I can’t imagine the board is too popular in North Korea, and I wonder if China doesn’t take a close look now and then. That government’s recent interaction with Google is what made me think of the question.
Has the Reader ever received any cease and desist orders, (I won’t ask about national security letters since you could not answer affirmatively anyways), or the like - I have no idea how a country would/could block a website, only fairly certain that it can be done.
And if they did, are we allowed to set up mirror sites to smuggle you in? (Which I have no idea how to accomplish either, but it would be cool to do so.)
Agnostic Pagan
The Straight Dope site is banned in many schools and libraries as we are on the NetNanny list of bad sites.
People in the armed forces cannot access this site from office computers, as I discovered when I sent a link to a friend in the Air Force.
We are blocked by many companies, but that’s more of an independent list run by each company’s IT department. If we were blocked by more companies, the rise in productivity would make Wall Street sing “Happy days are here again.”
Methinks you underestimate the ingenuity of the bored worker. The Dope being banned would just send workers to another playground, IMHO. There are way too many “fun sites” for one, regardless how powerful and popular, to cause the singing in the Corner Office. Besides, those “authorities” are busy at The Dope themselves. I wager that if truth were known a high percentage of our players are suits!
Have you ever noticed how many IT people you have here? Why would we lock ourselves out of such a great sight? My WAG why the SDMB isn’t locked out of more companies.
Just thought I’d mention that apparently Entemann’s blocks the dope. My close friend, whom I’ve been trying to get on here for years and even bought him a year’s membership can’t get on at work. That really sucks.
That’s because Entenmann’s wants the addictive but legal substances market all to itself! Given a choice between never eating Entenmann’s again and never reading the Dope again, I’d probably just shoot myself.
It depends on the base. It’s not one big military. They all have IT guys and different firewalls. I was deployed about a year ago and stuck in front of a computer most of the time. The SDMB was not blocked for about half my deployment. Then they did some adjusting and it was blocked along with a ton of others sites that had been previously available. The SD main page and articles were open but I couldn’t get to the MB. I know there wasn’t a problem with the content. I would have heard about it if there was. Our internet usage was heavily monitored and several people got burned for looking at inappropriate sites. No one ever mentioned anything to me. The SDMB just got caught up in the new firewall. I could access it from the “morale” computers we had in several locations but they were so slow I only used them for important things like the Death Pool.
I understand that the SDMB is also restricted from use at many bank. brokerage and financial institution employee computers. I believe that those businesses often have broad restrictions on private e-mail, message board and similar sites to limit the potential release of insider information and unauthorized trading.
Thanks for the response. I had not even considered the NetNanny angle. I would agree the SDMB ain’t exactly kiddie safe. Not with Anastasaeon and EvilCaptor running around. (I like their posts mostly.) And I’ve been lucky to work for fairly open-minded employers, but I can see their concerns also.
Regarding my second question, would the Reader allow a mirror site? Would that help the hamsters if lurkers went to one site, and posters here?
I work in a public school. I can access the front page from there, but not the message boards, which seems like a reasonable policy to me. There’s a lot of stuff on the boards that isn’t really appropriate for the li’l uns.
