http://dfn.org/Alerts/contest.htm September 28, 2000 [8]DFN media release | [9]Related material Winners of the Foil the Filters Contest Thanks to all who submitted entries in the Foil the Filters Contest, including the many anonymous ones. We hope this contest will help illustrate how unreliable censorware is and provide further examples for those interested in exposing it. And of these examples, these are our favorites.... Grand Prize Joe J. reports being prevented from accessing his own high school's Web site from his own high school's library. Carroll High School adopted filtering software which blocked "all questionable material." This included the word "high." Runner-Up You wouldn't think someone named Hillary Anne would have censorware problems, but all attempts to register hillaryanne@hotmail.com were rejected because censorware spotted the hidden word "aryan." Hillary says "I had to email and fight the system like crazy to actually be able to use my registered nickname again." ___________________________________ The Poetic Justice Award For those bitten by their own snake Tie An anonymous submitter noticed that the Web site of [10]Richard "Dick" Armey, Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives and a staunch defender of censorware and strict Internet regulation, is himself a victim of censorware. Netnanny, Surfwatch, Cybersitter, N2H2, and Wisechoice are among the "software solutions" which Armey advocates. All of them filter his site because it contains the word "dick." The conservative group Focus on the Family intends its anti-porn site [11]Pure Intimacy to be a "resource for those struggling with sexual temptations" and the "psychological bondage" that is "a major reason why individuals go online." Jim K. observed that Cybersitter blocked this site for violating the following categories: porno, hardcoreporno, sexual, nudity, and, of course, bondage. ___________________________________ The Silicon Eye Award For finding objectionable content where only a computer would look Winner Tim M. wanted to register an account with [12]Sympatico, but it wouldn't accept the name "Heather," which contains the phrase "eat her." Honorable mentions John W. couldn't get to a test preparation site. The Navy's censorware blocked him from accessing the A+ Exam site was blocked because its URL, [13]www.aplusexam.com contained the word "sex." John C. had the same problem with a biotechnology education site, [14]www.accessexcellence.org. An employee of [15]Surplus Exchange complained that customers always report being unable to access the site. The non-profit company recycles office equipment, and, in this whistleblower's words, the employees have "nothing to do with sex." Maybe censorware is not their biggest problem. One of Kelly D's Australian high school students had difficulty completing a report on the genetics of cucumbers. The education department had chosen to use NetNanny, and when it detected the word "cum" in "cucumbers," the student had to complete the report offline. CyberPatrol kept stopping Paul J. from submitting his monthly reports. The subject of these reports was statistical software that "analyseS HITs," but the center letters kept coming back as Xs. Devon R. won't be seen on Microsoft Network's Messenger under the name of his favorite "high-tech cow." Censorware blocked his choice: "Gizmoo." We see a lot of problems like the [16]Essex Company's insufferable problems getting their email to go through. According to C., their address domain, essex1.com, rarely vaults other company's censorware, hurting profits and frustrating work. An anonymous submitter reported being unable to use a German word for "a kind of virtual coffee" at Hotmail: "muckefuck." Chris G., of Greece, has a client, Pissanos Productions. His attempts to register pissanos.com were dismissed by [17]Network Solutions and many other services, costing "a large amount of money." Finally, he says, he found a service that didn't use a word filter. ___________________________________ Overkill Award For blocking even good words Winner John exposed some strange filtering decisions at [18]Quokka. The site blocks "golden," he says, "no doubt from its connection with showers." It also blocks "mate," "so Aussies and Kiwis can't use the term, which refers to a friend." Honorable mentions John W. plays multiplayer games at [19]CyberStrike II, but CyberStrike II appears to be playing games with him. John noticed that the words "gay" and "sex" are blocked at the site but if he types "I am homosexual," "homo" is blocked and replaced