Re: equal time for SurfWatch

[Carol Simpson <csimpson@TENET.EDU>]

Doug, you seem to have started the Great Debate.  I do have a concern
about this "filtering" or "blocking" in general.  If the filter is set to
a particular address, all the suspect site would have to do is move their
page to another address and they would be "in the clear" again.
Additionally, if this Manager program allows each school or district to
set up their own preferences, does that mean each district will have to
hire full-time surfers to seek out and block offending material?
Wouldn't that put our districts in the position of Prodigy who recently
lost a significant judgement because they attempted to exercise partial
editorial control (and failed)?  What if, despite our efforts, some child
finds something inappropriate?  And how does one allow access to a
wonderful collection of math puzzles at a university gopher when another
item on that gopher is a colletion of D.H. Lawrence?  Blocking by address
throws the baby out with the bath water.

To throw a bit of humor on the whole mess, a computer consultant recently
told us of a way to block files SINGLY in much the same way that virus
protectors identify viruses - they look for specific bit sequences.  When
one of my colleagues asked "Does that mean someone will have to find and
scan EVERY naughty file and picture on the Internet?" the consultant
replied, "We're accepting applications....."   ;-)