A couple of weeks ago now I was talking to a prospective ContentKeeper user. This company had a real aversion to limiting access to Internet content in any way, as it was seen to be censorship - and contrary to the way the business wanted to be perceived.

Fair point, and I do understand where they're coming from. But employees are people, and if you put something like the big bad Internet on their desk with no policed use (there is an Acceptable Internet Use Policy, but no tools to enforce it), there's a high likelihood it will be abused.

I reminded them of the risks of unfettered Internet use:

• Lowered productivity, because of staff time wasted on aimless surfing;
• Excessive bandwidth usage
• Network congestion
• Risks of discriminatory, offensive or explicit content in the workplace
• Legal risks of file sharing networks
• Tacit suppot of the "bludger" mentality

I also gave them the two options which, IMHO, provide the best environment for controlled Internet access. These are:

• Don't block, just coach. Most Internet filtering products (including ContentKeeper) allow for the insertion of a coahing page before displaying content that would normally be outside acceptable use guidelines. If the user is legitimate, they will read the coaching page, decide that they have evry reason to continue, and then click through to the web page. On the other hand, if Johnny Porn King was visiting has favourite sites and saw the same coaching page he would know that usage is being monitored. This in itself, is enough to eliminate 99% of inappropriate use. And it works.
• Some types of content are just simply never work-related. Internet banking, for example. Seeking that new job. Or checking out the latest sports scores. If the organisation doesn't like the "Big Brother" approach, policies can be configured to allow access to these categories of web pages before or after work, or maybe at lunchtime. Even less limiting - just put a time or download limit on these categories per day, week or whatever.

In my view these two techniques are all that is necessary.