Free Republic Blocked as "pornography" ???

[ReignOfError]

I was denied access to a church website one day. I used my password to turn off the monitoring software. The culprit was a frank discussion of human sexuality on the website but apparently one of the words used in the title identified the article as porn to the software.

Net Nanny infamously blocked the whole White House site because one of the kids' pages described Bill/Hillary and Al/Tipper as "couples." And in probably the most infamous filter fiasco, AOL banned the word "breast" amongst many others -- which shut down the legitimate and much-needed breast-feeding and breast cancer support boards.

Filtering software is fine, but it has serious limits. And I wouldn't trust any that automatically bans sites based on keyword, instead of making recommendations for a blacklist that have to be approved by a sentient being.

[em2vn]

“When a website has numerous links to porn or soft porn sites it will be flagged as a porn site by a strict filter. FR fits that definition.”
You’re out of your mind.

[CSM]

Were you logged in? Sorry if someone already asked this, I just got out of the shower.

;-)

[LetGoNow]

Really?

I suppose you don’t consider playboy.com to be porn then?

[LetGoNow]

I like your philosophy.

As you alluded to, there is a difference between “at work” and “supposed to be working” in some types of jobs.

When I had employees, when it was work time I expected work. If it was a slow day we all goofed off together. And sometimes that meant going in to my office and surfing.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>>My bet is he or she is a Kos-sack or a DUer.

That would be KosKiddie and/or DUmb-ass.

[gondramB]

>>Please note that hot linking is bandwidth theft. It actually hurts the victim. Plus it’s lazy and stupid. Now grabbing a photo and re-hosting it may still be “theft” but I don’t see where it actually hurts anyone so I have no problem with it.<<

That's part of a larger discussion. When something is provided free online can the owner require me to view in a certain way. Network executives have described fast forwarding past commercials or even going to the bathroom during commercials as theft.

Likewise advertisers have claimed that popup blockers and Firefox addins that let users control how (and how much) of a page is displays are theft.

I don't buy any of that - if the page is availabe free of charge delivered to my house I should be able to view whatever portion I choose.

I am only aware on hotlinking cases that have been found to have merit in the case of pay content where the infringer was reselling the stolen content. Thats a crime no matter how you aquire the content.

That said, I don't hotlink except from major news stories or when I want to show that photo has not be 'shopped.

It cost me about $22 a year to run Boycottlasvegas.com at 1&1.com. That gives me 300000.0 MB a month so my cost for 2 meg picture is one hundreth of one cent (2 * 2 000) / (3 000 000 * 12) = 0.000111111111

And for that 2 megs a picture like this can be downloaded 57 time.

So thats half a million downloads for a penny. I can't feel too bad about that.

[LetGoNow]

Thanks for the input. We are too close in our thinking to quibble over a couple of details.

[gondramB]

Its probably best also to not take the thread further off track. Nice chatting with you about this.

[rbosque]

[supremedoctrine]

It could be because still so many mentions of the word
“Clinton” on FR that the blood-red flags of pornography went up.

[em2vn]

It’s a photography magazine isn’t it. The work is excellent.

[LetGoNow]

You are not a troll so stop trolling.

[sageb1]

Is there some reason you posted that to me?

[rbosque]

Other than it’s humor content, no.

[Alouette]

China 2005 and 2006: Free Republic blocked on hotel computer in Beijing

FreeRepublic is available in Moscow, in spite of all the Putin-bashing threads (or maybe because of them).

[CharlesWayneCT]

My work blocks RedState.com. And I think it might block DailyKos now as well. Fr is still OK.

Although I worry about the “f-news” part of the string, it might be mis-interpreted.

[em2vn]

I haven’t trolled since I took up fly fishing, though trolling can be an effective way to hook a bass or two.

[DBrow]

I did a quick word freq analysis. The page contains the word abortionist, Al Quaeda, arsonists, bedwetter, barfing, bitch, bite, breast-feeding, breast, centerfolds, come, cross-dressing, Exotic, jackbooted, Lazamataz, playboy, poking, pornographic, pornography, socialist, tongue, weenies, xxx, and references to named web filters.

1648 different words.

I listed the ones that a filter may care about, if anyone wants to see a two column list 1700 entries long let me know.

[mewzilla]

My husband works for the State of NY, They block FR too.

Figgers.