[IRP] [Expression] openDNS - seems to be a decent way of content filtering
Milton L Mueller
mueller
Sun Jul 12 21:38:39 EEST 2009
Max:
This is an interesting example of what I am calling "peer production of content regulation." Peer production methods can be adapted to a number of Internet governance problems, not only free software production. I have a chapter about this in my forthcoming book (and I am writing this email instead of working on finishing it, because as any writer will tell you after an exhausting bout we will seize on any excuse not to write...) The UK's IWF and other child porn "hotlines" rely on similar activities, although they use human review rather than impersonal "voting" to decide what gets blacklisted and what doesn't. Some of the commercial security sites (e.g. Websense) use a fairly sophisticated (but still highly fallible) machine-learning classification techniques to develop these lists, in a more automated mode.
The presence of Huffington Post on this blacklist, and other political sites that some find controversial, is completely unsurprising given the peer-produced nature of the list. Some guy who doesn't like its liberal bias can report it as "hate speech" just as some liberals can (and frequently do) complain that Rush Limbaugh's rants constitute hate speech. Same with spam blocklists.
One issue for OpenDNS is that DNS-based blocking (as opposed to URL-based blocking) is far less precise. Are they supporting the former only, the latter or both? Why would someone choose to do this via DNS service as opposed to client-installed software or at the ISP level?
The good thing about such peer-produced content reg is that it's not done by states and thus lacks coercive force behind it; end users can avoid it if they don't want it. Bad thing is that there are no legal constraints on it, and if a private actor gains dominant market share it can amount to private censorship. However, OpenDNS is obviously customizable at the individual level.
________________________________
From: expression-bounces at ipjustice.org [mailto:expression-bounces at ipjustice.org] On Behalf Of Max Senges
Sent: Sunday, July 12, 2009 2:00 PM
To: irp; expression at ipjustice.org
Cc: David Casacuberta; bryan at opendns.com
Subject: [Expression] openDNS - seems to be a decent way of content filtering
hello everybody
last night i met someone from www.openDns.com<http://www.openDns.com> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDNS). As the name says, they offer a free/open Doman Name resolver and what i thought was quite interesting: they allow for community based (crowdsourced) filtering by categories.
I just signed up for their service to test it. Here is how it works and some reflections:
You select the network you want to have filtered by either choosing one of the categories or doing a custom category filter:
High
Protects against all adult-related sites, illegal activity, social networking sites, video sharing sites, and general time-wasters.
27 categories in this group - View - Customize
[x]
* Adware
Sites that distribute applications which display advertisements without user's knowledge or choice. Does NOT include sites which serve advertising.
* Alcohol
Sites about alcohol use, commercial and otherwise.
* Chat
Sites where you can chat in real-time with groups of people. Includes IRC.
* Classifieds
Sites for buying and selling (or bartering) goods and services.
* Dating
Sites for meeting other people.
* Drugs
Sites about illegal or recreational drug use.
* File storage
Sites that offer space for hosting, sharing and backup of digital files.
* Gambling
Sites that offer gambling or information about gambling.
* Games
Sites that offer game play and information about games (news, tips, cheat codes).
* Hate/Discrimination
Sites that promote intolerance based on gender, age, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or other group identities.
* Instant messaging
Sites that offer access or software to communicate in real-time with other individuals.
* P2P/File sharing
Sites that facilitate the sharing of digital files between individuals, especially via peer-to-peer software, including torrent sites.
* Social networking
Sites that promote interaction and networking between people.
* Video sharing
Sites for sharing video content.
* Visual search engines
Sites for searching for images based on keywords.
* Weapons
Sites about weapons, commercial and otherwise.
* Webmail
Sites that offer the ability to send or receive email.
* Photo sharing
Sites for sharing photographs, as individual images, galleries and albums.
* Adult Themes
Sites that are adult in nature and are not defined in other rating categories. Note: This category should only be turned on if you want to be very restrictive on your network.
* Tasteless
Sites that contain information on such subjects as mutilation, torture, horror, or the grotesque.
* Lingerie/Bikini
Sites displaying or dedicated to lingerie/bikini that could be considered adult-only.
* Proxy/Anonymizer
Sites providing proxy bypass information or services. Also, sites that allow the user to surf the net anonymously, including sites that allow the user to send anonymous emails.
* Sexuality
Sites that provide information, images or implications of bondage, sadism, masochism, fetish, beating, body piercing or self-mutilation.
* Nudity
Sites that provide images or representations of nudity.
* Pornography
Anything relating to pornography, including mild depiction, soft pornography or hard-core pornography.
* Forums/Message boards
Sites with discussions, including bulletin boards, message boards and forums.
* Phishing Protection
By enabling phishing protection, you'll protect everyone on your network from known phishing sites using the best data available.
Moderate
Protects against all adult-related sites and illegal activity.
14 categories in this group - View - Customize
[x]
* Adware
Sites that distribute applications which display advertisements without user's knowledge or choice. Does NOT include sites which serve advertising.
* Alcohol
Sites about alcohol use, commercial and otherwise.
* Dating
Sites for meeting other people.
* Drugs
Sites about illegal or recreational drug use.
* Gambling
Sites that offer gambling or information about gambling.
