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So the questions are, should a line be drawn? And if so, where should that line be drawn, and who should draw it? Who should regulate the drawer and who can control the line? What do the people think of someone else drawing a line on their behalf to control their use? Who would conform and who would not? Big questions, lots of theories, and no answers. Now the scene has been set perfectly for a media frenzy and application vendor marketing hype.
But why would people or organisations want to apply these filtering products? The four main uses of a information content filter are:
- Business. Employers wanting to enforce their acceptable usage policies (AUPs), also can be used for spying on staff use of company's Internet resources. This spying can be recorded, logged, and archived for later use should it be necessary. Some content control in this area could be deemed acceptable particularly when looked at from a HR point of view. Several well-documented overseas legal cases have arisen with an employee suing an employer -- most often for sexual harrassment -- because of information received via the company Internet resources from either a manager or another staff member within the organisation. Therefore it is in the employer's interest to control access as much as possible to the distribution of material that may potentially offend employees. Employers can save money by curtailing non-work-related Internet access, particularly to bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming video, and many employers also believe this will make staff more productive. On the flipside, some employees are resentful of being monitored, censored, or not being able to access their Hotmail accounts. Does this lead employees to be fearful of the technology they have been handed by the employer?
- Service Providers, wishing to protect themselves against action from their users and/or legislation that exists in the area(s) that their services are provided. Whether they are Internet service providers, application service providers, or content providers, it is currently a hot topic and one well open for debate; for instance who within the service provider makes the decision to control the individual users' access to content, and how is that regulated? Is it purely based on content hosted by that provider or traffic that flows through that provider's equipment?
- Personal. An Internet user wanting to control content at their end of the connection. Common use includes parental or carer control in an effort to block access to sites not suitable for their charges. Despite popular belief, this method does not replace the watchful eye. Any carer allowing their charges to have an Internet-connected PC in a private room unsupervised is potentially allowing access to harmful information whether there's a content filter or not. The old adage seems to apply well here: where there's a will, there's a way.
- Government. Depending on where you live, you would already have a fair idea of your government's requirements and agendas in controlling information on the Internet.
Technology & Business readers mainly fall into the "business" category of users, therefore this review will focus mainly on those applications designed around controlling Internet content in the workplace.
