another filtering system bites the dust

Danny Yee (danny@staff.cs.usyd.edu.au)
Wed, 22 Oct 1997 15:26:44 +1000 (EST)

X-Stop was much touted by protectors of public morals as suitable for use
in libraries. (It has a "felony load" option which was supposed to block
only "obscene" material under the US Supreme Court _Miller_ judgement.)
Of course we (or those of us with some technical clue) know such claims
are total bunk (needs strong AI, at _least_), but some people seemed to
swallow the PR... now the analysis is in, and it's just what we expected.
X-Stop (with the _least restrictive_ felony load option enabled) blocks
the usual list of things, including
* the Quakers
* the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think-tank)
* Banned Books sites
* homosexual resource sites
and a whole pile of other things which aren't remotely obscene.

Details at
http://www.spectacle.org/cs/xstop.html

Danny.