{"id":6038,"date":"2013-04-06T23:17:16","date_gmt":"2013-04-07T07:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6038"},"modified":"2013-05-09T22:46:53","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T06:46:53","slug":"i-know-it-when-i-see-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=6038","title":{"rendered":"I Know It When I See It!<\/q>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yester-day evening, I was using a publicly accessible WLAN<\/abbr> to connect with the Internet. I found my access to this 'blog blocked by a Norton-branded product<\/a>, which declared the 'blog to be pornographic<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>

Erotica<\/span> really hasn't figured large in this 'blog. You can find the relevant entries<\/a> with the tag erotica<\/q><\/a>. I think that the two or three entries that caused Norton to damn this thing are specifically my entry of 2 July 2009<\/a>, my entry of 26 March 2010<\/a>, and perhaps my entry of 30 June 2010<\/a>; the entry of 30 January 2011<\/a> may have weighed against me as well.<\/p>

Of these, the entry of 2 July 2009<\/a> is the one that most likely set-off alarms. It contains an overtly erotic image (by Carolyn Weltman), and has a key-word of cunnilinctus<\/q><\/a>.[1]<\/span> Do a Google image-search using that key-word<\/a>, and a link to that entry is currently the second returned. And, because of a couple of the other key-words in that entry, other images are also found, including one by Karel Šimůnek than many would regard as pornographic<\/a>.<\/p>

In the '50s, the drawings by Joe Shuster in the entry of 30 June 2011<\/a> would have been regarded as pornographic, though now the word pornography<\/q> would typically be regarded as too strong. (Actually, a hundred years ago, many would have insisted that the picture in my entry of 2 February 2011<\/a> were pornographic, while now-a-days it could appear in a children's book without fuss.) Still, the text in that entry contains the term sado-masochistic<\/q> and there are pictures<\/em>, and Norton's classification was probably mediated with weak AI<\/abbr>; indeed, once other flags were thrown, the appearance of the word dominatrix<\/q> in a follow-up entry<\/a> may have been seen as further PoP<\/abbr>.<\/p>

Most WLAN<\/abbr>s that filter do so by way of a DNS<\/abbr> table. When a browser seeks content located in terms of a URI<\/abbr> or of a URL<\/abbr>, and that specification includes a domain name, the domain name is converted to an IP<\/abbr> number by way of a DNS<\/abbr> table. By censoring the table that is used, the WLAN<\/abbr> can block domains.<\/p>

Some people subvert this censorship by way of a proxy<\/em> server, which is no more than some site that will act as an intermediary; fetching content from the blocked domain. The obvious problem here is that the proxy may be identified and blocked as well.<\/p>

A better subversion is to use a different table than whatever is being supplied by the WLAN<\/abbr>. In particular, one may configure one's system to use DNS<\/abbr> tables provided by Google<\/a>, or perhaps by some other third party. But be alert that using an alternative DNS<\/abbr> table may not be a good idea in other contexts. (For example, when using a subscription ISP<\/abbr> that places quotas on content for most sites, but with exceptions.)<\/p>

[1]<\/span>The words cunnilinctus<\/q> and cunnilingus<\/q> are synonymous in English and in some other languages; but in Latin cunnilinctus<\/q> referred to the act<\/em>, while cunnilingus<\/q> referred to a performer<\/em> of that act. The latter word acquired its more recent meaning as a result of incompetent posturing<\/em> (something that has figured more than once in attempts to borrow foreign terms and phrases). Efforts to clean-up this particular mess have repeatedly failed, but I avoid participating in it, by using the word that is both proper English and proper Latin. Hence my use of the less common term.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yester-day evening, I was using a publicly accessible WLAN to connect with the Internet. I found my access to this 'blog blocked by a Norton-branded product, which declared the 'blog to be pornographic. Erotica really hasn't figured large in this 'blog. You can find the relevant entries with the tag erotica. I think that the […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[164,7,117,720,4,100],"tags":[1174,1175,1332],"class_list":["post-6038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-blog-meta","category-communication","category-epistemology","category-public","category-sexology","tag-porn","tag-pornography","tag-sexology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}