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Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites, Study Finds
The New York Times ^ | 12/11/02 | JOHN SCHWARTZ

Posted on 12/11/2002 8:54:09 AM PST by ppaul

The New York Times Sponsored by Starbucks


December 11, 2002

Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites, Study Finds

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Teenagers who look to the Internet for health information as part of their "wired generation" birthright are blocked from many useful sites by antipornography filters that federal law requires in school and library computers, a new study has found.

The filtering programs tend to block references to sex and sex-related terms, like "safe sex," "condoms," "abortion," "jock itch," "gay" and "lesbian." Although the software can be adjusted to allow access to most health-related Web sites, many schools and libraries ratchet up the software's barriers to highest settings, the report said.

"A little bit of filtering is O.K., but more isn't necessarily better," said Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, which produced the report, to be published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. "If they are set too high, they can be a serious obstacle to health information."

The researchers found that filters set at the least restrictive level blocked an average of 1.4 percent of health sites; at the most restrictive level, filters blocked nearly 25 percent of health sites. The amount of pornography blocked, however, was fairly consistent: 87 percent at the least restrictive level, 91 percent at the most restrictive.

The programs blocked a much higher percentage of health sites devoted to safe-sex topics: 9 percent at the least restrictive level and 50 percent at the most restrictive. The blocked pages at high levels included The Journal of the American Medical Association's site for women's health and a page with online information from the Food and Drug Administration about clinical trials.

To the researchers, the results mean that a school or library that uses a less restrictive setting for Internet filters can lose very little of the protective effect of the filters, while minimizing the tendency of filters to block harmless and even valuable sites.

The report is the first major study of the effectiveness of filters to appear in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the first to look at the effectiveness of filters at various settings. Most previous studies have been produced by organizations with a strong point of view either favoring or opposing filters. The Kaiser Foundation is a nonprofit health research group. David Burt, an antipornography advocate who is a spokesman for the filtering company N2H2, said he was pleased with the report, which he called "very thoughtful and well designed — they recognized it matters a lot how you configure a filter and set it up."

But opponents of filtering requirements said the study showed the technology's clumsiness.

"Filters are just fine for parents to use at home," said Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association. "They are not appropriate for institutions that might be the only place where kids can get this information."

"The importance of the First Amendment," Ms. Krug said, "is that it provides us with the ability to govern ourselves, because it guarantees that you have the right to access information. The filters undercut that ability."

Nancy Willard, an Oregon educator who has written student guides that emphasize personal responsibility in Internet surfing, called filtering a kind of censorship that, if performed by the schools directly, would be unconstitutional.

"These filtering companies are protecting all information about what they are blocking as confidential trade secrets," Ms. Willard said. "This is nothing more than stealth censorship."

The study was conducted for the foundation by University of Michigan researchers, who tested six leading Internet filtering programs. The researchers searched for information on 24 health topics, including breast cancer and birth control, and also for pornographic terms. They performed the tests at each of three settings. At the least restrictive setting, only pornography is supposed to be blocked; an intermediate setting also bars sites with nudity and other controversial material like illicit drugs. The most restrictive setting possible for each product may block sites in dozens of other categories.

The researchers then called 20 school districts and library systems around the United States to ask how they set their filters. Of the school systems, which teach a half million students over all, only one set its filters at the least restrictive level.

The issue of library filtering is making its way through the federal courts. Last month the Supreme Court agreed to hear a Bush administration defense of the Children's Internet Protection Act, the federal law requiring schools and libraries to use filters on computers used by children or to lose technology money. A special panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, struck down part of the law that applied to libraries as unconstitutional. Chief Judge Edward R. Becker wrote that filters were a "blunt instrument" for protecting children.




TOPICS: Breaking News; Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aids; ala; ama; americanlibraryass; children; condoms; filters; homos; homosexual; homosexualactivists; homosexualagenda; internet; online; perversion; porn; pornography; publicschools; schools; teens; web; website
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"Filters are just fine for parents to use at home," said Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association. "They are not appropriate for institutions that might be the only place where kids can get this information."

Moron.
Kids don't need to get this information.

1 posted on 12/11/2002 8:54:09 AM PST by ppaul
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To: ppaul
http://www.peacefire.org/

Please go to the above site to see how broad most of these filters are.
2 posted on 12/11/2002 8:59:40 AM PST by Karsus
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To: Karsus
blocked by filter at work because they consider this site an advocate group site.
3 posted on 12/11/2002 9:06:29 AM PST by Big Guy and Rusty 99
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To: Karsus; EdReform; scripter; TLBSHOW; RaceBannon
The main reason these groups are complaining is because they want our children exposed to homosexual activist propaganda by any means possible.


