[SagelyGuru]

I remember when filters first appeared and UK secondary schools were forced to employ them. The filters work(ed) by filtering out anything on the www that contains so called offensive words, such as sex in particular.

Following this, the universities of Essex and Sussex suffered a mysterious but nevertheless catastrophic drop in applications, as their websites became invisible to secondary school applicants and nobody knew what happened.

[ljlolel]

[citation needed]

[SagelyGuru]

I don't cite anyone because I myself was doing the admissions at Essex at the time and I saw the figures and I had put 1+1 together. However, it is difficult to quantify how many didn't apply because of what they had not seen and so my colleagues preferred to bury their heads in the sand about this. One also gets the feeling that people are getting afraid to speak up against such 'morally and politically correct measures'.

More generally, it is hard to prove that/how someone didn't achieve something important because censorship denied them the crucial information. It is a very real negative effect nevertheless that was clearly demonstrated by the gradual stagnation of the Soviet Block and should not need repeating. This is precisely why censorship is a lot more pernicious than most people seem to realise.

[webmonkeyuk]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VAa-AouAHxoC&lpg=PA61...

[desas]

Also known as the Scunthorpe problem

[SagelyGuru]

Or entrance to Prat's Bottom (School in Kent)

[webmonkeyuk]

Pratt's Bottom