with "&*#%." Saying "I am heterosexual" goes right through, though, "of course." Sergio is Canadian and, no surprise, a big hockey fan. All he wanted was the time his hockey game would start, but he couldn't access [20]Statspro because the link, [21]www.statspro.com/hockey/ighl/adult/sunday, contained the word "adult." Mike Q. and son have discovered that the auction areas at [22]Amazon.com won't permit the word "bitchy" in the description area even though the item he was trying to sell used the word on the back cover. It was a book about Bette Davis, and many books are sold by Amazon which use this word, and others, in their titles. ___________________________________ The [23]Sherril Babcock Award For enduring censorware's human implementors Winner Sascha of Germany is Webmaster for [24]Teendate, an international pen pal site promoting communication and understanding among teenagers. When he tried to submit the site to [25]web.de, it was blocked as an adult-entry site. The Webmaster explained that "the word 'teen' would be reserved for adult sites." ___________________________________ The Twilight Zone Award For blocking which humans don't even understand Winner Scott, a high school student in Australia, couldn't get past his school's censorware to complete a report on the Fibonacci sequence (the mathematical sequence in which each number in the series is the sum of the previous two). He suspects the word was blocked because the mathematical sequence is relevant to "the pattern of rabbit-breeding," but we don't buy it. Honorable mentions Trish M's company uses WorldSecure software which won't let her access the popular [26]Webcrawler search engine. The entire site is blocked for being "offensive." Jeff G.'s company wouldn't let him access a link to [27]WebMonkey, a techie site, from hotwired.com's site. He's not holding his breath for an explanation. John found that the sailing forum at [28]Quokka bans use of the word "scoop." This has everyone baffled. He asks "does it mean something that I haven't heard of?" "Scooping" is a new one to us, too, John. Chris found NetNanny was triggered by the word "rum." It "didn't block it per-say [sic]," he says, but instead sent spaces in place of the "rum" in a company FTP password. Disabling NetNanny solved the problem. A lesson for us all. ___________________________________ The Frolic Award For fun at censorware's expense Winner Peacefire's Bennett Haselton takes the prize for his fun with Cybersitter. Bennett started with this phrase: "Gary Bauer is a staunch anti-homosexual conservative who sees the gay movement as absolutely pure fascism and thinks movies of men with men are the greatest terror." After Cybersitter's keen filters attacked it, here's what came out: "Gary Bauer is a staunch anti-conservative who sees the gay movement as absolutely pure and thinks movies of men with men are the greatest." ___________________________________ The Dick Sexton Award Named for one with a personal stake in censorware-for obvious reasons. This award honors those whose lives have been affected by filtering. Tie Terry D. works for a company that secured a contract in that Yorkshire, England town, Scunthorpe. The IT manager had implemented a mail filter but wasn't aware that no one had been able to receive customer e-mails from this client for four days (the filter didn't generate logs). The manager was sacked. An anonymous submission blames the Gauntlet firewall for "prohibiting 300 lawyers from searching the Web for detailed dissections and commentary. The most frequently used word for such works is "analysis," and the first four letters of that word are blocked." Honorable mentions Manish Engineer and Dean Santamaria-Capetanelis deserve quick mentions for being blocked for non-censorware reasons. The former's name is often a "reserved" word which isn't permitted as a registration option.. The latter's last name is frequently blocked because, with 22 letters, it's too long for many registration algorithms to accept. Online, look for him as just Santamaria-Cape. ___________________________________ The Puritan Award For outstanding achievement in hindering people from learning about their own bodies Winner [29]Altavista's "family filter." When activated on September 26, 2000, Altavista's total number of returns for "sex" - a topic which includes areas of public health, mental health, safety, reproductive facts, contraception, animal biology, sexual dysfunction, law, history, prose, and poetry - totaled only 161. ___________________________________ The "I saw the