With the demise of the Communications Decency Act, censorware makers should be clicking their heels in anticipation of parents stampeding to their local computer stores to protect their tots from online smut. But at least one manufacturer, Solid Oak Inc., has a thorn in its side - namely one 18-year-old Bennett Haselton - who is effectively keeping it from jumping for joy.
The problem? Haselton, a frequent critic of Solid Oak's selection of sites blocked by its Cybersitter filtering program, is raising a new charge: that Solid Oak may be trespassing on individuals' hard drives.
Co-founder of a teen Web site, Peacefire, Haselton says that several of his listserv members tried to download Cybersitter, but received an error message and were forbidden access. Haselton, who had downloaded the program several months earlier, began experimenting to see what the problem was. Eventually, he says, he discovered that the software was set to scan users' hard drives to see whether they have visited the Peacefire site. If the answer was yes, then access to the software is denied.
"This is really a side issue to what Peacefire is about," Haselton said, "but I think it's significant in terms of privacy concerns. I mean the program is coming in and crawling your hard drive."
To prove his case, Haselton posted instructions on how to verify that Cybersitter crawls hard drives. According to the site, Cybersitter blocks access only if "you have Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.x on Windows 95, Explorer is set to cache files on your hard drive, and the default extension for hypertext files on your Win95/NT system is '.html' and not '.htm'."
When Wired News staff ran Haselton's test Monday, Cybersitter aborted its load when a file called "peacefire.html" was cached, but loaded as normal when no such file appeared on the hard drive.
For their part, executives at Cybersitter, who say they are offering a viable alternative to a governmental regulation of Internet content, characterize Haselton as a publicitymonger intent on tearing Solid Oak down in order to build a virtual pedestal for himself.
"He's a little entity we don't want anything to do with. There are much more important things going on - the Supreme Court decision on the CDA, for instance," said says Marc Kanter, Solid Oak vice president. "How would you feel if you were a parent and your kids could get access to Little Benny Weasleton's instructions on how to get around software you'd paid for? That's why we block access to his site."
Although Kanter acknowledged blocking Peacefire - an action that has won the company no fans among civil libertarians - he said he doesn't know of any Cybersitter function that would allow it to crawl people's hard drives for evidence that users had looked at Peacefire before downloading.
When told that Wired News had successfully run Haselton's test, Kanter said he was surprised.
"I've never heard of such a thing," he said. "And I'm the guy who'd know."
Related Wired Links:
Teen Offers Way to Crack Blocking Software
23.Apr.97
Cybersitter Goes after Teen
9.Dec.96
