Mattel Censorship Censorship6/5/2000; 7:10:19 AM March 20, 2000: Mattel, makers of CyberPatrol, a censorware product, are now censoring anybody who has the cracks on their site (not much surprise), and anybody who merely points to the cracks (more surprising).

Aside: Coporate America really needs to lose the idea that a site linking to something is the same as the site actually having and distributing that something.

Sites hosting the crack, hosting critical essays, or sites pointing to critical essays are being banned under every catagory CyberPatrol has, such as Violence/Profanity, Partial Nudity, Sexual Acts, Gross Depictions, Intolerance, Satanic/Cult, Drugs/Drug Culture, Militant/Extremist, Sex Education, Gambling, and Alcohol and Tobacco.

Mattel is also firing off threats at a Wired News reporter for simply maintaining an archive of related documents.

I guess I understand blocking the crack (in theory anyhow), but blocking criticism? There's no justification for that.

(I'm still not banned, but I guess I'm working on it...?)