Censorship

Unintended consequences

by Nina Willdorf

Chat-room aficionados across the country are painfully familiar with this scenario: hanging out online with friends, they casually -- perhaps even unknowingly -- throw in some dirty words. Then, bam, the Web site they're on blocks the words, sometimes sending a wrist-slapping note. When Sherril Babcock, an attorney in Los Angeles, tried to register for www.BlackPlanet.com, she hit the same high-tech roadblock.

The reason? The "cock" in her last name.

BlackPlanet uses a filtering system that blocks bad words. "Cock" is one of them -- even if the letters are only part of a larger word. As Omar Wasow, the site's executive director, explains it, the filtering is a necessary ill of trying to create a safe space for a diverse community. "We're trying to run a site that appeals to the full spectrum of the black community, teenagers and grandmothers included," he says.

But to Babcock, that just seems like a load of -- well, to use a word that might pass BlackPlanet's censorware, ca-ca. "If my name is good enough for the California Supreme Court, I don't understand why it's not good enough for BlackPlanet.com," she says. For the record, Babcock was able to register with the site using the last names Babdildo and Babpenis.

Wasow says he's not concerned about the matter -- and has no plans to rework the software to allow people with names like Babcock or Dickinson to register. "Every day on the Web there are thousands of people who get filtered," he says. "We don't want to be a red-light district."