Seth Finkelstein's Home Site

Quick navigation (I'm a server programmer, not a web-designer ...):

What might be interesting:

My past (now long-defunct) Infothought blog

2007: See my columns for The Guardian

March 2006: Supreme Court decides against civil-liberties in the case of Nitke v. Gonzales (Press Release), (see also August 2005 appeal, January 2005 case update).

October 2004: If you're interested in Internet jurisdiction issues, see my Expert Witness Report and Declaration for the case Nitke v. Ashcroft

April 2004: "Jew Watch", Google, and Search Engine Optimization - This report examines issues surrounding the high search ranking of an anti-semitic website, presenting complex issues of unintended consequences and social dilemmas.

December 2003: An extensive interview with me: Greplaw - Seth Finkelstein on Censorware, Copyright and Blogs

October 2003: DMCA Victory - Copyright Office renews DMCA exemption for censorware, "based primarily ... by one person, Seth Finkelstein"!

See my April 2003 DMCA testimony at the Washington, D.C. hearings.

November and October 2003: Google Bayesian Spam Filtering Problem? and Google Spam Filtering Gone Bad

February 10, 2003: Online Policy Group, Seth Finkelstein Submit CIPA Court Brief ("... a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting a lower court decision that the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) places unconstitutional limitations on free speech ...")

PR! See discussion of my DMCA guide in the PCWorld online article "Digital Copyright Law Up for Challenge" , and their follow-up "Copyright Office considers exemptions to DMCA".

December 2002: Searching Through The Great Firewall Of China - This report describes a simple technique which can be used with some search engines to bypass censorware bans on searching for forbidden words.

November 2002: EFF is pleased to present a guide to the DMCA "exemption" process (written by me) How To Win (DMCA) Exemptions And Influence Policy. I am "one of the very few people who succeeded in arguing for an exemption (for the act of circumventing access/copy controls on censorware blacklists)".

November 2002: Updated report: BESS's Secret LOOPHOLE (censorware vs privacy & anonymity)
This exposes a secret category within the BESS (N2H2) censorware, and discussing agains why censorware must prohibit site which provide privacy, anonymity, language-translation, even web page feature checking, and more

June, 2002: Federal censorware law overturned. And the court seems to have used my anticensorware reports as one factor in its decision!

March, 2002: New Anticensorware Investigations:
BESS vs Image Search Engines - BESS bans several general popular images search engines as pornography.
The Pre-Slipped Slope - censorware vs the Wayback Machine web archive - The logic of censorware programs suppressing an enormous digital library.

July 19, 2001: I'm profiled in the New York Times! Cracking the Code Of Online Censorship

Enjoy my latest essay: Thoughts On Winning An EFF Pioneer Award (May 2001)

I've co-authored a White Paper for the National Research Council with Lee Tien of EFF :  Blacklisting Bytes

March 5, 2001:

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION (EFF) PIONEER AWARDS HONOR INTERNET LUMINARIES

Ennis, Finkelstein, and Perrin Presented Awards at EFF's Tenth Annual Pioneer Awards Ceremony
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Seth Finkelstein - Anti-censorship activist and programmer Seth Finkelstein spent hundreds of unpaid and uncredited hours over several years to decrypt and expose to public scrutiny the secret contents of the most popular censorware blacklists. Seth has been active in raising the level of public awareness about the dangers that Internet content blocking software and rating/labeling schemes pose to freedom of communication. His work has armed many with information of great assistance in the fight against government mandated use of these systems.

Seth Finkelstein, the programmer principally responsible for the investigation of X-Stop filtering software and its flaws, vital to the landmark Mainstream Loudon victory, ...