light" Award For committing censorware to the flames Winner Not everyone stays committed to censorware. Mike maintains a former science teacher's [30]Web site and built in a censorware mechanism with what he calls "the usual swear words." When a posting showed up on his site which spelled "class" as "cl***", he dumped the filtering software to the flames and hasn't used it since. Honorable mention You may know [31]Matsushita better as the company that controls Panasonic. A "major mover," according to David B., but only after voicing his "outrage at the stupidity of the algorithm" did his IT department prevent the company from appearing in his newsgroups as MatsuXXXXa. ___________________________________ The Inspiration Award For reminding us what it's all about Winner Attributed to [32]EPIC's Marc Rotenberg, and though we aren't sure if it's a real case or not, it says it all and we couldn't pass it up. Thanks, Marc. "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances." ___________________________________ - [33]Alan Brown, Dir., Internet Development, Digital Freedom Network RELATED MATERIAL * [34]Digital Freedom Network announces censorware contest winners: The Digital Freedom Network has announced the winners in its Foil the Filters Contest. (September 28, 2000) * [35]Digital Freedom Network announces "Foil the Filter" contest: DFN's "Foil The Filters" contest is under way, and entrants are encouraged to search high and low - sometimes very low - to trip up Internet censorware. (September 7, 2000) * [36]A debate on filtering: BlackPlanet.com Executive Director Omar Wasow and DFN Internet Development Director Alan Brown debate the merits of filtering technology. (August 30, 2000) * [37]Filtering follies: Filtering software is no substitute for parental discretion, and it often does more harm than good. An essay by DFN Executive Director Bobson Wong. (August 25, 2000) * [38]Web site bans woman with "unacceptable" name: In a new twist on Internet censorship, Los Angeles attorney Sherril Babcock was blocked from joining the BlackPlanet.com online service - at least until she changes her name. (August 18, 2000) * [39]Widening the network of friends: Dissident Xin Wenming condemns the Chinese government for shutting down his site and clamping down on freedom of speech on the Net. (August 11, 2000) EXTERNAL ARTICLES * [40]Hey Armey, you've been filtered (Wired, September 28, 2000) RELATED SITES * [41]Peacefire * [42]Electronic Frontier Foundation [INLINE] _________________________________________________________________ [43]Home | [44]About | [45]Voices | [46]Press | [47]Alerts | [48]Contact | [49]Support Unless otherwise noted, all material copyright © 2000 Digital Freedom Network. All rights reserved. References 1. http://dfn.org/index.html 2. http://dfn.org/About/about.html 3. http://dfn.org/Voices/voices.html 4. http://dfn.org/Press/press.html 5. http://dfn.org/Alerts/alerts.html 6. http://dfn.org/Support/support.html 7. http://dfn.org/Contact/contact.html 8. http://dfn.org/Alerts/censorresult-pr.htm 9. http://dfn.org/Alerts/contest.htm#related 10. http://armey.house.gov/ 11. http://www.pureintimacy.org/ 12. https://reg.local.sympatico.ca:447/reg/ 13. http://www.aplusexam.com/ 14. http://www.accessexcellence.org/ 15. http://www.surplusexchange.org/ 16. http://www.essex1.com/ 17. http://www.networksolutions.com/ 18. http://www.quokka.com/ 19. http://www.cyberstrike2.net/ 20. http://www.statspro.com/ 21. http://www.statspro.com/hockey/ighl/adult/sunday/ 22. http://www.amazon.com/ 23. http://dfn.org/Voices/Americas/usa/blackplanet.htm 24. http://www.teendate.de/ 25. http://web.de/ 26. http://www.webcrawler.com/ 27. http://www.webmonkey.com/ 28. http://www.quokka.com/ 29. http://www.altavista.com/ 30. http://www.northcoast.com/%7Erchilds 31. http://www.matsushita.com/ 32. http://www.epic.org/ 33. mailto:abrown@dfn.org 34. http://dfn.org/Alerts/censorresult-pr.htm 35. http://dfn.org/Alerts/censor-pr.htm 36. http://dfn.org/Voices/Americas/usa/blackplanet-response.htm 37. http://dfn.org/Voices/Americas/usa/follies.htm 38. http://dfn.org/Voices/Americas/usa/blackplanet.htm 39. http://dfn.org/Voices/Asia/china/xinwenming-stmt.htm 40. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,39038,00.html 41. http://www.peacefire.org/ 42. http://www.eff.org/ 43. http://dfn.org/index.html 44. http://dfn.org/About/about.html 45. http://dfn.org/Voices/voices.html 46. http://dfn.org/Press/press.html 47. http://dfn.org/Alerts/alerts.html 48. http://dfn.org/Contact/contact.html 49. http://dfn.org/Support/support.html