That's truly Orwellian.

The site you mention, Urban75.com, has a large section on drugs. I can see why schools might want to block that. Perhaps not so sinister?

I've been able to print stuff off indymedia all morning from the RMnet, so I can't see the problem. Maydaymonopoly/Mayday2001.co.uk are both fully accessble, as are all areas of the IMC.

Maybe it's our network that has extra blocking on it ... a lot of the time it seems that half the web's barred ..

Ako

Assuming that they DO block Urban75.com (I couldn't find any way of verifying this, short of breaking into the nearest school)...

RM Networks looks to be pretty strict on filtering -they even restrict access to many chatrooms, which is understandable seeing as the filter is for schools. BUT, as far as I can see there is no reason for them to block Urban75.com - their filtering policy states...

"A general benchmark used by IFL to determine whether a site or part of a site should be filtered, is whether or not the questionable material is something, which the national press may publish. If it is, then it is unlikely IFL would choose to filter it"

The Urban75 drugs section is not glorifying the use of drugs, and seems to present a discussion of both sides of the argument. U75 state in their FAQ "we feel that it's vital that people can get impartial, honest information about the risks involved and make up their own minds". In my view there's nothing on there which would not be 'suitable' for national newspapers.

The other possibility is that it is objectionable because of 'terrorism', but alternative politics does NOT equal 'terrorism' (tho. Tony Blair seems to think ANYONE who disagrees with him is a terrorist).

The last possible reason is dirty language on the bulletin board, but there's not much of that and, as RM does allow access to many Usenet channels so I think any argument there falls flat on its face.

Orwellian? Perhaps an overstatement, but certainly unjustified. Go to  http://www.rm.com to complain.

RM Filtering Policy -  http://www.ifl.net/support/filteringpolicy.html

They have an email address as well ... the  filtering@rmplc.co.uk one is just an autoresponder ... the person in charge of filtered sites is Guy Henstock ...  ghenstock@rm.com. I personally think the interent should be totally unfiltered, and we're all doing a protest in the school computer area at present ;o) ... LOL

Ako

I think its more likely that the reason you can't access U75 and other underground sites is that their servers are running at overload.

Over the past few days this whole story has caught the public imagination, hence many more hits on the sites. Webservers can only take so much and so you'll possibly find that once the story dies down a little, you will have full access again.

Companies like the BBC spend ££££ on their sites and get millions on to their sites each month, so they have the hardware to cope with the demand.





The truth is a two edged sword!