God is for Suckers gets blocked by net filtering software
April 16, 2005God is for Suckers!, the atheist site I do with some other people, is now blocked by the SonicWALL Content Filtering System. I found this out because I sometimes use the excellent free wi-fi access at Panera Bread, and they use SonicWALL to filter their content.
Now, I’m generally against content filtering, but this is a private business providing a free service, so I suppose they’re pretty much entitled to filter if they want. And I can appreciate that they want to impede people who would use their service to advocate violence, or eat up their bandwidth with porn that then gets displayed in the eatery.
But why GifS? It’s not porn, and it doesn’t advocate violence against anybody (OK, W could use a good slapping, but no serious violence). What’s the problem, then? According to SonicWALL, GifS is blocked as “Cult/Occult”, which is defined as follows:
Sites sponsored by prominent organized modern religious groups that are identified as “cults” by three or more authoritative sources. Sites that promote or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, curses, magic powers or supernatural beings.
OK, lemme see: GifS isn’t prominent, organized, or a religious group; it’s hard to see how anybody (much less “three or more authoritative sources”) could call it a “cult”; and it doesn’t promote or offer methods for anything supernatural at all. Now, pretty much any church would fall under this definition; but GifS surely doesn’t.
I’m guessing that somebody saw the site, was offended by the in-yer-face anti-religion, asked SonicWALL to filter such blasphemy, and they decided to use the “Cult/Occult” classification because we have something to do with religion.
I’m going to try to contact them, just for the fun of it. I’ll post anything interesting that happens.
