cleanfeed and wikipedia

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <4944DEDE.5050700@ernest.net>, Nicholas Bohm
<nbohm@ernest.net> writes

>>> 2  It would make the whole process more transparent for the IWF to
>>> oblige ISPs to disclose when they were blocking on account of an IWF
>>> decision.
>> 
>> The question is whether such extra transparency is desirable, perhaps
>> not if it gives surfers a clue that they are "getting warm" when looking
>> for material. But I've not been involved with the IWF since around the
>> time the url-list was invented, so I can't claim to have all the
>> conflicting arguments at my fingertips.
>
>If Demon can do so can the rest.

There's two issues ... whether it's wise to say "you've found a URL that
contains material that some people would really like to locate" and
secondly whether it's technically possible to produce such a message.

The first is ultimately a matter of opinion -- whether you think people
will be using the IWF as a trust authority (this site lives up to its
promises, this one is scamming you); or whether you think there will be
further publicity about every blocked image.

I'd also caution that in some circumstances (albeit rather rare) it is
possible to mislead blocking systems, so that they block entirely
innocent pages (details in my thesis). Depending what the "you've been
blocked" message says, there's the possibility of defamation suits. This
may be a risk that an ISP is prepared to take (given the difficulty of
causing such a problem), but it's one to weigh in the balance.

A further, albeit similar problem is that what is blocked is in the
hands of a third party who might not be good for the money if an ISP not
only blocked Hello (to pick a company with a lot of lawyers) for a
while, but said clearly (using their branding, from their site) that was
because the Hello site was full of illegal images!  That's essentially
the statement made about Wikipedia recently -- and I'm not sure that
claiming "the IWF told me to say that you support paedophiles" is a
statutory defence to a defamation suit.

Now I realise that people want these clear "it's been censored" messages
so it's clear when the IWF list contains material that they think it
should not. But from the ISPs point of view, being up-front about the
blocking has downsides. Thinking about the incentives is always a
valuable way of understanding why the world is as it is -- and whether
it is likely to quickly change.

The second issue is that this is essentially a call for the ISPs who
have deployed expensive blocking systems that don't create currently
provide a "you are blocked page" to scrap these expensive systems and
build another one that can. That seems to me to be throwing good money
after bad :( The incentive for that is entirely absent.

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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