From: "Toantom" To: filt4lib@listserv.ci.escondido.ca.us cc: "Glaad" , "International Guild of Gay Webmasters" , "WestHollywood" , , , Date: Sun, 14 Dec 97 20:30:57 +0000 * List: filt4lib@listserv.ci.escondido.ca.us Greetings one and all. My name is Bob Parker and I am the Community Leader Liaison for GeoCities WestHollywood. For those that don't know, Community Leaders are volunteers who have home pages in the varous communities of GeoCities and donate their time to help out their virtual neighbors, among other things. Since WestHollywood and the bad block placed upon it by CyberPatrol has been a topic of discussion lately, I was asked to jump in here to discuss some of the issues being raised. I apologize in advance to anyone offended by long posts, but this one is a doozy. IMPORTANT: It is important that anyone reading this understand that I am a VOLUNTEER in WestHollywood. I DO NOT speak for GeoCities in any way whatsoever. In a general way I speak for the volunteers in WestHollywood, in the broadest of senses, since I am the Liaison (coordinator) of those volunteers, but everything in this message should be taken first and foremost as my own personal words. There appear to be many misconceptions and rumors going on about GeoCities and WestHollywood. I would like to try and clear some of those up here. For all intenents and purposes, GeoCities is an Internet Presence Provider (IPP) - they do not provide any editorial control over any of the content in the web sites HOSTED by them under the various "Neighborhood" subdirectories. GeoCities is NOT one single site. It is 1.2 million sites hosted under one domain. When an individual creates an account (becomes a "homesteader) at GeoCities they agree to a legally binding contract (Page Content Guidelines and Terms of Service - http://www.geocities.com/members/guidelines) stating that they will not use their site for items on the list of proscribed activities. That list specifically includes, among other things: * Displaying material containing nudity or pornographic material of any kind; * Providing material that is grossly offensive to the online community, including blatant expressions of bigotry, prejudice, racism, hatred, or profanity; * Displaying material that exploits children under 18 years of age; In order to help enforce these guidelines, GeoCities has a very proactive monitoring system in place. This system is three tiered: 1. GeoCities has a full time Community Response Team on staff that works diligently to investigate and remove prohibited content. This includes working with various filtering programs to remove sites that are reported. 2. A Community Leader (CL) program - the CLs, aside from their primary function of providing assistance to the homesteaders in creating and maintaining their sites and promoting community activities, routinely review the VISIBLE portions of the sites under their assigned areas of the communities for possible content violations. Any violations, or potential violations, are reported to the appropriate personnel for immediate handling. 3. A Neighborhood Watch Program (http://www.geocities.com/main/contact/alert_form.html) - Anyone, and I repeat, ANYONE who finds a site at GeoCities that they believe violates the Content Guidelines can and should use the form at this address to report the site to the Community Response Team. Reports can be submitted anonymously, an email address is not required. Even if you do provide an email address, you may not necessarily receive any feedback from the CRT, but all sites submitted are investigated fully. However, as some people pointed out in earlier messages on this subject, if you go to a site at GeoCities and you end up seeing the main GeoCities home page instead, you are seeing the results of this CRT in action - all sites that have been suspended due to content violations will either say "Access Denied" or route you to the main front page. In the WestHollywood Community, we Community Leaders have also set up our own Community Watch program. Aside from the GeoCities program, anyone that finds anything that they believe shouldn't be on the site is welcome to email WestHollywood Alert at whalert@vpdev.com - I personally investigate all messages sent to that address. In WestHollywood we also have a very proactive program to educate our homesteaders on RESPONSIBLE blocking and filtering services. Our Community Center (http://www.geocities.com/~wehocl) has an entire section devoted to voluntary ratings programs like RSACi (http://www.rsac.org) and SafeSurf (http://www.safesurf.com), including a rating registration form on site for SafeSurf. We fully understand that there ARE some things on home pages focused around the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered identity that won't be suitable for children. Wholesale blocking of EVERY ONE of those pages, however, is not the answer. The WestHollywood Community is very large and diverse. The area of WeHo, like all GeoCities Communities, is broken down into "suburbs". Each suburb has "blocks" of 100 addresses (sites), and there are a maximum potential of 90 blocks in each one. So far, WeHo breaks down like this: /WestHollywood - 9000 sites (1000 - 9999) /WestHollywood/Heights - 9000 sites (1000 - 9999) /WestHollywood/Village - 5500 sites (1000 - 6499) TOTAL SITES - 23500 sites Each one of those 23,500 sites is a distinct and individual web site - they have different owners/authors, and all operate independently. Each site may have anywhere from 3 megabytes up to 18 megabytes of space in it. The number of individual pages on those sites goes anywhere from 1 page to several hundred - there is no real way saying just exactly how many pages there are, since 23,500 people make changes constantly, adding and deleting pages and content. I did a little bit of research prior to sitting down to write this letter today. It seems that WestHollywood is not the only area that has been targetted by CyberPatrol for widespread censorship. (Yes, I say censorship because that's exactly what it is. If CyberPatrol is going to place itself in the position of wholesale blocking access to thousands of INDIVIDUAL AND DISTINCT SITES without taking appropriate measures to investigate those sites, then it is censorship no matter how they try to dance their way around the truth.) CyberPatrol has also taken it upon itself to block the GeoCities community of SunsetStrip (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip), which makes no sense to me whatsoever as that community is dedicated to MUSIC. They have also blocked the entire domain of http://members.tripod.com as well. I'm not involved with Tripod, so I have no idea what the numbers are like over there, but between WestHollywood and SunsetStrip at GeoCities, CyberPatrol has blocked 122,500 individual home pages (SunsetStrip has 11 suburbs, each one containing 9000 sites. 11 X 9000 = 99,000. 