[Foundation-l] Image filter brainstorming: Personal filter lists

Tue Nov 29 22:56:55 UTC 2011

On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 02:28:13PM +0100, Alasdair wrote:
> On Tuesday, 29 November 2011 at 13:42, Tobias Oelgarte wrote:
> 
> > With the tiny (actually big) problem that such lists are public and can be directly feed into the
> > filters of not so people loving or extremely caring ISP's.
> > 
> > 
> 
>  I think this is a point that I was missing about the objections to the filter system.
> 
> So a big objection is that any "sets" of filters is not so much to the "weak" filtering on wikipedia but
> that such "sets"  would enable other censors to more easily make a form of "strong" censorship of
> wikipedia where some images were not available (at all) to readers - regardless of whether or not they
> want to see them?

> I am not sure I agree with this concern as a practical matter but I can understand it as a theoretical
> concern. 

This is an old objection, which diverse library organisations have been dealing with for at least half a century
in their practice. They call such sets of prejudicial labels "Censorship Tools", and are opposed to them.

eg.  http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=interpretations&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=8657

See elsewhere for further sources. (they get brought up regularly)

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

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