The Censorware Project

Australia has rejected mandatory use of censorware in an effort to stop child pornography. Sayeth Communications Minister Helen Coonan:

"The biggest issue is not so much the money but such an expensive scheme would not necessarily solve the problem and small to medium ISPs (internet service providers) would be driven out of business for little or no benefit," Senator Coonan said. "What does work is greater information and parental supervision and that is the kind of program that the government is promoting."

BoingBoing has a story today on how Microsoft's new blogging tool, MSN Spaces, does word-based blocking of your blog entries. Sad and funny. I saw two stories in the blogosphere today on MSN Spaces -- one a video demo of how to post to it, which I yawned past, and this censorship story, which I'm, well, blogging myself.

As reported by Eric Umansky:

Two Army spokespeople have now explained to me that it is indeed the Army’s intention to purposely block service-members from viewing non-Pentagon casualty sites. (Other services apparently have similar policies and do use filtering software.)

Details are sketchy so far, but it seems the Supreme Court has decided 5-4 that "a lower court was correct to block [the Child Online Protection Act] from taking effect, because it likely violates the First Amendment." I wonder if there will be a reason in the near future for researchers to demonstrate the quality of censorware's "important technological advances" since 1998.

Here's CNN's story.

Here's the Syllabus and the Opinion.

NewsForge has an article today on how U.S. and Open Source Censorship Slims the Net. Interesting quotes from censorware providers (it's better than governmental censorship, doncha know) and some discussion of whether open-source censorware is better than closed blacklists.