Democracy Has Prevailed.

April 11, 2013

LESBIAN UPDATE

I have an update on this story.

Well, Sue has the update, I'm just passing it along:
Some good news to share – as of about 2:30 PM, OpenDNS changed the labels for my site. They “rejected” pornography and nudity and “approved” blog. Last night, I was able to reach the CEO of the company thanks to a petition supporter and he was responsive. I’m grateful for that and appreciate that a major hurdle has been overcome.
We're still left with a few questions, however.

  1. How is it that a one person, apparently living in Indonesia and tapping away on his computer in 2008, can effectively curtail access for Pittsburgh city employees to an important Pittsburgh blog?
  2. How do we know that her blog STILL isn't blocked?
  3. How can the City of Pittsburgh ensure that access to Pittsburgh's political (and I am using this term rather broadly) blogs is open to all of its employees permanently?
While it's all well and good this one issue's been resolved but what good is it if next week or next month or next year it all happens again to someone else's blog?  For some other equally absurd reason?

This whole thing happened because someone somewhere was offended by the use of the word LESBIAN and they somehow assumed that if the word LESBIAN was found on a blog, that that blog must be PORN.

Out of solidarity to Sue's blog, I'd like to conduct a test.

First, let me point out that this blog, 2 Political Junkies, is not a porn site.  There are, of course, many many porn sites on the internets.  Heck, I suppose that some of them are even LESBIAN porn sites but you'll have to go find them yourselves, sorry.  I suppose that while some people might find some LESBIAN porn sites to be offensive (I'd further suppose that some of the offended might in fact be LESBIANS), the word itself should not offend.

Second:
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN LESBIAN
How offensive is that?  And will it get me bureaucratically bounced from the City-County Building?  How would I know if I am?  If I'm not?

Aye, and that's what's offensive.

2 comments:

Sue said...

Thank you, David.

You make good points. If The City's CIS team does not use whitelisting (as per their email response) - there is simply nothing in place to control the webfilter system. I was fortunate to reach the CEO of OpenDNS because my attempt to use the "normal" channels of disputing a label were unsuccessful. That's not a very responsive process.

While I suspect I'll never get answers on the situation involving my blog, we can advocate for a solid policy around webfiltering (and related issues) by working with the ACLU and City Council.

Unknown said...

BOOGER!!! (t/m Johnny Fever)