From: BOOKSMITH Newsgroups: rec.arts.books Subject: bookstore website banned Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:25:14 -0700 Lines: 170 Message-ID: <33DD2A51.7D5A4672@booksmith.com> Reply-To: read@booksmith.com Thought this might be of interest to you. The entire Booksmith website has been blocked by Cyberpatrol because of the contents of a single page! What follows is the text of an article in the July 28th issue of 'Bookselling This Week' which can be found online at http://www.bookweb.org/news/btw/820.html ================================ Bookselling This Week July 28, 1997 Internet 'Filter' Program Blocks The Booksmith The Booksmith (www.booksmith.com) of San Francisco, California, last week learned that its acclaimed World Wide Web site enjoyed a somewhat dubious distinction--it has been added to a leading "filtering" software company's list of blocked sites. Booksmith "Webmanager" Thomas Gladysz found that, because of a single page of what one company considers objectionable content, computers with the popular CyberPatrol software installed are barred from visiting any part of the online bookstore. "I think the ability of blocking software to indiscriminately deny websurfers access to our bookstore website is a frightening situation--one that affects not only our potential customers but the author and publishing community as well," said Gladysz, who had no way of knowing how long the Booksmith's site had been unavailable to CyberPatrol subscribers. "It's amazing. Here I am,being blocked, and I'm unaware of it. That's worrisome to bookstores and to other forms of commerce on the Internet." At issue on The Booksmith's site, according to CyberPatrol, is a single web page highlighting the store's "erotica" category. The page begins with a warning that readers must be at least 18 years old to order books featured on the erotica pages. CyberPatrol's Susan Getgood told BTW that such messages serve as a virtual red flag for her company's research team. The page features the playfully suggestive jacket art for Linda Jaivin's explicit Broadway Books title Eat Me, as well as a vintage black-and-white photograph of a nude woman reading a book. But Getgood said that the text alone was likely enough to earn the page a spot on CyberPatrol's "CyberNOT" list of blocked sites. For instance, Jaivin's recent reading at The Booksmith is described like this: "Alternating between a small whip, an English cucumber, a kiwi, bananas, ripe strawberries and grapes, the spunky Jaivin not only read, but acted out the ribald first chapter in which Ava seduces first the fresh fruit section and then a security guard in a late night grocery store." "That's certainly appropriate reading for adults," Getgood said, "but probably not for children." While such booksellers as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble have not been added to the CyberNOT list, Getgood said that if similar content was brought to the company's attention at one of those sites, "we'd probably put it on the list as well." While Getgood acknowledged that it would be possible for CyberPatrol to only block individual pages at the bookstore's site, she argued that the resulting list--which must be downloaded on a weekly basis by CyberPatrol users--would be overly cumbersome if each individual page at a site was cataloged separately. For the bookstore, that's not a satisfactory answer. "Our web site is our bookstore online," Booksmith owner Gary Frank said last week. "It was designed to be fully accessible within its limitations, just as our bookstore is fully accessible. Having our entire web site blocked because of one offending element on it is like having a V-chip on a TV block all of NBC's programming because of a sexually charged episode of Seinfeld." Keeping The Booksmith company on the CyberNOT list are several publisher sites: Circlet Press (erotic science fiction; www.circlet.com/circlet/home.html), Paladin Press (featured title: The Art of the Rifle; www.paladin-press.com) and the bookstore's San Francisco neighbor AK Press, which features such writers as James Kelman and Henry Rollins alongside more explicit books and zines (db.akpress.org/capps/mall/frontpage.cfm). A quick check of two other leading filter programs, SurfWatch and NetNanny, indicated that The Booksmith was not blocked. CyberPatrol is just one among a growing number of software filters that allow parents--and sometimes teachers and librarians--to control access to Internet resources that contain potentially objectionable material, in either textual or graphic form. Once the filter is installed, access to certain web pages is blocked. In some cases, the software will keep a log of sites that triggered the block or will even shut down the computer system entirely. Using a password, the software can typically be configured to block only certain categories of content, allowing access to some sexual content, for example, but blocking access tagged as promoting violence or hate speech. But it's not just parents who install the software. CyberPatrol is one vendor of choice to filter material for libraries' Internet terminals--while the American Library Association passed a resolution opposing libraries' use of filtering software, different communities continue to pressure librarians to install filters on library computers. Just last week, the library board in Loudoun County, Virginia, voted 6-2 to require that software filters be installed on all library computers. Loudoun County adults who want to explore the web without filters must ask a library employee to deactivate the program. And free speech advocates worry that because the user of a filter program is typically unaware of exactly what is being filtered, the software can be written to filter sites from a certain social or political viewpoint. Some filtering software, for instance, has been found to block access to such sites as the National Organization for Women or to sites that simply oppose the use of filter programs. In fact, a quick experiment by BTW revealed that one popular filtering program,NetNanny, blocks its users' access to an innocuous page at Carnegie Mellon University discussing banned books (www.cs.cmu.edu/People/spok/banned-books.html). For his own part, Gladysz said he won't even consider dropping the erotica pages from The Booksmith's site. "That's the last thing I would do," he said. "The erotica section is one of the better-selling--but certainly not the bestselling--aspects to our web site. People buy everything from Susie Bright's Best American Erotica anthologies to books like Eat Me." Even so, Getgood says the bookstore can readily solve at least part of the problem. If the Booksmith keeps its erotica pages in a separate computer directory from the rest of its web site,CyberPatrol will block only that directory, leaving its users free to browse the rest of the store. "We appreciate it when things like this are brought to our attention, because it helps us get better,"she said. "If we can work with a site, and we often do, we can put all of the materials inappropriate to kids under one subdirectory." Not likely, said Gladysz. "The erotica section home page is a longstanding URL," he told BTW. "The Booksmith has invested considerable time and effort marketing and publicizing this page online to serious readers and book lovers. More than 30,000 hits have been registered on this page alone. To move it to satisfy the demands of CyberPatrol--or any other blocking software--would be to lose the goodwill, return traffic, and many existing links to this page. To do so, in our eyes, would be to appease those who wish to place erotica--a literary genre that goes back thousands of years--into some dark, forbidden corner of cyberspace. "The Booksmith stands by its erotica section and does not feel that any of the content found on its pages, which is mostly book covers and descriptive copy, could be considered pornographic." Curious Internet explorers can get a taste of what's being filtered by these programs. CyberPatrol maintains a "CyberNOT Search Engine" that allows users to check and see if a site has been blocked (www.microsys.com/cybernot/default.htm), while Spyglass makes a similar service available for its SurfWatch program (fido.siv.spyglass.com/testasite/). Interested parties can also download an evaluation copy of NetNanny and take it for a spin (www.netnanny.com). -- The Booksmith "One of the strongest websites in the business." - PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY _____________________________________________________________________ The Booksmith 1644 Haight Street (between Clayton & Cole) San Francisco, California 94117 (800) 493-7323 -- phone (415) 863-8688 (415) 863-2540 -- fax http://www.booksmith.com/ email: read@booksmith.com