dickinson, John Hancock or even Scunthorpe it soon won't be worth travelling down.
| Alan Docherty is editor of Internet Freedom News
Read on:
spiked-issue: Free speech
(1) The Peacefire report, 'Study of Average Error Rates for Censorware Programs', was published online 23 November 2000. It can be found here
(2) The Digital Freedom Network 'Foil the Filters' contest was released 28 September 2000 and can be found here
(3) The survey, Public Libraries and the Internet 2000: Summary Findings and Data Tables was published 7 September 2000 by John Carlo Bertot, Associate Professor at Florida State University and Charles R. McClure, Francis Eppes Professor, Florida State University. The study can be found here
(4) The report 'Public Places' will be published later this year
(5) The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) was launched in late September 1996 to regulate the internet on behalf of the internet industry and the police. See the IWF website
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