Censorware company Smartfilter has blocked Distributed Boing Boing, a service that helps Boing Boing readers access the site through censoring firewalls. They're classing the service as an "anonymizer" and blocking it for customers that block access to anonymizers on their networks. These customers include several repressive governments around the world, who use SmartFilter's censorware to restrict the information their citizens can access.
SmartFilter never talks about the repressive governments they do business with. Instead, they focus on a story about keeping little kids from accidentally seeing naked people. But by targeting Distributed Boing Boing — a service only ever used deliberately, by sophisticated Internet users who know what they're looking for — SmartFilter once again shows its true colors: they're about censorship, not protecting kids.
The "anonymizer" classification is just as spurious, of course. An anonymizer is a service that lets you look at web-pages without your identity being logged. Distributed Boing Boing lets you look at Boing Boing, period.
It's amazing to think that there are CIOs still writing checks to these vindictive clowns — they're not in the business of accurately classifying the Internet to help companies contain liability. They're in the business of persecuting sites that criticize them.
In the meantime, you can still access Distributed Boing Boing by checking the Google cache of the page, which SmartFilter doesn't block.
(Thanks, Jamie!)
Update: Gordon sez, "Did you know that Boing Boing is also blocked by Websense, which my company uses? In this case you are actually categorized as ‘Sex’. I can access the distributed site though."
