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Re: Get cybersitter to block your ISP
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From: [email protected] (evans-the-swim)
Newsgroups: alt.privacy,alt.censorship,alt.revenge,news.admin.censorship,alt.html
Subject: Get cybersitter to block your ISP
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 20:16:16 GMT
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To all readers:
I suggest that you do as I have done. If you have a web page, add a
link (or many) dealing with Cybersitter, and email Mr. Milburn.
Here's my example...
Mr. Milburn:
I have been reading the reports of you and your company's unethical,
deceptive, bullying, and probably defamatory practices. It appears
that your response to critics is to add their ISP to the list of sites
blocked by your software.
Accordingly, I have added to my home page links to various sites and
files which will inform the reader of the true nature of your agenda.
I am also suggesting to readers in all the newsgroups that relate to
this issue that they do the same. My hope is that they will respond
by doing so, and in turn force you to add so many ISP's to your list
that you effectively restrict your users from the entire net.
If successful, this will lead ultimately to the mass realisation that
Cybersitter does not do what it is advertised to do, and that people
wishing to "protect" their children from influences with which they
disagree should choose other methods, and that you and your company
will disappear as yet another burp in the turgid indigestion of the
net.
Please respond when you have added my ISP to your list of blocked
sites. Feel free to email my postmaster as well.
A sample of the information available to visitors to my site follows:
=============================================
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 1997 14:36:55 -0800
From: Jonathan Wallace <[email protected]>
Subject: 1--Solid Oak Blocking Software & Ethical Spectacle
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jonathan Wallace
[email protected]
NEW YORK CITY, January 19, 1997--In an apparent act of
retaliation against a critic of the company, Solid Oak Sofware
has added The Ethical Spectacle (http://www.spectacle.org) to
the list of Web sites blocked by its Cybersitter software.
The Ethical Spectacle is a monthly Webzine examining
the intersection of ethics, law and politics
in our society, which recently urged its readers not to
buy Cybersitter because of Solid Oak's unethical behavior.
The Ethical Spectacle is edited by Jonathan Wallace, a New York-
based software executive and attorney who is the co-author,
with Mark Mangan, of Sex, Laws and Cyberspace (Henry Holt, 1996),
a book on Internet censorship.
"In the book," Wallace said, "we took the position--
naively, I now think--that use of blocking software by parents
was a less restrictive alternative to government censorship.
We never expected that publishers of blocking software would
block sites for their political content alone, as Solid Oak
has done."
Solid Oak describes its product as blocking sites
which contain obscene and indecent material, hate speech,
and advocacy of violence and illegal behavior. In late 1996,
computer journalists Declan McCullagh ([email protected])
and Brock Meeks ([email protected]) broke the story that
Cybersitter blocked the National Organization for
Women site (http://www.now.org)
along with other political and feminist organizations.
In addition, the product blocked entire domains such as
well.com, maintained by the venerable Well online service.
McCullagh and Meeks implied that they had received an inner
look at the Cybersitter database of blocked sites from someone
who had reverse engineered the software. Shortly afterwards,
Solid Oak asked the FBI to begin a criminal investigation of
the two journalists and accused college student Bennett Haselton
([email protected]) of being their source.
Though McCullagh, Meeks and Haselton all
denied he was the source (or that anything illegal
had occurred), Solid Oak president Brian Milburn called
Haselton an "aspiring felon" and threatened to add
his Internet service provider to the blocked list if it did
not muzzle Haselton.
Haselton came to Milburn's attention by founding Peacefire,
a student organization opposing censorship. On his Web pages
(http://www.peacefire.org), Haselton posted an essay called
"Where Do We Not Want You to Go Today?" criticizing
Solid Oak. The company promptly added Peacefire to its
blocked list, claiming that Haselton had reverse
engineered its software, an allegation for which the
company has never produced any evidence.
"At that point," Wallace said, "I felt Milburn was
acting like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla. I added a
link to the Spectacle top page called 'Don't Buy Cybersitter'
(http://www.spectacle.org/alert/peace.html).
Anyone clicking on the link would see a copy of Bennett's
'Where Do We Not Want You to Go' page with some added
material, including my thoughts on the inappropriateness
of Solid Oak's behavior. I wrote the company, informing
them of my actions and telling them that they
misrepresent their product when they claim it blocks only
indecent material, hate speech and the like."
Solid Oak has now responded by blocking The
Ethical Spectacle. "I wrote to Milburn and to
Solid Oak technical support demanding an explanation,"
Wallace said. "I pointed out that The Spectacle does not fit
any of their published criteria for blocking a site.
I received mail in return demanding that I cease writing
to them and calling my mail 'harassment'--with a copy
to the postmaster at my ISP."
Wallace continued: "With other critics such as Declan,
Brock and Bennett, Solid Oak has claimed reverse
engineering of its software, in supposed violation
of its shrink-wrapped license. I have never downloaded,
purchased or used Cybersitter, nor had any access to
its database. I believe that Solid Oak's sole reason
for blocking my site is the 'Don't Buy Cybersitter'
page, criticizing the company's bullying behavior."
The Ethical Spectacle includes the internationally
respected An Auschwitz Alphabet
(http://www.spectacle.org/695/ausch.html), a compilation
of resources pertaining to the Holocaust. "Sixty
percent of the Spectacle's traffic consists of visitors to the
Holocaust materials," Wallace said. "Schoolteachers have
used it in their curricula, it was the subject of a lecture at
a museum in Poland some weeks ago, and every month, I get
letters from schoolchildren thanking me for placing it
online. Now, due to Solid Oak's actions, Cybersitter's
claimed 900,000 users will no longer have access to it."
Solid Oak can be contacted at [email protected],
or care of its president, Brian Milburn ([email protected].)
-----------------------------------------------
Jonathan Wallace
The Ethical Spectacle http://www.spectacle.org
Co-author, Sex, Laws and Cyberspace http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."--Gandhi