Yes, urban75 is definitly filtered (none of the other mayday sites are, so this is not political censorship) and to be honest i'm not surprised - RM Network filters a lot of stuff without regard to it's content, as if they search on google for a term ban the 1000s of results it brings up. Most annoyingly, IRC is completly offlimits for RMNet users, inless you use a foreign version, and then you have to find some way of getting on to the buggering thing.

We have found websites on such wide ranging subjects as the Waco disaster filtered. Lesbian/Bi/Gay sites have had the axe, as with the usual penal code mix. If you email them and complain, they get shirty and blame your school. The schools are not likely to allow unfiltered access ("WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN????") and so nothing gets done. The amazingly stupid thing is, porn is quite easy to access. If kids want to bring in disks of the stuff, there's nothing to stop them from doing so. It is all in aid of the school's reputation rather than some self-rightous mother state child protection system.

The sixth formers are left the most annoyed. By the age of 17 you would of thought we can make our own decisions on morality (thank you very much.) Because the system has no switch off, everybody is exposed to the same filtering. New "general knowledge" courses such as Key Skills are amusingly scuppered when you cannot access the information you require. Recently, u-boot.com was barred. Other than having a chat room (which could have been easily individually filtered) it is also damed useful for text messaging. Kids can't have fun, it seems.

The use of the internet for education is questionable, anyway. Much of the information is copied out of books, which are already in the libraries - the expense on computers seems frankly a waste, especially when you hear of teacher's struggling and books falling apart. I think the priorities are wrong somewhere. Sure, I like the access but I wonder if the money could have been better spent (as ffar as i know, RMnet is not a charity)

There is probably little we could do - if we complain we are accused of being ungrateful, or looking for trouble, or for being unessarily libertarian. There are ways to skirt the system, but I am not willing to divulge them in a public forum (which is also via proxy). I would appreciate help in this matter - i'm suprised no one has brought this up sooner. I would like to create a database of sites (and database of contexts which are filtered) barred by RMnet, for public view. Please email me if you're willing to start such a campaign - thanks to the size and reach of this network, we might have something intresting on our hands.