WebMink
Simon Phipps's personal commentary

SurfControl Luddites

Alerted by Volker and Jon, I checked Webmink against the list at SurfControl and found, indeed, the site listed in a category that would result in it being blocked for their customers. I requested the removal of my site from their list and was told "it would be checked", with the ominous rider:

Please keep in mind that we do not include legitimate business appropriate sites in our list.

which, translated, means "we don't think weblogs are legitimate viewing for business users".

These people are Luddites. Yes, there are plenty of sites out there that could be considered ephemeral, but they are blocking the Seattle PI's Microsoft page and Dan Gillmor in the name of not being 'legitimate business sites'. Esther Dyson is blocked. San Ruby is blocked. Robert Scoble is blocked. Doubtless most of my list to the right is blocked. This is outrageous. It's like having a librarian who doesn't read books or understand the Dewey system categorising your reading and telling you what you can read based on their worthless biases.

I doubt SurfControl will listen to my bleating about this, but maybe we should help them by ensuring all weblogs are categorised correctly. Why not go over now and check a few and ask them to add the missing ones to their lists? The more their product blocks, the less credibility it will have. After all, a librarian who categorises all books as 100.00 won't be around for long...

posted at 11:59 PM (UK) | |