Caller: Why can't I access the web site www.cnn.com? My browser says it is blocked!

LM: Do you subscribe to our XStop service?

LM: Let me check the site. (I check the CNN web site for any reason why our censorship service would be blocking it... I find nothing questionable on the site.) The XStop service must be malfunctioning right now. I'll call them and tell them about the error and get back to you. Can I get your number?

I'm amazed how many times I get calls like this, caused by Internet censorship failure, usually when the service censors something it shouldn't. But, of course, I shouldn't be surprised: There are many technical problems with Internet censorship. First of all the manpower and money needed to keep an accurate and up-to-date database of questionable sites, as most censorship firms do, are tremendous. The second problem is the lack of accurate content filtering software, especially on the client side. Also, the inte

rnet is multinational, and uses many protocols, languages that computers use to talk to each other and "negotiate" data exchanges, making it nearly impossible to police the entirety of the network. Lastly, there is the issue of data encryption, which makes censorship of encrypted data impossible.

The truth is that most ISPs spend more money using and helping maintain services like XStop than they make by offering the service. This problem isn't limited to only services such as XStop; there are other companies out there that provide censorship software that is not publicly maintained, yet the same type of problems occur. Those that are maintaining the database can't cover the entirety of the Internet in their searches for questionable material. The Internet is so large that not even automated search engines, such as Yahoo!, Excite, or Google have all the pages indexed (Google has the largest index, at over a billion pages). The time and money it takes to keep an accurate, up to date database of questionable sites cost too much for any one entity to handle it.

The multi protocol nature of the Internet is another contributor to the complexity of the Internet. New protocols for content transfer are being developed every day, rendering software that only censors the protocols of today obsolete in a short time. To add to matters, a great number of these protocols are proprietary, therefore any company wanting to censor the data carried over those protocols would have to license the protocol from the company that created it (potentially very expensive) or try to reverse engineer the protocol and risk a lawsuit.

The biggest stumbling block that is appearing now is encryption. Encrypted data can not be censored, period. The most common encryption in the world n

Some common words found in the essay are:
Yes LM, People America, Usenet GNUtella, ISPs XStop, Censoring Internet, Excite Google, Infowest Utah's, Defense Internet, internet censorship, xstop service, Internet ARPA, database questionable, database questionable sites, censorship software, questionable sites, 2048 bit key, complexity internet, services xstop, manpower client, questionable site, web site, keeping database date,
Approximate Word count = 1193
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)