Porn-filter Disabler Unleashed

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Porn-filter Disabler Unleashed

An anti-censorship group Peacefire has released a program which disables porn-filtering programs.

This software, which only works on personal computers, is being released in response to the passage of a bill by the US Congress that requires the use of blocking software in schools and libraries that receive federal funds.

Peacefire.exe, which is available as a free download, can disable popular Windows censorware programs, such as SurfWatch, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, CYBERsitter, X-Stop, PureSight and Cyber Snoop. However it is ineffective against "server-level" blocking programs, including AOL Parental Controls and many applications used in schools. The program is only known to work on Windows 98 machines.

In essence, the program automates instructions for disabling filter that Peacefire has had on its site for months. But with the program users do not have to input lines of code - making it far more user friendly.

Peacefire explains its motives on its site: "This Web site was created because we don't accept the excuses for treating minors with fewer rights than convicted felons.

"Smut on the Internet - you're going to be harmed more by eating a hamburger than by seeing a picture of two people having sex," it adds.

The group argues that it is acting on principle, and that many sites such as those affiliated to human rights organisation, Amnesty International, are blocked by filtering software. It makes the case that many sites are blocked in error or for questionable motives.

Peacefire software (135 K in size)

-- nonehere (none@to.give.net), December 19, 2000

Answers

Peacefire.org: Why we do this

To people who think we suck

A note about minors' rights in general, that gets back on the topic of Internet censorship towards the end, so read the whole thing.


The First Amendment says fake scientists can write about the "black stupidity gene", ex-Nazis can campaign for state governor, and a Kansas minister can go to funerals of gay men with signs saying "AIDS cures fags". The point is not to take these people's rights away -- their rights are as important as anyone else's -- but if you can support free speech for people like that, you ought to be able to support the rights of people under 18 as well.

This Web site was created because we don't accept the excuses for treating minors with fewer rights than convicted felons. Smut on the Internet -- you're going to be harmed more by eating a hamburger than by seeing a picture of two people having sex (at least the hamburger has something bad in it like cholesterol; the picture doesn't do anything). Sex in the movies -- it's insulting to victims of real crime that you once could have gone to jail in Ohio for showing Shakespeare in Love to a minor, since it got an R rating for showing Gwynyth Paltrow's breasts for about five seconds. These are not good enough reasons for treating 40 million Americans as if their rights are not important.

If you lived at home when you turned 18, did your family fall apart just because you suddenly had all these rights as a human being? If you're under 18, do you think your family would fall apart if you got all of those rights tomorrow? You'd probably still live with your parents anyway (even most 18-year-olds do), and your parents always have the right to decide what's for dinner if they're cooking it. Other countries have different ages of majority, and people don't sue their parents as soon as they become full citizens, they mostly stay where the free food is. So much for minors' rights "tearing apart the moral fabric of society".

Where minors' rights would make a difference, would be for people under 18 who die because state laws ban them from seeing a real doctor if their parents would rather use "faith healers". Or for the college-bound students in Kansas, where the board of education dropped evolution from the science curriculum under pressure from parents' groups, ec hoing Pat Buchanan that "parents have the right to insist that godless evolution not be taught to their children". Or teenagers that want to date a member of another race, even though Gallup said in 1994 that most white American parents disapproved of interracial relationships, but most of their kids disagreed. (Maybe some "moral fabrics" need tearing.)

So, our information on disabling blocking software is mostly symbolic. For a few people, it will be their only way to get vital information on AIDS or birth control, but for everybody else, it's just the principle of the thing: Think for yourself before you're 18.



-- nonehere (none@to.give.net), December 19, 2000.

I agree, treat kids with all the responsibilities and rights as an adult... Oh yeah, just don't complain then when they start executing 8 year olds.

Frank

-- Someone (ChimingIn@twocents.cam), December 19, 2000.


They're talking about free speech and access to information, Frank.

Good grief, don't be so dense!

-- nonehere (none@to.give.net), December 19, 2000.


One of the most interesting findings of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography was that there was a distinct inverse correlation between childhood exposure to explicit sexual material, and propensity to commit sex crimes later in life. Put plainly, this means sex offenders had (on average) LESS exposure as children. This was based on a LOT of data, and the data were pretty solid.

Of course, the religious people on the Commission rejected these findings out of hand. This statistical stuff may mislead the impressionable, they said, but "if you wallow in filth, you're going to get dirty" by definition. For the religious, definition trumps observation every time. It beats thinking.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 19, 2000.


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