Inevitably, almost all battles about Internet content controls become battles about the effectiveness of Internet filters. That’s because, from the start, many have held out hope that private filters can offer families, schools, libraries and others the opportunity to block objectionable content without getting government involved in the ugly business of Net censorship.
But there have always been filtering critics and, ironically, they come from two very different camps. On one hand, we often hear policymakers or pro-regulation activist groups lamenting the fact that filters are UNDER-inclusive, or miss too much objectionable online content. Indeed, rumors are that the Department of Justice is currently engaged in major effort to build a legal case against filters as an effective private blocking tool. If the government was able to successfully make such a case to the courts, it might help them undo a decade’s worth of jurisprudence that has been built upon the belief that filters offered a “less-restrictive means” of addressing objectionable content compared to vague, over-broad government content control efforts.
Cutting in the opposite direction, many librarians, free expression groups and others have long criticized filters on the grounds that that they are far too OVER-inclusive. These critics consider filters to be fundamentally flawed because they often block access to sites that contain important information. Early examples included filters that blocked access to breast cancer websites because they contained the word “breast,” or others that blocked access to Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey’s website because the word “dick” was blocked by the filter. Moreover, the critics of filter over-inclusiveness also point out that, despite their technical nature, filtering technologies are ultimately quite stupid and depend on the subjective values / morality of their creators. For example, if a filter maker decides that websites discussing homosexual issues were offensive to him, then anyone using his software wouldn’t be able to access those sites either.
These competing anti-filtering forces are still at war today. Not only is the DOJ trying to build a case against private filters, but new bills are being introduced in Congress and pro-regulatory critics are engaged in new efforts to question the effectiveness of filters. (They either want a government-approved filter or want online intermediaries to rid the Net of all content they find “indecent.”) Meanwhile, filters have again come under attack from the folks up at the Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP), which is part of the Brennan Center for Justice. They have just released a revised edition of their “Internet Filters: A Public Policy Report,” which mostly criticizes filters for their over-inclusiveness.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.