Content Filtering - Terminology

Terminology

This article uses the term "content control", a term also used on occasion by CNN, Playboy magazine the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. However, two other terms, censorware and web filtering, while more controversial, are often used. Nannyware has also been used in both product marketing and by the media. Industry research company Gartner uses secure web gateway (SWG) to describe the market segment.

Companies that make products that selectively block Web sites do not refer to these products as censorware, and prefer terms such as "Internet filter" or "URL Filter"; in the specialized case of software specifically designed to allow parents to monitor and restrict the access of their children, "parental control software" is also used. Some products log all sites that a user accesses and rates them based on content type for reporting to an "accountability partner" of the person's choosing, and the term accountability software is used. Internet filters, parental control software, and/or accountability software may also be combined into one product.

Those critical of such software, however, use the term "censorware" freely: consider the Censorware Project, for example. The use of the term censorware in editorials criticizing makers of such software is widespread and covers many different varieties and applications: Xeni Jardin used the term in a 9 March 2006 editorial in the New York Times when discussing the use of American-made filtering software to suppress content in China; in the same month a high school student used the term to discuss the deployment of such software in his school district.

In general, outside of editorial pages as described above, traditional newspapers do not use the term censorware in their reporting, preferring instead to use terms such as content filter, content control, or web filtering; the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both appear to follow this practice. On the other hand, Web-based newspapers such as CNET use the term in both editorial and journalistic contexts, for example "Windows Live to Get Censorware."