Symantec steps on their wing-wang at last

S

Well, lookee here.

Remember when Symantec—that Internet Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, that over-reaching, intrusive, “who will think of the children!!” Moral Guardian of the Universe—decided either on their own or at the prompting of radfem elements to block access to MRA and other gender blogs as porn sites? Here’s the list of MRA and other sites they blocked:

http://therightsofman.typepad.co.uk/the_rights_of_man/2013/02/the-48-mens-human-rights-sites-feminists-seek-to-censor.html

The common thread was not that these sites were MRA sites but that they were all critical of feminism. The other common thread is that branding them as pornographic sites was not only a slander but also a very telling slander.

Well, now it seems they’ve touched a third rail and been zapped into climbing down on another group of websites that they’ve labeled as pornographic. This time, they’ve slandered people who can slam back and rub their noses in their whorish, entrepreneurial pandering to pressure groups that poses as sanctimony.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/09/16/3381932_ap-newsbreak-web-filter-lifts.html?rh=1

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A popular online safe-search filter is ending its practice of blocking links to mainstream gay and lesbian advocacy groups for users hoping to avoid obscene sites.

For several years, top Web-filtering services have been resolving a security over-reach that conflated gay rights websites with child porn, blocking both from web surfers using safe-search software. Now Symantec, one of a handful of key players in the content-filtering market, is joining the push.

Online security firm Symantec told The Associated Press that while customers can still set their search to block offensive websites, there will no longer be an option to block websites just because they relate to sexual orientation.

“Making this change was not only the right thing to do, it was a good business decision,” said Fran Rosch, executive vice president, Norton Business Unit, Symantec in a Tuesday announcement. “Having a category in place that could be used to filter out all LGBT-oriented sites was inconsistent with Symantec’s values and the mission of our software.”

Symantec’s shift, which came after customers at an Au Bon Pain cafe and bakery blogged in January that the free Wi-Fi was blocking access to advocacy groups, is the latest in a series of Internet-filter revamps prompted after frustrated Web searchers found human rights campaigns and gay advocacy groups were being grouped together with child porn sites by some Web-content monitors, which then prevented users from clicking on them.

Let this be a lesson to all of us on how far these market-appointed moral guardians can be trusted with other people’s civil rights to free speech. They can be trusted as far as the leash attached to that.
This time, of course, it wasn’t radfems behind the blocks. This time it was:

Analyst Bryan Fischer at the conservative American Family Association said some people consider websites advocating gay rights as dangerous propaganda and should be allowed to block them.”Symantec is simply wrong to deny their customers this option,” he said.

… someone with identical methods and identical attitudes toward other people’s rights, someone who also thinks branding something as pornography is the most damning accusation one can sling.

When it comes right down to it, they are all basically indistinguishable under their various ideological white sheets. They are all puritans: dominionistic,* high-minded, SJW totalitarians. For a time they were able to ride a wave of parental hysteria and high moral purpose and bend hucksters like Symantec to do their will, but the tide is finally turning. The tide is turning at last.

*http://www.publiceye.org/christian_right/dominionism.htm

Jim Doyle
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