Having operated under a rather oppressive form of websense at college for years, I have very little love for the company. But this still seems like a case of over-extending the blame. Sure, they are probably more evil than they want to pretend, but at least they bother pretending; which is more than I can say for some.

I think I'll reserve judgment until more facts are out, especially Websense's next step. If they actually do uphold their anti-censorship statement, then props to them; they'll be the least annoying filtering software in the market, which is not saying a whole lot.

It is unfortunate, but it is certainly not without precedent. During major wars, we usually censor mail from soldiers to try to prevent security leaks, accidentally revealing the rumors to the enemy really can cost lives.

We need to strike a balance between freedom and safety/security. Preventing all social networking seems excessive to me, but perhaps there were some recent incidents that made the Pentagon panic that we don't know about. I doubt such a policy will stand for long, perhaps they just need some extra training in cyber-safety (like most of America).

I must have misunderstood. It was my impression that "(randomly chosen) article" meant that a reference was provided by the user, thus the service need only search the one article for the text. That wouldn't be too computationally heavy, unless they are getting several such requests a second (which I doubt... but I suppose it's possible).

Good point. And they did refund the money. I guess the flaw is assuming that the user wants to play by the rules, and I suppose we'd be complaining even at the unnecessary restrictions to account for the users who do not. We can make any machine look stupid when we misuse it.

The beef here I think is that they have the 'audacity' to sell the license... but now that I think about it, it's still a much better system than trying to contact a real person and deal with it. Still, I don't think it should be too hard to have a JavaScript check to see if the words come from the actual article. At the very least that might help prevent people from accidentally misquoting it if they are silly and type by hand or copy the wrong article or whatever.

Should be changed to "$.46-a-word" press.

Especially not in the regulation from ISP side (there'd be a better chance if it just limited the ability of third parties to requisition or request such data). People still seem to think that internet traffic is public domain, which is like saying mail I send to my parents is privy to the USPS's inspection to make sure it isn't copyrighted material or child porn, imho. It's ridiculous, but people (especially those who still see the internet as "new" just don't understand it the way we do.

It burnss our eyeses preciousss!

Joke detection fail.

Hardware failure is just Marvellous. ;D

Obesity is bad for you. More news at 11.

All they need is something to lift their Spirits... maybe a good comedy movie will do the trick. (sry, the pun HAD to be made)

Using this in conjunction with the new Google Brain search should make spotting nefarious terrorists, murderers, drug traffickers and torrenters easy. The program should be run by Alfred Bester.

Exactly. As do we all. This is why discussing the games like RapeLay is kind of a red herring (as the article seems to insinuate, I'm just sick of my friends yapping about it as if it were indicative of mainstream gaming... forgive my rant). Sure, games like that make me want to puke, but who cares? Its a game for sickos made by sickos, it does not reflect on gaming culture as a whole any more than a fetish-indulging book refelcts on the entirety of literature as a whole. The real problem is that people latch on to examples and try to generalize them.

Nevertheless, "a resistive zone developed" which kicked off the whole problem.

It's supposed to be, but that's what failed during tests. See the link.