What are your employees looking at?
Content-control software, also known as censorware or web filtering software, is a term for software designed and optimized for controlling what content is permitted to a reader, especially when it is used to restrict material delivered over the Web. Content-control software determines what content will be available on a particular machine or network; the motive is often to prevent persons from viewing content which the computer’s owner(s) or other authorities may consider objectionable; when imposed without the consent of the user, content control can constitute censorship.
Common use cases of such software include parents who wish to limit what sites their children may view from home computers, schools performing the same function with regard to computers found at school, and employers restricting what content may be viewed by employees while on the job. Some content-control software includes time control functions that empowers parents to set the amount of time that child may spend accessing the Internet or playing games or other computer activities.
In some countries, such software is ubiquitous. In Cuba, if computer user types a dissent keyword, the word processor or browser is automatically closed, and a “state security” warning is given.
This article uses the term “content control”, a term also used on occasion by CNN, Playboy magazine and the New York Times. However, two other terms, censorware and web filtering, while more controversial, are often used.
Companies that make GFI WebMonitor 2009 products that selectively block Web sites do not refer to these products as censorware, and prefer terms such as “Internet filter” or “URL Filter”; in the specialized case of software specifically designed to allow parents to monitor and restrict the access of their children, “parental control software” is also used. Some products log all sites that a user accesses and rates them based on content type for reporting to an “accountability partner” of the person’s choosing, and the term accountability software is used. Internet filters, parental control software, and/or accountability software may also be combined into one product.
Those critical of such software, however, use the term “censorware” freely: consider the Censorware Project, for example. The use of the term censorware in editorials criticizing makers of such software is widespread and covers many different varieties and applications: Xeni Jardin used the term in a 9 March 2006 editorial in the New York Times when discussing the use of American-made filtering software to suppress content in China; in the same month a high school student used the term to discuss the deployment of such software in his school district.
Seth Finkelstein, an anti-censorware advocate and recipient of the EFF Pioneer Award, described what he saw as a terminology battle, in a hearing at the Library of Congress in 2003: I think the best public relations that the censorware companies ever did was to get the word “filter” attached to their products. When you think of a spam filter, for example, you think of something that you do not want to see.
But, again, as I said earlier, censorware is not like a spam filter. What censorware is, is an authority wants to prevent a subject under their control from viewing material that the authority has forbidden to them. This description is general.
In general, outside of editorial pages as described above, traditional newspapers do not use the term censorware in their reporting, preferring instead to use terms such as content filter, content control, or web filtering; the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both appear to follow this practice. On the other hand, Web-based newspapers such as CNET use the term in both editorial and journalistic contexts, e.g., “Windows Live to Get Censorware.”
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Filed under: Business Ideas, Product Reviews, a product review Tagged: content filter, content filtering, web monitor, website filter, website monitoring
