Excerpts from linuxchix: 17-Jan-101 Re: [issues] Re: Filtering .. by Jen
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> There's no reason to argue N2H2's effectiveness or in-effectiveness in
> this newsgroup. The issue is censorship, not N2H2.
On the contrary. The issue is Internet filtering. This issue
includes several sub-questions. One of them is the question of
censorship. Another question is its effectiveness. Even assuming
that not allowing access to pornography in schools and public
libraries is a good idea, Internet filtering is not a good idea if no
product does what it claims (ie. blocks access to pornography, and
does not block access to not-pornography).
Now, any person's opinion on censorship is mostly a moral issue, while
the question of effectiveness is mostly a technological issue, and can
be evaluated empirically. It's inherently difficult to change the
opinion of anyone on moral issues, so the obvious path for someone who
wants to argue against Internet filtering (even if the reason they
don't like it is that they feel censorship is wrong) is to argue that
it's not effective, and give evidence supporting these arguments, as
groups such as Peacefire have apparently done.
> Are you really resorting to slandering my company's product in order
> to prove your point? N2H2 serves over 11,000 schools covering over 9
> million students, so for every dissatisfied customer, there are
> hundreds or thousands more satisfied ones.
You brought up a point that many people do not understand the
technology, and gave the specific example of your company's product.
I assumed you were saying that the people arguing that censorware is
ineffective were wrong, and claiming that your company's product is in
fact effective.
I believe that most points raised in a discussion in support of an
opinion are fair game to be questioned by those who disagree, unless
doing so hurts another person. I also believe that corporations have
no feelings to be hurt.
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