Return-path: Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 10:35:00 -0400 From: Richard Yanowitz Subject: I am distressed... To: bmilburn@solidoak.com Cc: bennett@peacefire.org Reply-to: ryanowitz@bigfoot.com ...to learn about your Cybersitter software and its apparently extraordinarily broad blocking (i.e., censoring) of numerous internet sites merely because they refer to such topics as sexuality of whatever kind--or because they oppose use of your software. When I was raising my son, now grown, I encouraged him to explore the pros and cons of whatever issues caught his attention. Uncensored use of the internet and web would have been a tremendous boon to him had they been available. But your software would have cut him off from much that has helped make him a thoughtful, caring, discriminating young man; and I fear that today's young people will be greatly victimized, often without even knowing it, by use of your software. Were my son today using a system that had adopted your software, I would certainly be actively fighting for removal of that software; and to the extent that I encounter your software's use, I shall speak out against its use. I am also distressed to hear reports that your company's method of dealing with opposition has included gratuitous insults (often, I gather, of the very kind of adolescent sexual "humor" that your software presumably screens for) and general vitriol. Apparently much of your company's venom is directed at teen-agers who, for some reason, your policy makers think should be governed by their own standards of what is ok to think about and what not. I take it to be the case that when you market your software, your potential customers are not (always? ever?) informed of the full range of what your software censors; and since, under the guise of protecting trade secrets, you seem to refuse to make public how your standards are determined, you make it impossible for potential customers or those who might influence them (e.g., citizens like myself) to make informed judgements about exactly what you're selling. To the extent that all this is true, you and the other members of your company are making a living (and, I fear, an ample one) by encouraging an anti-democratic and anti-American control, worthy of Goebbels or Stalin, of what should be free media and free thought. Please change and start doing business in a socially responsible manner. Yours truly, Richard Yanowitz, Ph.D.