Ports for Porn - Using Firewalls to Block Porn

vicpylon writes "A Utah businessman and his non-profit organization wants to limit pornography to certain ports in the TCP/IP protocol. He is literally suggesting legislatively restricting porn sites to certain ports, so that the "offensive" content is easier to block. This is not workable on so many levels that it is laughable. International adult sites not subject to US laws, proxy servers, enforcement issues all leap to my tired mind as major flaws in his plan. He is lobbying congress, so do not be surprised to see this discussed by some headline grabbing politico. "

Comments

Let me guess:

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Port number 69?

Re:Let me guess:

[Stephen Williams]

According to the /etc/services file on my box, 69/udp is already taken by tftp, though there's no reason why 69/tcp couldn't be assigned to www-pr0n or whatever.

The same /etc/services file indicates that port 30 is unassigned for both tcp and udp; that'd be my pick, as it's XXX in Roman numerals.

-Stephen

Re:Let me guess:

[squoozer]

Or possibly 88 (two fat ladies) for those who like that sort of thing.

oooh, that was so non-PC on soooo many levels.

Re:Let me guess:

[archgoon]

Great idea. The politicians could refer to the movement as:
rm XXX

Re:Let me guess:

[jeremymiles]

For German/English speakers, possibly a worse pun:

Q: What comes between fear and sex?
A: Funf

(Vier, is four, funf is five, and sechs is six, in German. It works better if you are English and saying it to a German, because the pronunciation of sechs is more like Zeks. If you're English, it's more likely that you'd say it wrongly, and then the joke works.)

Re:Let me guess:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I've got the hang of it now...

Port 230 for any porn under a Creative Commons Licence ?

Re:Let me guess:

[ChairmanMeow]

I suggest ports for financial news, spam, penis enlarger advertisements, and so on.

Spam already has a port... port 25.

Re:Let me guess:

[FluffyWithTeeth]

Do you really want your teenagers first impression of sex to be some woman with six inch long nails taking it up two orifices while screaming "CUM INSIDE OF ME!!!"?

Lnk plz

Re:Let me guess:

[fyngyrz]

Hmm. Limiting insidious influences to specific ports. Not a bad idea. Though I really don't think we want to do it to porn, as this could potentially do damage to a major part of the US's, even the world's, e-commerce base, not to mention ruin many people's lives.

Instead, I have a counter-proposal: let's put all the Internet web traffic from Utah on a specific port, say, port 1827. We can call it MINDER (Mormon Isolation Network Denial Enabling Restriction.)

We can follow up with the nationwide program ITSCRAP (Initiative To Stop Christian Religious Abusive Packets) on port 666.

Then, bring in the UN and implement the worldwide system SOMEQUIET (Shut Off Muslim Entreaties Queering Up Internet, Ethernet, and Telnet) on port 569, along with its sister program JUSTSHUTUP (Jewish Uploads Shunted To Some Handler Using TCP User Protection), using port 1000.

In this way, we can prevent superstition, arguably the most divisive and harmful force in our society and the world today, from causing harm to random readers who might stumble over it by accident. We must think of the children: Truly, is it fair to allow the superstitious to present stories with no evidence to impressionable kids, victims, really, undermining any tendencies towards logical and scientific thinking they might have? Of course not. We must proceed!

With religion throttled, we can turn our attention to the next most insidious problem facing the Internet with the new PINHEAD initiative: (Politician Interdiction Network Handler Ends Appalling Deceptions) on port 1600.

In this way, we can make the Internet safe for science, education, commerce, gaming, and of course, pornography, that most important segment of every young man's consumer role: Tissue purchasing.

The port that will be used...

[quigonn]

The TCP port that will be used for it is obviously 69. Actually, this is a great help, as a simple "tcpdump -w pr0n.log 'port 69'" writes all the porn downloaded by your colleagues to a tcpdump file, from which all the video and image files could be extracted later.

Re:People should learn

[Anonymous Coward]

I was terribly damaged by porn when I was only 3. My father had a huge porn collection which unfortunately fell on top of me.

Re:this port

[vidnet]

6660 is unassigned but in a range commonly used for IRC.

Porn in other words.

I wonder if....

[tpgp]

This idea is from Ralph Yarro

I wonder if it will be as successful as the SCO group under his leadership?

Here's an even better suggestion:

[Ihlosi]

Just block every port that could possibly be suspected to be used to transfer p0rn, i.e. 0-65535. You know, just like with terrorists ? Just being a suspect is proof enough.

Then your computer and kids will be safe from p0rn from the Internet

Re:Here's an even better suggestion:

[iphayd]

Then of course strip search all of the (female) images that come in through the firewall.