* Hate/Discrimination
Sites that promote intolerance based on gender, age, race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation or other group identities.
* Weapons
Sites about weapons, commercial and otherwise.
* Tasteless
Sites that contain information on such subjects as mutilation, torture, horror, or the grotesque.
* Lingerie/Bikini
Sites displaying or dedicated to lingerie/bikini that could be considered adult-only.
* Proxy/Anonymizer
Sites providing proxy bypass information or services. Also, sites that allow the user to surf the net anonymously, including sites that allow the user to send anonymous emails.
* Sexuality
Sites that provide information, images or implications of bondage, sadism, masochism, fetish, beating, body piercing or self-mutilation.
* Nudity
Sites that provide images or representations of nudity.
* Pornography
Anything relating to pornography, including mild depiction, soft pornography or hard-core pornography.
* Phishing Protection
By enabling phishing protection, you'll protect everyone on your network from known phishing sites using the best data available.
Low
Protects against pornography and phishing.
5 categories in this group - View - Customize
[x]
* Tasteless
Sites that contain information on such subjects as mutilation, torture, horror, or the grotesque.
* Proxy/Anonymizer
Sites providing proxy bypass information or services. Also, sites that allow the user to surf the net anonymously, including sites that allow the user to send anonymous emails.
* Sexuality
Sites that provide information, images or implications of bondage, sadism, masochism, fetish, beating, body piercing or self-mutilation.
* Pornography
Anything relating to pornography, including mild depiction, soft pornography or hard-core pornography.
* Phishing Protection
By enabling phishing protection, you'll protect everyone on your network from known phishing sites using the best data available.
Minimal
Protects against phishing attacks.
1 category in this group - View - Customize
None
Nothing blocked.
Custom
Choose the categories you want to block.
---------------------------------------------------
in their category list they have some pretty strange themes to filter like " Educational Institutions" , "search engines" as well as really broad ones like "news & media"
once you selected the "evil" content you dont want your children, roomates or workers to see all you have to do is active the filter and no-one in your IP/network will be able to access these pages. In fact you can define custom messages/pages to be displayed for the different blocked categories.
I am not 100% sure how the system works though. I played around with it and e.g. didn't see a reason why weeklygripe.co.uk<http://weeklygripe.co.uk> or even more strange http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ was tagged (to be decided for blocking) as hate & discrimination. In fact i didn't think any of the sites in that category were reasonably tagged.
In their defense it has to be said that from the 5,399,836 sites submitted only 1,034,372 are aproved for blocking right now.
here are some relevant answers from their FAQs
What Do I Do If A Domain Is Tagged Incorrectly?
If an undecided domain is tagged incorrectly, vote No.
If a decided domain is tagged incorrectly, go to the domain detail page and click the "Flag for review" link.
Community moderators will review all reports.
Who are the moderators? [http://www-files.opendns.com/img/top.gif] <http://www.opendns.com/community/domaintagging/faq/#top>
Moderators are a mix of OpenDNS employees and trusted community members. Moderators are identified throughout the community by a badge [http://www.opendns.com/img/icon_mod.gif] .
**And they invite applications to become a moderator from the community.
--------------
so here are my 2 cents worth of thoughts about this approach
A) I think the way the decisions about blocking are made should be described clearer (who has the final say?) and a wikipedia like discussion page would also be helpful
B) having that said, i think it is a rather transparent, community driven and therefore commendable approach
C) it would add substantial value if there was a "suggested warning" category -- so say nazi propaganda gets flagged and a warning page is displayed when a user tries to enter, but if s/he descides s/he wants to see the page there is a link to enter
-------------------
Interestingly Prof. David Casacuberta and myself had envisioned a relatively similar service in our 2007 article "Do we need new rights in Cyberspace? Privacy and the Need for an Internet Bill of Rights<http://ddd.uab.cat/pub/enrahonar/0211402Xn40-41p99.pdf> ", presented at the GigaNet Symposium 2007 and published in Enrahonar 40/41
Allow me to quote:
"Lets imagine the institution managing the cyber address assignment includes meta-information regarding the content of the information and service provided. This would enable, for example, the classification of content to be only appropriate for mature users as well as the insertion of a informative page advising the user of the quality of the content. This upstream page would also allow for public discourse and collective assessment of content provided at the site. This way there is no enforcement of particular axiological dispositions in the form of restraining the freedom of expression but vulgar and extremist content would be classified and debated."
-------------------------------
Lastly i looked and it seems quite easy/possible to "hack" (=circumvent) the openDNS system. You can go to the sites IP directly, or you can use a proxy server.
Also it seems that openDNS finds pretty interesting (value added) services to complement their core functionality. For example you/the admin can define shortcuts to point to urls; so you can define that the word "mail" points to your webmail etc.
I would be interested what you think about their system. For me it is clear that openDNS is operating in a space that is very relevant to internet governance so i would like to invite them to join our efforts and discussions; and if possible come to the IGF so we can work with them "in real life".
Best
Max
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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
-----------------------Margaret Mead
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Dr. Max Senges
Chair Internet Rights and Principles Coalition
www.internetrightsandprinciples.org<http://www.internetrightsandprinciples.org>
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