Do any of you folks know (1) whether our blog is blocked by some filters, and (2) how, if at all, we can try to get it unblocked? A reader e-mails that a filter named Bess seems to have it in for us, which keeps up from being accessed on some high school computers. I’m not sure that we’d want to invest a great deal of effort in trying to get unblocked, but if we can quickly find out — with your help — who blocks us and just send a few e-mails that might help some high school students get hooked on that Volokh Conspiracy crack take advantage of the information and opinion that we provide, that would be nice.
By the way, I’m not terribly outraged or even upset that we might be blocked. While we don’t consciously try to run a “family blog,” my sense is that even the 1% of our stuff that may be slightly racy is mighty tame by modern high school standards; but if some filter manufacturer disagrees, I won’t to be too upset. I just suspect that the blockage is more a matter of automated word searches than of deliberate and particularized judgment, and that a filter manufacturer who does look more closely at us would probably conclude that we’re not really R-rated. (As to pre-high-school students, let’s just say that one doesn’t need a filter to keep a typical 11-year-old from reading a blog like ours; and if some 11-year-old does read us, I suspect that it’ll have to be a generally pretty mature 11-year-old.)