Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Are Political Blogs Being Censored By Hillsborough County Libraries?

Censorship

Vox Populi left this message in the comments.

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Emergency Post: Sorry to take off subject. Need your help.

The people in Hillsborough County FL better be made aware of something. Currently, the Hillsborough County Library System is blocking content and comments to certain websites. Among these are State of the Sunshine, Ybor City Stogie, Tampas Back Door, (Pushing Rope) (outfield) and here's a blank one julessideburn.blogspot.com
until just a moment ago and others, still checking which ones.
As well, I and others here present are unable to log into our blogs to update them or to comment on them. Yet you can easily open and comment on some sites that are 'racier'.

I would hardly refer to my site or stogie's site as racy. I think state of the sunshine would qualify as political. One of these sites is COMPLETELY BLANK and is blocked from posting or comment.
Before they shut us all up here is the error code we receive when attempting to blog or comment and I think that anyone out there with a blog should be aware of and comment on this.
Sorry to take this off subject but I happened to be here today and have been working on this for two hours and have written joe stines. This IS a big huge deal and people need to be aware what the county is up to and what you are up against. It's not just the teachers against super-elia it's the citizens against the ptb of the county. make no mistake.

Please help by contacting joe stines at stinesj@hillsboroughcounty.org
and asking him why he is allowing free speech to be interrupted at the Tampa Public Libraries. There is no sexual content on the above pages and this is what the filter says. It is quite obvious to me that the county (and the school system) endeavors to shut us down.

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I haven't checked to see if any of these blogs can not be read on Hillsbough County public library computers. Will someone check and tell me if this is true.

Update: I just emailed Joe Stines to ask if what Vox Populi's says is true. If you do decide to email Stines - please be civil. There is no reason to be rude.

5 Comments:

At February 14, 2007 5:48 PM , Blogger Jim Johnson said...

I believe the Websense software is blocking Blogger and Blogspot domains.

That is one reason I switched to my own domain. Yes, it is costing me $7 per month for the hosting service via GoDaddy... but I don't have to worry about being filtered with Blogger and Blogspot blogs...

 
At February 14, 2007 5:49 PM , Blogger Joel said...

All those blogs mentioned except State of Sunshine are on Blogger (though State of Sunshine used to be) - could it be some kind of weird block for sites on the blogspot backbone? I'm not sure if Vox checked other Blogger sites or not.

 
At February 14, 2007 6:05 PM , Blogger Michael Hussey said...

I'm not sure what the deal is. I sent an email to the Hillsborough County library system. Hopefully, I'll get a response.

 
At February 14, 2007 7:28 PM , Blogger Julio Rodriguez said...

Thanks, Michael and Vox, My E-mail Is On Its way.

 
At February 15, 2007 5:00 PM , Blogger 1234512345 said...

I've emailed him too, just too see how willing he is to discuss this matter. I'm guessing they're just blocking the blogger.com domains, but that's still not a good excuse.

 

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