Boing Boing to Bounce Back into Boston

Reports came in yesterday that BoingBoing, the directory of wonderful things, had been banned by the City of Boston's free WiFi network. Once again we became the brunt of ridicule for the nation. Banned in Boston and the great Mooninite scare of 2007 were both invoked. Along with mother-ship BoingBoing, Universal Hub, Gizmodo, and Slashdot were among those hot on the case.

While many pointed the finger at Mumbles as his name popped up with the city seal it's not likely that he knows anything about BoingBoing or makes any blacklist decisions himself. So why the ban on BoingBoing? Seth Finkelstein runs the same censorware and finds the culprit is a link within a post to a google search with the qualifier "safe=off." The Dan's Guardian software the city runs on the WiFi network flagged BoingBoing yesterday " isItNaughty" because of the combination of google and the search criteria "safe=off." The ban is, however, not permanent. The censorware won't put BoingBoing on a blacklist permanently; rather it just blocked the site when the offending link text existed on the post which appeared on the home page. The individual post will remain banned and give users of city WiFi a wonky view of the April 2007 archives for, well, ever. Guess this means that next time we search for Britney's famed cooter shots via google we'll have to rely on Comcast to bring it to us.

Image of the resulting blocked screen from BoingBoing