Web-site Rater SafeSurf
Finds Itself Blocked
SafeSurf, a voluntary Web-site rating service, has condemned as “stealth censorship” the erroneous blocking of its URL by TeleGlobe, an international Internet provider, on the advice of the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS), to which TeleGlobe subscribes. The error occurred because the SafeSurf URL apparently resides on a server on which several unrelated e-mail marketers were once located.
The incident was revealed days after the unaffiliated Internet Content Rating Association, launched a promotion to get content providers to have ICRA rate their sites.
In an October 25 Open Letter to the Internet Community, SafeSurf Chairman Ray Soular declared that MAPS’ “crusade” against Internet spam “should not give them the authority to deny freedoms to the blameless.” He went on to decry MAPS’ Realtime Blackhole List for blocking entire groups of Internet Protocol numbers, instead of spammers’ unique Internet addresses, by returning “Web site unknown” messages to RBL-listed URLs. MAPS unblocked the SafeSurf site four days later.
Ironically, SafeSurf issued in 1997 a Proposal for a Safe Internet Without Censorship, in which it advocated legislation giving online surfers “the right to be able to identify the adult rating of online content before it enters one’s home” and families “the presumption in a suit against negligent publishers.”
Posted November 5, 2001.
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