Chapter: Filtering the Internet in the USA: Free Speech Denied?

Quote:

Thus, access criteria are preset by the product manufacturer and can be altered by the regular downloading of updates or even altered, for certain of the filters, by the active user. Not surprisingly, most users, especially busy parents, are likely to use the default criteria and therefore have minimal awareness of which sites and newsgroups are not accessible. Since blocking and filtering programs are commonly available, the focus of this paper will be on their use; however, also of importance, and potentially more dangerous, are rating programs, analogous to systems in place for movies and television. Two systems are intended to first encourage and later require websites and newsgroups to rate themselves along a number of dimensions for example includes nudity, sex, violence, and language. Browsers and search engines could then be programmed to return or access sites and newsgroups that satisfy a preset profile. The dangers associated with self-rating schemes will be discussed later in this paper.

What I expect to learn:

To know why filtering and blocking are both wrong in some cases

Review:

It is sad to have something that is really present to protect oneself in encountering things that are not meant to be seen or be aware of such as online violence, sex, or other explicit issues that need not to be mentioned here which is why today, more and more developers are trying to create programs or software that is intended to protect the users by filtering or blocking unnecessary contents that may pop out of nowhere while the user is surfing the internet. The main issue here is the ethical approach of allowing explicit contents to be available for anyone’s access which includes children that are not meant for them but why is it so hard to develop such programs? Why is it becoming an issue?

There are a lot of problems with blocking and filtering contents because such features restricts access to some content that some people might actually want to gain access too. For example, just the other day, i saw this kid browsing through the internet about something that let’s just say, not for his age but then it’s there, it is there wide and open for the innocent kid to see. That is not for him but how come he has access to it? Is it the fault of the parent? Or is the browser the one to blame? Why won’t they activate the filtering feature of the browser? Okay, just thinking about who is the one to blame or the one who should take action makes me want to complain my throat out to the parent but what can I say, he’s a kid who is just randomly searching random sites with explicitly random content.

What I learned:

·         Definitions

·         Examples of Problems with blocking and filtering programs

·         Mainstream Loudoun

·         Librarians and filtering programs

·         Discussion and analysis

Integrative Questions:

1.    What does filtering mean?

2.    What is blocking?

3.    Enumerate problems encountered with blocking.

4.    Enumerate problems encountered with filtering.

5.    Give the two libraries that were given as examples that use filtering software.