Don't confuse the messenger with the message

It's been a rather unusual week for me, hearing complaints about censorship and miscategorized websites from various venues. For starters, there's this blog post at iptegrity.com complaining that Vodafone was censoring the internet access that a British writer's Blackberry had, and she did not want to be subjected to the whims of an "American" company called Blue Coat that was blocking her internet.

Unfortunately what the writer fails to realize is that while Vodafone uses products like Blue Coat's for internet filtering, it's not Blue Coat that makes the decision on what to block or filter. It's strictly Vodafone's decision. It's akin to deciding that it's your TV's fault that the program your watching contains something you don't like. It would be the same regardless of what vendors product they used to establish internet filtering.

Next someone on the other side of the world complained about the rating of taobao.com. For those of you that aren't familiar with that site, it's the Chinese equivalent of ebay. The person complaining had just read this article in PC Magazine on how some scammers were selling illegal iTunes account information on taobao.com. They wanted to know why the site wasn't classified as illegal, and instead was classified as auctions and shopping. It'd be the same as if someone went on to ebay and sold illegally obtained merchandise. Because some sellers happen to be illicit, does that mean all of ebay should be classified as illegal? Once again, the person is confusing the message with the messenger.

Unfortunately in this day and age, it's too easy to confuse the companies that provide tools with people who might be using them the wrong way. A company like Vodafone using a tool like Blue Coat's has every right to do so, but in the interest of customer retention and satisfaction might want to consider being up front about their practice and explaining their intentions. Just don't shoot the messenger.