HTML at 1996(was it intelligent enough)?????

[FlatHead]

I don't know if that is the right forum for this question but i thought that definatelly someone could help.

I have an assay for uni.
It is one of those classical ones about pornography and the web.(SOMM,Felix Bruno CompuServe 1996).

All I want to know is if these days (1996) the ISPs such as CompuServe were capable enough to use such as technologies (HTML Java or other...) to identify and censor illegal pornographic material such as pedofilia.

Please help me if you know about this with any information (reliable). This will help me for my conclusion as far as im not certain if HTML or others (older versions) where capable enough for such as functionalities.

 

[tanderso]

No, there is no image recognition software in existance that can distinguish illegal pornography from legal pornography, nor distinguish pornography at all. There are some heuristics which determine content by searching the words on the web page, but a web page consisting only of an image, and possibly some clean text, passes those tests.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[iza]

ah ah ah 2 different forums = 2 different answers s-) !

 

[zefir]

FlatHead: HTML has been never used for tasks like this.
Ref.: Chuck Musciano, HTML..., O´Reilly
G.Hoffmann

 

[tanderso]

No, not HTML. That is just silly.

You would use server-side languages such as C or Perl to scan website content on the server. Or you would use a web browser (developed in VB, C, or other) to do website blocking on the client-side. You might even develop a proxy server which does this.

However you do it, it can only be successful at scanning words, not images.
Sincerely,

Tom Anderson
CEO, Order amid Chaos, Inc.

http://www.oac-design.com

 

[FlatHead]

yep i do know that html is not capable enough.That wasn't an issue! The issue is ingeneral between the years 1995 - 96 did they have tools for censoring or no. And if yes were they capable to censor words tags etc.
In other words ISPs and server storage services could they control the material throughout their facilities used??????
Regards
h@rrI$

 

[Karl Blessing]

they had tools for filtering out words as far as the late 80s I think, of which I'm sure any ISP or server could have used the same technieque for scanning words on incomming traffic, of course that would require more bandwidth for them to check, but I'm sure they had things to scan for a sequence of words, or etc.

I'm sure places like Compuserve, and what not were able to use them, but by default the protection was turned off, unless it was part of their server (such as adult specific forums that existed on compuserv) they had other software similar to netnanny, there has been some occurances of some serverside implementations, and some clientside, the only problem was, at the time the standard speed was anywhere from 14K upto 36K modems for most dialup user, and ISDN wasnt a practical option for non-bussiness use, due to the price. now we have faster connections, faster processors to aid the scanning, more and more people online, which calls for more and more demands for censorship by large groups particulary parents.
Karl
kb244@kb244.com

http://www.kb244.com

Experienced in : C++(both VC++ and Borland),VB1(dos) thru VB6, Delphi 3 pro, HTML, Visual InterDev 6(ASP(WebProgramming/Vbscript)

http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=629151

 

[iza]

actually, i would say the answer is YES, we had and we still have tools to control (such as information retrieval tools ...). I did work on such technologies a few years ago, i KNOW they exist !! But those tools are not and were not used "officially" (they are unofficially)... They might be some day tho ....
the main point is on censorship not on technology. First there is a legal problem, then a "communication" problem (in a way that even if it's legal, if you're known for using censorship you might lose clients (or credibility or whatever)), finally a "network" problem (with this i mean that even if your tools find

http://www.xxx.com

should be censored, and even if you can censor the site (ban it from the provider), there will be mirrored sites everywhere !!! it happens right now, i have bunches of examples !!!)

 

[MasterRacker]

As a side note, there are filter companies that are experimenting with image blocking based on a percentage of skin tone colors, etc. I doubt this would ever really work since it would also block pictures of pigs at the state fair, etc. and tinting pictures could defeat it, but it is beig looked at.
Jeff
masterracker@hotmail.com

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