Re:Here's an even better suggestion:

[maxzilla]

But then the ethernet cord and router lobbyists would be up in arms! think of the servers people, think of the servers!

utah and the internet

[romit_icarus]

Utah Woman Deletes the Internet! By Tom 7 (Dissociated Press) REDMOND: Millions of frustrated calls rushed into internet service providers this past thursday as "The Information Superhighway" was reported Missing In Action for several days. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) traced the problem to a home in Utah where Doris Packuko resides. She was allegedly found "hysterical and crying", police say. "That much information flowing through the phone lines all at once generates a lot of heat," Doug Wernicke of the IETF told us, "We just followed the smell of burning fiber optics." "Apparently, she just deleted The Internet right off her desktop. Even after being warned, 'are you sure you want to delete The Internet?', she persisted." Experts claim that this is a major problem with The Information Superhighway, perhaps even worse than animal pornography. "The Internet is a great cooperative work, built by millions of people. It is so unfortunate that it can be ruined by just one person. Thank God we were able to save it," commented Packuko's neighbor. The IETF was able to recover most of The Internet by opening up Packuko's Recycle Bin and dragging The Internet back onto the desktop. The rest was restored from the master backup copy kept on Zip Disk in the pentagon. Puckuko claims ignorance was the cause of her act. "I just didn't know. I was trying to clean up my desktop and I deleted it. I ... I just didn't realize." Microsoft Corporation reports that they are currently working on a bug fix.

The better answer...

[jonwil]

Is to implement a special top-level-domain for porn, something like the .xxx domain that was proposed (and rejected IIRC).

That would have almost no technical issues and be just as easy to block as this braindead proposal.

Might I suggest port 80/http?

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Everyone okay with that?

What about other content?

[Rob Kaper]

There are only 61538 ports. That's barely enough to categorise my personal fetishes, let alone everyone else's. Where on earth are we going to leave all the other content?

Re:What about other content?

[dr_dank]

Where on earth are we going to leave all the other content?

What other content?

Gives whole new meanings to the phrases...

[ettlz]

.."port knocking" and "port sniffing".

Re:Gives whole new meanings to the phrases...

[ettlz]

ooooooooh! I just pinged myself!

Try finger instead.

Re:Front-page worthy?

[confusion here]

At least it's not a dupe... yet.

Just block port 80!

[Sindri]

Thats where most of the porn is currently cumming in.

Why not als invent a few exclusive new protocols?

[flowerp]

P2P - Porn 2 Peers
HTTP - Hypertexttransport for porn.
FTP - Filetransfer for porn.

Just extend RFC 3514!

[Advocadus Diaboli]

RFC 3514 already introduces the evil bit. So it should be easy to extend this RFC and also introduce a "porn bit". Tagged packets should be easy to filter out with a proper configured packet filter and there shouldn't be any fuss about proxies and so on...

SCNR this one, so don't mod me down for not knowing that RFC3514 is an april fools day joke.

Utah

[Jaysyn]

Can Utah please do us all a favor & secede from the Union. Thank you.

Jaysyn

Re:I want to restrict things, too.

[jasen666]

Will the balance ever shift in the other direction?
What, you mean protect us from the children? Amen brother, those kids are ruining my porn experience.

Limited Range

[johnnyblade111]

Sounds like a great idea.. porn should be limited to ports 1 to 50000. Hey, good work congress.. now we already have full compliance...

Hard Core

[daveewart]

From TFA: "we are all hard-core technology businessmen".

How appropriate.

Poor slashdoters

[linumax]

Hey, I'm really pissed
They are fu**ing with the only source for an slashdotter to know what the world fu** really means

Technically bad.

[eyeball]

That's such a terrible implementation. It should be incorporated into the OSI model:

• 8 - Application
  
• 7 - Presentation
  
• 6 - Moral Control Protocol
  
• 5 - Session
  
• 4 - Transport
  
• 3 - Network
  
• 2 - Data Link
  
• 1 - Physical

(BTW, I'm joking)

Re:Parents would decide

[Jeremy Erwin]

Parents would decide to either have a child friendly IP addresss or not.

My children have already informed me that they've made lots of new friends on the internet. I'm glad that I unblocked 6667. One of them even offered to buy her a very special wardrobe, if she'd install a webcam.

Porn

[nukeade]

If you think porn scars a kid... wait until he gets a girlfriend.

~Ben

Limiting to Ports

[DanThuMan]

A near technical impossibility but I'm sure the sailors would be happy!

But we can still have Nazi porn.

[type40]

Right?

You know the kind with the hansom young Nazi officer on all fours with a leash around his balls being held by a burly black man saying, "So, what were you a saying about being part of the master race?"
que the porn music

that's still ok right?