What Kind Of Filtering System Thinks W3C Is A Porn Site?

from the one-that-won't-stay-in-business-long,-hopefully dept

Tue, Sep 30th 2008 9:06pm — Mike Masnick

We've all heard stories of various online filters that block perfectly legitimate sites as being "porn" or something else objectionable, but sometimes there are such extreme cases that it makes you wonder what people are thinking. Apparently, some ISPs are using a filtering system that believes the W3C site should be blocked as porn. W3C, of course, is the body that manages standards for the web. It was founded, and still run, by the creator of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Any filtering system that classifies the W3C as porn doesn't deserve to be in the filtering business. Hell, they barely deserve to be on the web at all.

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Filed Under: filtering, porn, w3c

21 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 30 Sep 2008 @ 9:20pm

They probably added it because they use IE and didn't want people to see how poorly coded their 'this page is blocked' pages are.
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Mr. Giggles, 30 Sep 2008 @ 9:42pm

2009 IBC
similarly, the construction industry is having hearings about classifying the new building code as porn...
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- Chunky Vomit, 30 Sep 2008 @ 11:49pm
  
  Re: 2009 IBC
  Don't construction workers get enough porn when they go to the strippers at night?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2008 @ 1:49am
    
    Re: Re: 2009 IBC
    No, but the general public gets to see enough porn in the form of builders arse cleavage, nice...
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zcat, 30 Sep 2008 @ 10:00pm

Finnish police to blame
Apparently the blocking list is one compiled and distributed by the Finnish Police.. so perhaps they don't deserve to be in the policing business?
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qez, 30 Sep 2008 @ 10:03pm

National Bureau of Investigation
Any filtering system that classifies the W3C as porn doesn't deserve to be in the filtering business.

I totally agree. The list of filtered web sites is provided by National Bureau of Investigation.

The whole censorship is a like a bad joke. Here's one of the Electronic Frontier Finland's press releases about the issue. I don't know if you would laugh or cry if you would know all the details, this kind of stupidity shouldn't happen in modern day democratic society. I guess Finland is not part of that.
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- Evan Carslake, 1 Oct 2008 @ 2:45am
  
  Re: National Bureau of Investigation
  Haha that press release was quite funny, even the title alone.
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Overcast, 30 Sep 2008 @ 10:25pm

I get all my best Porn there.
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Chunky Vomit, 30 Sep 2008 @ 10:45pm

Can't a geek get off on reading HTML references any more? What is next, A List Apart? CSS Zen Garden?

If this keeps up, I might have to go have sex with my wife.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2008 @ 12:27am

Finland is quite a bit more democratic than the US. That two party system seems to work so well. Which side of the sane coin is going to win this time? Why do USians think they own it? Oh yeah, its the US. Creators of the world.
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Ima Fish, 1 Oct 2008 @ 4:01am

My work uses SonicWall to block sites. Once Slate and the New York times were blocked as pornography.
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Lisa Westveld (profile), 1 Oct 2008 @ 4:06am

Actually...
There are many porn sites that contain links to the W3C sites. This is a nice trick to tell webspiders and webcrawlers to get lost and stop spending bandwidth of the porn site itself. As a result, you can find plenty of references to the W3C on porn sites.

Then again, many other sites including the TechDirt sites contain links to the W3C site. Techdirt uses this reference:

So when an ISP blocks a porn site and everything it references to, W3C gets blocked too. :-)
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Anonymous Coward, 1 Oct 2008 @ 4:54am

One other option
If you have an axe to grind with a web site you can hit the big filter companies and subit there URL as this or that.

Once you have done this the site gets added to the bad list untill the site owner can try and get it fixed.
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NullOp, 1 Oct 2008 @ 5:41am

W3C, porn?
"When in doubt, filter it out." Thats how a lot of filters work. In todays litigious climate companies are trying to protect themselves from litigation in every way possible. An "All Ya Gotta Do" solution looks very attractive but, in fact, is not currently possible. So in the long run, deal with it.
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Michael Tulloch, 1 Oct 2008 @ 8:03am

Blocking sw
When I taught introductory psychology at the University of South Dakota my students complained they couldn't access the class website from libraries or schools. I found out the state was blocking the Intro to Psych website because their blocking SW said the site contained "occult" material.
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Chris, 1 Oct 2008 @ 8:06am

3 Women one Cup?
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Eric the Grey, 1 Oct 2008 @ 11:28am

Filtering software
I've seen problems like this, where sites were incorrectly labeled by filtering software. One of my radio stations (area93.com) is filtered at work as being a hacker site.

Oh, and I find it interesting that www.w3c.org is owned by Yahoo. Talk about typo squatting.

EtG
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known coward, 1 Oct 2008 @ 12:25pm

you mean
the web consortium is not porn???
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JoelMBenge (profile), 1 Oct 2008 @ 2:05pm

It's obvious.
Like you said, it's a "body". Need I mention that it strips code down to its bare essentials? *snerk*
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Jason, 2 Oct 2008 @ 12:19am

Typed soft porn into google and this was one of the results, i thought it was pretty funny: http://leeannejaud.pictiger.com/albums/42405/16939866/
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- Evan Carslake, 16 Oct 2008 @ 5:16am
  
  Re:
  There are more of her at http://www.27bslash6.com/photos_2008_beach.html
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