4 posted on 12/11/2002 9:06:32 AM PST by ppaul
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To: ppaul
Internet Filters Block Many Useful Sites

Right, if you consider porn sites to be useful. Everything the kiddies need to know about AIDS can be said in one paragraph:

AIDS IS CONTAGIOUS; AVOID DRUG USE; AVOID HOMOSEXUALITY; PRACTICE MONOGAMY.

5 posted on 12/11/2002 9:07:39 AM PST by Minutemen
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To: Big Guy and Rusty 99
blocked by filter at work because they consider this site an advocate group site.

It is.
Homos and ACLU activists.

6 posted on 12/11/2002 9:08:16 AM PST by ppaul
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To: TxBec
Ping.
7 posted on 12/11/2002 9:10:04 AM PST by ppaul
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To: ppaul
"Filters are just fine for parents to use at home," said Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association. "They are not appropriate for institutions that might be the only place where kids can get this information."

Yes, and the #1 site the American Library Association recommends is Go Ask Alice, where they actually recommend that you use a condom if you have sex with animals and discuss such great topics as safe rimming.....yep, kids have to know this kind of stuff....

8 posted on 12/11/2002 9:12:01 AM PST by Always Right
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To: ppaul
Some examples of what actually gets blocked
9 posted on 12/11/2002 9:12:07 AM PST by B Knotts
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To: ppaul
well, I do work for a canadian company. You'd think they'd be more tolerant. ha HA!
10 posted on 12/11/2002 9:17:10 AM PST by Big Guy and Rusty 99
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To: ppaul
well, I do work for a canadian company. You'd think they'd be more tolerant. ha HA!
11 posted on 12/11/2002 9:17:27 AM PST by Big Guy and Rusty 99
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To: Karsus
This one's gotta be the funniest:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
272. Homogeneous Transformation Matrices #4140
http://www.silcom.com/~barnowl/HTransf.htm (in Janes sample)
Blocked by: N2H2 (Sex - Jul 14, Jul 26, Sep 11, Oct 7)
Yahoo: /Science/Mathematics/Linear Algebra/
Google: /Science/Math/Algebra
Explicit n-dimensional homogeneous matrices for projection, dilation, reflection, shear, strain, rotation...



12 posted on 12/11/2002 9:20:45 AM PST by B Knotts
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To: B Knotts
Thanks for the link.
If kids need to view those sites, they can do so at home with their parents' permission. We do not need to fund public libraries to give kids access to a lot of that garbage - which most of those sites are peddling.
13 posted on 12/11/2002 9:21:12 AM PST by ppaul
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To: ppaul
True.

My interest in this is that I'd be ashamed to release software that worked that poorly.

I think there are some that work better, though.

14 posted on 12/11/2002 9:24:03 AM PST by B Knotts
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To: ppaul
I'd go so far as to question the need to have public access Internet terminals in public libraries, anyhow.
15 posted on 12/11/2002 9:26:45 AM PST by B Knotts
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To: ppaul
I'm still confused about all of this. When I was in school, we were in class all day, had 5 minutes between them to scurry about in a frenzy. The library was a resource for checking books out, but rarely did we have time to linger unless there as an entire class, supervised.

That said, I know some schools have "empty" periods, or study halls which provide time for the students to go to the library to ostensibly study. If you are going to have internet access in the library, have each kid log on and off and review the sites they visited. If they've gone to porn sites, punish them the same way you would if you found a Penthouse in a kid's bookbag. Or, use the filters and recognize that some good content will be blocked. Who cares? What's the big issue here?

16 posted on 12/11/2002 9:28:29 AM PST by Mr. Bird
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To: ppaul
I agree that the programs are necessary. However, my geography students are constantly getting booted off of the National Geographic website. The school's filter senses "pornographic material," and I have to go through the technology police to get around the wall.
17 posted on 12/11/2002 9:30:34 AM PST by ivoteright
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To: ppaul
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!
18 posted on 12/11/2002 9:36:29 AM PST by Texaggie79
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To: Texaggie79
This is BREAKING NEWS.
The article states that "the report, [is] to be published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association. "
You are reading about now it on FR before it is even published in the AMA Journal.
19 posted on 12/11/2002 9:48:01 AM PST by ppaul
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To: ppaul
So you got it on a technicality.....
20 posted on 12/11/2002 9:53:06 AM PST by Texaggie79
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