99,000 + 23,500 = 122,500). I've seen so called justifications for these blocks - justifications based on keyword searches in places like Alta Vista for words like "sex" and "smut". Guess what? Your searches are FATALLY FLAWED! Remember not too long ago when the White House Web Site got blocked by someone (was that CyberPatrol?) because there was a file named "couple.gif" on the site, which was actually a picture of the President and Vice President and their wives? Keyword searches to justify blatant censorship is just plain wrong. My own personal web site at GeoCities has no sex, no nudity, no pornography. According to your rules, however, it should be blocked because I have the word "sex" on the front page. Let's face it, if you are blocking based on keywords, you are blocking out a whole bunch of stuff that shouldn't be. Having the words on a page does not mean that the content is actually there. Another example - in the EnchantedForest (children's) neighborhood of GeoCities they have a site dedicated to educating parents and kids about staying safe on the Internet. This site has absolutely nothing on it that could be considered offensive to anyone - far from it, it's whole purpose is to help parents learn the TRUTH about protecting their children in a RESPONSIBLE manner. Again, according to the rules of keyword searching, however, this site should be blocked because it has the words "sex" and "porn" on it. The bottom line comes down to this: If CyberPatrol is going to block sites based on content they believe is objectionable, then they need to take some responsibility to at least verify the facts on those sites before blocking them. I notice that members.aol.com is not blocked by CyberPatrol - yet I know for a fact that porn is pervasive throughout the directory, as is many other objectionable and illegal subjects. What about the member sites at major ISPs, like concentric.net and earthlink.net? Those sites have tons of porn and nudity on them. What's even worse about this is the fact that all it would have taken was a few minutes of investigation on the part of Microsystems to find out about the Neighorhood Watch program at GeoCities, get the sites taken care of and avoid this whole situation. I may be wrong, but from what I've read in the archives, David Burt of Filtering Facts (which should be called Filtering Opinions IMHO) seems to think that these blocks are justified, based on the fact that he has personally seen offensive material on some of the sites in WestHollywood. My question to Mr. Burt is this: If you found those sites, which would have been easier in the long run: follow the established procedures to report those sites so that they could be removed, or support censorship of the entire 23,500 sites based on that one violation? On a total side note, I am very surprised to see that the Filtering "Facts" web site doesn't seem to have any mention of the PICS Ratings system built into the newer browsers - those that are supported by RSACi and SafeSurf. I suppose I could have missed it - I didn't go through the entire site, because quite honestly I couldn't stomach it, but shouldn't any organization supposedly dedicated to making it safe for kids on the Internet at least provide basic information about freely available programs that parents can use to block access based on their own personal decisions, rather than those of companies whose purpose it is to make money off the software they are selling? Wouldn't it be better to promote systems that allow parents to make their own decisions? What it all boils down to in the end is this: If GeoCities was doing nothing to enforce the Content Guidelines and Terms of Service, CyberPatrol would be more than justified in blocking sections of the GeoCities domain based on past violations that have been found. Nobody is saying that nudity and porn can't be found at GeoCities. However, there is a mechanism in place to deal with those sites when they are found, and CyberPatral (Microsystems Software) has been, IMHO, negligent in not following up on those mechanisms. They have, instead, taken the easy way out by blocking over 120,000 individual and distinct sites rather than expending a little effort to verify those blocks. The effort needed to do that would have been nothing compared to the time that they are going to need to spend to deal with the 120,000 email letters that they will get when (or if) it is published to those individuals that their sites are being blocked unnecessarily. This letter is being copied to the GLAAD representative to the CyberPatrol Oversight Committee, the International Guild of Gay Webmasters, representatives of the GeoCities staff, the webmaster of Tripod and Microsystems Software. At this point in time, I also intend to publish it on a website in WestHollywood and in the WestHollywood Cyberzine, so that the residents of that neighborhood know what is being done to censor their websites. I encourage the GLAAD representatives to NOT support CyberPatrol at this time, until they can prove that they are going to fairly review the blocks that they have unreasonably placed based on their limited guidelines, or come up with better procedures for verifying not only the content of the sites that they are blocking, but also that all steps have been taken to follow established procedures in removing those sites if they are in violation of the Terms of Service at the hosting domain. Until that happens, we have no choice but to believe that the complete blockage of the WestHollywood neighborhood has been motivated by something other than reasons of "protecting the children", such as homophobic beliefs on the part of those making decisions at Microsystems. If anyone finds sites that contain pornography, nudity or other such material in the GeoCities WestHollywood neighborhood, I encourage you to either report that site using the Content Violations Report Form at the address mentioned above, or email WestHollywood Alert at whalert@geocities.com. That Report Form can also be used for sites at any of the neighborhoods other than WestHollywood as well. Lastly, for the proponents of Free Speech, let me say this: Identifying and removing pornographic sites like what is done at GeoCities is NOT ant-free speech and it is NOT CENSORSHIP. It is enforcement of a legally binding Terms of Service Agreement, nothing more. There are plenty of places on the Web where people can post whatever they want, if it is in accord with the Terms of Service at that location. GeoCities is simply saying that they don't want that material on their server, and anyone who creates an account there is given ample opportunity to review and acknowledge those guidelines - if they break them, that is their choice and they know the consequences. If there are any questions, I will be happy to answer them both here on the lists or in private. Sincerely, Bob Parker aka Toantom WestHollywood Community Leader Liaison