Etik och censur inom internetfiltrering – En forskningsöversikt

Abstract

This paper is a research review in the realm of censorship systems and filtering systems. It applies ethical considerations to the creation of censorship systems bringing forward discussion on the ethics of technology with the purpose of limiting access to information. There is active research being done in the area of automatic content filtering and censorship systems. These are systems that can filter out undesired material, typically from the Internet, automatically. Used in some nations, many schools and even mandated in some libraries there are many ethical questions raised concerning censorship and access to information. Part of the review concerns the level of accuracy of these systems presented by researchers in the field and the different approaches used. Reviewed articles centre around automatic content classification and filtering of potentially harmful materials with regards to minors while some relate to censorship technology in a wider sense. Results show a general lack of discussion concerning the ethics of the technology in the research reviewed. Most of the filtering systems under discussion are concerned with pornographic material. The existence of some kind of moral guidelines are often implied but hardly explored explicitly or defined. The most common techniques are intelligent content filters in the forms of textual or visual analysis and increasingly both combined. Results indicate a high reliability for filtering pornography and significantly lower results for other domains.