[lug] Filtering Proxies

[Michael J. Pedersen]

I have an idea for this group to consider fairly seriously. We have hit the
age of proxies, and we aren't going to get rid of them. We also have
legislation that requires any place receiving federal funds put them in place.
My solution? An open source proxy.

Consider this: With it being open source, we could make the blacklist not
quite so dark. In fact, we could provide some truly useful categories which
could be used. Make the list public, too, so that users can see what is in
what category, and even provide a challenge mechanism for a mis-filed website.

In short, we could write something which would give these places a break, in
all sorts of ways. Take junkbuster as the base, so it can work on nt servers
and on linux servers. The proxy itself is free. The list is free, and locally
modifiable.

Issues:
1) Categorizing the web would be incredibly difficult, to say the least. We'd
need to enlist the help of as many people as possible, and make it a painless
process as well.

2) Bandwidth, especially for the blacklist. I can't host it. Especially once
/. gets information about it. Can anybody here even suggest a site which could
host it?

3) Actual coding. Heck, by comparison to the others, this is small change. But
it would still take some time, probably a good two months, to get a beta out
the door for people.

Customizations could go hog wild, complete with a decent tool to administer
the whole shebang. What does everybody think? Should we try and write it, or
should we just wait for somebody else?

-- 
Michael J. Pedersen
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