Hello Everyone,
This evening I was shocked to learn that this site was "Banned" from the "Network" Presumably that was Bellsouth.net, which is my ISP. The notice appeared on a page that had the logos of OPEN-DNS. It stated the blockage was due to Big Closet being classified as having nudity, pornography and sexually explicit material. If they are so open, why are they doing this?
I received almost exactly the same message when I tried to access Fictionmania, Crystal's Story Site and Sapphire's Place. The only difference was the name of the site I was trying to log on to. Stardustr.us Beverly's Balcony and a few others were not blocked.
Excuse me, but I missed the announcement that the first amendment had been repealed! Did anyone else catch it? Was I napping?
Has anyone else experienced this? Is readership down because of it? Is there any way to pin down who started this censorship, how widespread it it, and how to respond? Of course, how will you respond, or even read this if you are blocked out as I was.
Avid Reader
Comments
Not a First Amendment issue
While I sympathize with your problem, whether or not Bellsouth bans this site has nothing whatsoever to do with the First Amendment, which relates to a prohibition on the Government abridging your right to free speech. Private companies (eg Faux News, Bellsouth, etc) can abridge your right to free speech all they want.
Your only recourse is to find an ISP that doesn't block the sites you like.
not as think as i smart i am
Unlikely but Might be
Bellsouth is regulated federally, because of crossing state lines. The first amendment might actually apply because such companies get certain federal benefits. A judge might not agree but the case could be made that sites should not be blocked by such carriers.
But there's no pornography here and I don't even know of any nudity. Adult material here is much like that you can find at Amazon, Gather, Facebook and hundreds of other sites. You have to be a member here to access any of the Explicit content anyway. Some red-eyed bug-swallower has asked BellSouth to ban us and so they have, it's happened before. We've been banned by BellSouth and other ISPs in the past.
Hugs to all,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Subjective and Open
The problem with deciding what is pornography and what is not is very subjective. As vanilla as all of my stories are regarding sex, they can and have been described as pornographic by some people. If you recall, I have even been called a racist right here on TS/BC by some of the kind, sweet and tolerant readers who visit here because one of my characters made an off color joke that offended someone.
Like Erin, I do not find the banning of certain web sites at all surprising. Get used to it. It's going to get worse, much worse. You can take that to the bank.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Why???
You say it's going to get worse. . .why??? Is there something in the air that I've missed?
It would appear that our cause is being supported by some very powerful people. After all aren't they holding "T Parties" all over the United States?
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
T Parties...
ROFL. Sorry. I'd love to think that those "tea" parties were "T" parties. It'd be so ...
Maybe not BellSouth
If you saw it on an OpenDNS site, then it more likely means that _OpenDNS_ is capturing the DNS for those sites, and rerouting it. If you get different name server, then you can probably still get to the sites.
Contact me by PM if you want me to give you one or two of my personal name servers to try.
BW
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
OpenDNS black and white lists
If you are using OpenDNS, you can manipulate your own custom blacklists and whitelists to allow or prevent access as you choose. The membership on those category blacklists is determined by users of the OpenDNS system but you can put a site on your personal whitelist and bypass them. But not if you opt out of the advertising setup OpenDNS uses while using the free product.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
OpenDNS ...
... operates its own black lists too. At least here in the UK. It stopped my accessing a commercial site because it identified it as 'phishing'. This is nonsense because not only had I dealt with them before but I've met the person who owns it on many occasions. I wrote to OpenDNS but nothing ever happened so I went back to using my ISP's built-in system.
AFAIK no ISP in the UK censors web content though they may operate a parental control facility. Obviously company networks may choose to restrict web access to their employees so that they actually use the 'net for work rather than amusement :)
I'm amazed that a commercial ISP would presume to limit what its customers access. Is this a religious thing?
Robi
Try using the Google Public DNS servers
It does sound like BellSouth is using the OpenDNS servers, and has added the sites to its blacklist.
You could try using the Google Public DNS servers, which do no filtering.
Instructions are here:
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html
Kris
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Probably not Bellsouth
OpenDNS is an independent provider of DNS service. The DNS server is kinda like the "phone book" or "ZIP code guide" of the Internet. You type an URL (the site's name), your computer checks with the DNS server and gets the numerical IP address of the site, which is what it can actually use to connect to the site.
Now, OpenDNS offers the ability to filter the sites you can visit -- basic service for this is even free. This can be useful for small businesses which can't afford more sophisticated forms of web-filtering so their employees can't goof off in porn or gambling sites during work hours. It can be useful for parental control. It's not effective against a sophisticated user (who can just find out the site's IP address and type it instead of the site's name, for instance), but it can help.
I very much doubt that Bellsouth is either using OpenDNS as standard (ISPs usually run their own DNS servers) or, even if they are, that they turned on porn filtering for all their customers.
If this happened at your work or someplace like a public library, it's probably the company or the library who are using the OpenDNS service to block adult sites. Not much to do in that case, it's their computer and network, their prerogative to censor it -- and complaining you can't access an adult site is usually not the best idea.
If this happened at home, however, it's probably caused by a combination of dynamic IP assigning, some other Bellsouth customer using OpenDNS for filtering, and *you* using OpenDNS for performance or other reasons.
It could happen like this:
- You set up your computer or router to use OpenDNS for performance reasons.
- Some concerned parent across town, also a Bellsouth subscriber, uses OpenDNS to keep their kids out of adult sites. They instruct OpenDNS to block DNS requests to adult sites coming from their IP address.
- After a while, however, their IP is reset -- they get a new IP address from Bellsouth and their previous IP is released back to the pool of dynamically-assigned addresses. This is normal procedure for many home internet connections.
- Then, *your* IP is reset and you happen to get that same address they instructed OpenDNS to filter requests from.
Normally, those concerned parents should have installed a small utility in their computer that automatically tells OpenDNS their new IP address, so OpenDNS can keep giving their customized service (which in this case includes filtering) to the right customer. But something went wrong here. Maybe they didn't understand the instructions and the utility was never installed correctly. Maybe the utility crashed and they didn't notice. Maybe they happened to turn off their computer and went on a month-long trip, so the utility cannot tell OpenDNS their IP has changed. Whatever the reason, OpenDNS is mistakenly giving *you* the setup intended for *them.*
Fortunately, the cure is usually simple: just power-cycle your ADSL modem and reconnect. This should force it to get a new IP address from Bellsouth.
A little question
Dear Avid Reader, how did you make it here to post this blog at all?
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Classifying as pr0n
One day at work I was, in a spare minute, having a look at some cycling websites related to Provence. The list of results came up, and I saw one was a Dutch site. As it is one of my languages, I clicked on it.
Up came the "policy violation pr0n" message. Apparently, the fact that it is in Dutch means it MUST be a rude site.