Research
has shown that Internet use by young people is the most rapidly expanding
sector, either through their educational systems, or at home within
their families. Teachers and parents are concerned about the use of
Internet children do, usually citing open access to pornographic and
other harmful materials as the main reason behind their scepticism.
Harmful Internet content exists, and in some cases it is managed by
powerful organisations (e.g. pornographic industries). These powerful
private sectors, harmful to European youth, need to be counterbalanced
by initiatives with partial public funding.
If the aims of eEurope are to be achieved, then young eEuropeans need
to be protected from access to content that might be considered to be
harmful to them. This will enable them to learn to use Internet in a
secure environment.
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POESIA
PROJECT
The POESIA project is funded by the European Commission
and takes place in the mark of the Information Society and Technology
Safer Internet Action Plan. The Safer Internet Action Plan (IAP) promotes
safety on the Internet by tackling the controversial issue of illegal,
harmful and racist content.
POESIA seeks to develop, test, evaluate and promote a fully open-source,
and extensible, state of the art, filtering and catching software solution.
POESIA will filter harmful content in several channels (Web, Email,
News) combining innovative technologies to achieve more effective filtering
than existing products. Filtering will cover a range of modes, including
image filtering, natural language text filtering, URL, PICs and JavaScript
filtering. The filter will initially be deployed in English, Italian
and Spanish. To cover other European languages additional work is required
and should be effectively possible because of the open-source model
and the portability of the technical solutions.
POESIA aims to become the standard filtering solution deployed by educational
institutions and for home use. It will therefore create an important
market of related services provided by European Small and Medium I.T.
Enterprises.
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POESIA DEVELOPMENT
The POESIA project is characterized by a collaborative,
consensus based development process, an open and pragmatic software
license, and a desire to create high quality software that leads the
way in its field. We consider ourselves not simply a consortium sharing
a server, but rather a community of developers and users.
The main activities of the POESIA project are:
· software specification
· software development
· software assessment
· product marketing and
· dissemination
POESIA is designed to be implemented through the LINUX
operating system.
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TARGET AUDIENCE
POESIA is targeted for situations where groups
of computers are used for browsing and other Internet activities, such
as classrooms, libraries, computer centres and business.
The use of POESIA filtering software will assist educators in their
pedagogical efforts. It is not expected that POESIA will replace adults
(such as teachers and parents) in their efforts to educate the future
generation, POESIA must be seen as a useful tool for educators.
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WHO PARTICIPATES
IN THE PROJECT?
The POESIA consortium is made of a variety of partners:
developers, researches and end users.
