DoJ Following Porn Blocker Advances? 265
GreedyCapitalist writes "A new filter called iShield is able to recognize porn images based on the content of the image (other filters look at URLs and text) and according to PC Magazine, it is very effective. The next generation will probably be even better -- which highlights the retarding effect regulation has on technological progress - if we relied solely on government to ban 'inappropriate' content from the web, we'd never know what solutions the market might come up with. Will the DOJ (which argues that porn filters don't work) take note of filtering innovation or continue its quest for censorship?"
Screaming so loud we can't hear you anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
But according to the article, it works well and doesn't filter out health-related websites. It also doesn't work for black and white images, but the majority of online porn isn't b&w. Or so I've heard.
Errors abound (Score:5, Interesting)
This thing won't be deployed en masse with problems like that.. it quickly becomes uneconomical for admins to be whitelisting pictures of pumpkins.
Re:What Is The Story here? (Score:1, Interesting)
On a related topic, I'm still amazed that introducing a
Re:False Positives (Score:5, Interesting)
This won't go anywhere for a long time, until image recognition technology catches up.
Even then, one person's "porn" is another's "art". Even a human can't correctly distinguish offensive vs. non-offensive content with all that much accuracy. (This is besides the fact that around the same time as image recognition technology catches up computers will have overtaken the world and we'll be following their rules rather than our own.)
Not many of you... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What Is The Story here? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not like they would have a lot to gain by remaining in .com (or other TLDs). It's not like they desperately want to reach underage kids at the library, pimply teenage boys searching for the free preview pages -- there's no money in them.
Even if only half of the porn sites on the net opt into the .xxx domain, schools and parents can now filter out half of the stuff flawlessly. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
So, please, enough about "who is going to enforce it?" The only real question is whether xxx should exist as a TLD at all, and I can't think of any good reason why it shouldn't.