Daily Kos contributor KiTA says the popular leftie political blog has been blocked as “a porn site” by SmartFilter, and some question whether the block may have been politically motivated (similarly popular right-leaning blogs are not blocked). Link to story.
SmartFilter is US-based firm that sells web-filtering software to private companies, state institutions, and government-controlled ISPs around the world. Not long ago, BoingBoing suffered the same miscategorization. We’re not a porn site, either, but SmartFilter’s dumb move blocked millions of would-be readers from accessing our site. No amount of reasoning would persuade them to lift the ban. Here are previous posts about BoingBoing’s troubles with SmartFilter. See also BoingBoing’s guide to defeating censorware. (Thanks, Seth)
Reader comment: Jay reminds us that
BoingBoing’s guide to defeating censorware is actually blocked by Smartfilter under the category: Anonymizers. You probably already know this but its kinda pointless having a page about getting around stuff when you can’t get to it in the first place (I can obviously get to the rest of BoingBoing from behind our SmartFilter) :)
Andy Armstrong , the censorware-hatin’ fella behind Distributed BoingBoing, says,
I’ve mirrored your censorware page here: Link. I’ve invited other bloggers to do the same. I’m not sure what effect that’ll have but it seemed appropriate to try to spread the word :)