Filtering and protection toolmaker ContentWatch – whose chief executive’s support of a new Utah porn filtering law provoked conflict of interest questions last month – has agreed to sell its ContentProtect and ContentProtectSuite filtering products through fellow Net protection toolmakers SafeSurf, the company announced May 2.
"ContentWatch is excited about partnering with a leading organization whose sole purposes are to protect children from objectionable Web content and to increase productivity and reduce Internet risks in businesses and organizations," ContentWatch chief executive Jack Sunderlage said in a statement announcing the new partnership.
"SafeSurf has a long and credible history of providing wonderful tools and guidance regarding Internet usage for businesses and families," Sunderlage added.
ContentProtect is an Internet filtering tool while ContentProtectSuite is a package of tools including filtering, spam blocking, and pop-up blocking, aimed primarily for use by small businesses and groups.
"SafeSurf is pleased to make ContentWatch products available from its website," SafeSurf chairman Ray Soular said in a statement. "Our customers will benefit greatly by having access to these industry-leading Internet protection tools."
ContentWatch officials were unavailable for comment before this story went to press, but Soular said that SafeSurf went hunting for such a partnership after getting numerous queries from small businesses and groups for the right kind of filtering for their size.
"We continually received requests to provide a product or information that could be used at the business level and provide the administrative level of control needed by education or small businesses, so we began searching for a product that would serve their needs," Soular said.
"Most [filtering packages] are designed for home use or for very large businesses," he continued, "but small businesses and libraries and organizations need only a certain level of administrative control not found in the home products or is overblown in the large scale. And we decided ContentWatrch was exactly what these small businesses need.”
Sunderlage – who also co-founded Citizens Against Pornography and chairs the Utah Information Technology Association – made headlines in April when he appeared at the ceremony at which Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. signed into law a requirement that Utah Internet service providers block "harmful" sites and the state's attorney general build and keep a list of such "harmful" sites, adult and otherwise—a law similar to a Pennsylvania law that was struck down by a federal court last year.
That appearance provoked questions as to whether Sunderlage's company may have sold its filtering products to at least one ISP after the state legislature session that approved the bill in both houses had ended.
