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alexpgpAn article published last Wednesday on rambler.ru speculated that the British e-publication The Register had been placed on a cybercensor's "banned" list owing to a lack of appreciation for "British humor" directed at Bill Gates and Microsoft in the wake of the recent earthquake in Washington State.
Not quite the case, it would seem.
According to The Register's latest article on the subject, the block - imposed by a company named SurfControl via its Cyber Patrol software - had been imposed because of a reference, in one of the publication's stories, to Peacefire.org which is an ardent opponent of filtering software, and in particular to the organization's web site, which offers software that supposedly defeats programs such as Cyber Patrol.
At any rate, the folks at The Register are not at all happy, since the ban percolated though a number of Cyber Patrol OEMs, including Novell's BorderManager, effectively keeping a number of corporate users from reading the magazine. Furthermore, it appears that the official explanation offered by SurfControl for the ban was that The Register was a sex site, which served to further ruffle editorial feathers.
A question of interest raised by The Register in a separate article is very thorny: Is it appropriate for a company to have - and exercise - the right to block publications that may write about that company from its customers view?
By the way, the story that informs readers of the ban being lifted is datelined March 9, at 12:27 pm (presumably GMT, which pegs publication at 4:27 am Pacific Time). As I write this, it is about 1:45 pm Pacific Time on the 10th (over 24 hours later), and The Register appears to actually still be on the list of banned sites, (at least according to this link, which may be one of the aforementioned OEMs, but I got there via the main Cyber Patrol site).
Interesting times we live in.
Cheers...
Not quite the case, it would seem.
According to The Register's latest article on the subject, the block - imposed by a company named SurfControl via its Cyber Patrol software - had been imposed because of a reference, in one of the publication's stories, to Peacefire.org which is an ardent opponent of filtering software, and in particular to the organization's web site, which offers software that supposedly defeats programs such as Cyber Patrol.
At any rate, the folks at The Register are not at all happy, since the ban percolated though a number of Cyber Patrol OEMs, including Novell's BorderManager, effectively keeping a number of corporate users from reading the magazine. Furthermore, it appears that the official explanation offered by SurfControl for the ban was that The Register was a sex site, which served to further ruffle editorial feathers.
A question of interest raised by The Register in a separate article is very thorny: Is it appropriate for a company to have - and exercise - the right to block publications that may write about that company from its customers view?
By the way, the story that informs readers of the ban being lifted is datelined March 9, at 12:27 pm (presumably GMT, which pegs publication at 4:27 am Pacific Time). As I write this, it is about 1:45 pm Pacific Time on the 10th (over 24 hours later), and The Register appears to actually still be on the list of banned sites, (at least according to this link, which may be one of the aforementioned OEMs, but I got there via the main Cyber Patrol site).
Interesting times we live in.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2001-03-10 02:45 pm (UTC)People.com refused and their link was deleted.
Here we have one unit of a company trying to put pressure on another unit of the same company to give only favorable treatment of a subject. I love it - AOL is already starting to suffer the self-inflicted death of a thousand nibbles ;)
no subject
Date: 2001-03-10 04:05 pm (UTC)1) Wow.
2) It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.
Cheers...