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SCO Chair's Anti-Porn Act Advances In Utah
iptables -A FORWARD writes "Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah reportedly plans to sign a resolution urging Congress to enact the Internet Community Ports Act. The ICPA proposes that online content be divided by port, rather like TVs have channels with adult and family content, so that certain internet ports will be 'clean' — so-called Community Ports — and others will be 'dirty.' Thus, they hope to remove objectionable content from port 80 and require that it be moved elsewhere (port 666 was already taken by Doom, sorry), so that people could more easily block objectionable content, or have their ISPs do the blocking for them. This concept is being pushed by the CP80 group, which is chaired by Ralph Yarro, who also chairs the SCO Group. That probably explains why they didn't choose to adopt RFC 3514, instead."
.. when I say, You have got to be FREAKING KIDDING ME.
anti-ports act? not anti-porn?
666 is Doom, but how about 69?
This is about as enforceable as the .xxx TLD. No matter what you do, you're not going to be able segregate the pr0n from other content. Unless you're SCO, I guess, then maybe you could sue those who don't comply by claiming that your intellectual property is on port 80, therefore you own all of the content on port 80 -- millions of lines of HTML!
My blog
What makes this approach that much different from using the .XXX top-level? That's just as easily blocked, and easily passable (ssh or proxy)
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
"There is this assumption that you can't control it (the Internet)," Yarro said. "It's a toaster, we made it, we can fix it. ... We can solve the Internet pornography problem tomorrow if we decided to."
Stupid legislators. It's not a fricking toaster, that's rediculous.
It's a series of tubes.
I thought we got that straight a few months ago!
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
In meatspace, we already have constraints on distribution channels for so-called "adult" material. I can send my kid to Toys R Us and know that he won't find porn. (I think that there are lots of problems with the junk sold there, but porn is not one of them.)
Why not also provide a mechanism for segregating content? The link to the RFC was simply silly. People who own this "adult" content want to make money from it, and they can be held accountable, unlike the idiots who pseudo-anonymously hack systems.
It's not censorship, it's segregation. This is normative in meatspace, why should it be different in cyberspace?
As a parent, I like the idea that I could install a port blocker at home and block the majority of porn content. I already have a content filter in place that blocks access to pages based on content (porn, violence, etc) and if something like this can make filtering content easier, without significantly restricting access to those people who want that content, what's the big deal?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I think we can all agree that the only reaction this requires is a hearty "STFU".
Leaving alone the obvious impracticality of implementation and enforcement (ask Australia about that), this moron thinks that he can legislate morality.
My morality doesn't agree with his. I resent having moral decisions made for me, and I bet the majority of Americans feel the same way. If I want to look at porn, I should be able to look at porn. If someone else doesn't want to look at porn, they don't have to. What exactly is the problem here that requires legislative intervention?
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Now all we need is to figure out a way to get Yarro to open Firefox in the bathtub.
brandelf: invalid ELF type 'KEEBLER'
Should be easy dividing up the internet into "good" and "bad" pages. All we've got to do is make 2 piles and throw each one of the billions of pages onto one of those 2 piles, then start offering "bad" http and "bad" https on 2 other ports, then configure every server in the world to comply with this and offer their content accordingly, then just release a standard for this new system so that it can be implemented in all of the popular browsers for every single operating system.
Nope, that won't be a problem at all.
He is thinking that ports are like TV channels but what we do need is an .xxx domain and domains ENFORCED properely which is why the internet is in the mess it is.
Domain usage is not used correctly as it was intended.
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
So instead of doing something at least partially sensible, like setting up a .xxx TLD for porn sites, We are gonna start breaking web browsing now?
Come ON people! I'm as much for protecting kids from online boobies as the next parent, but messing with the basic structural foundation of the Web? Give me a break!
Methinks we have some legislators that need:
a) A basic IT education (A+ and Net+ would be a good start)
b) a permanent vacation if they don't stop trying to push nonsense laws.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
To all legislators:
Please leave the internet alone. It works well. People smarter than you created it. It has revolutionized our world. Parents need to take care of their kids, not you. The more changes you make, the more likely you are to break something. Here's a deal. You don't need to get in the news to get my vote. Stay out of the news for a year, and I'll vote for you.
And what's to stop porn site from simply relocating to another country and ignoring this law completely?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
or have their ISPs do the blocking for them.
ISP: So, you want to see porn on the internet? You dirty bastard, that's an extra $50 a month and we'll unblock that port for you.
Of course this would never work since it requires the cooperation of the whole world. As far as I know most online porn sites aren't based in Utah. When will they learn...?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Another genius idea from people who know absolutely nothing about how computers or the internet functions. Ports are for protocols, not content. The "content" is just a paticular arrangement of data sent over that protcol.
What these guys really want is to mandate that all IPv6 packets have a TOTC(Think of the children) bit. Defaulted to 1, for "unsafe content". They then pass legislation banning ISPs from handling anything with a TOTC bit of 1. The only way to get a TOTC bit of zero, without breaking the law, is to apply for an extremely expensive licence and audit, available to only the largest corporations.
Entirely coincidentally, the Chinese government's UFTP(Unsafe for the People) bit will occupy exactly the same position in their altered version of the IPv6 protocol, ensuring that the new, saer net will be fully interoperable.
Farfetched? Well, which is more likely? This or competant government that's for the people?
May the Maths Be with you!
...so what ports are they going to be on?
The irony of this coming from a company that charges you extra money to be able to access the internet at all if you use their operating system.
They probably think www = vi vi vi = 666 = the beast and their duty to God is to attempt to subvert and destroy it!
Wait a minute... supposing we leave 22 for non-porn ssh, 25 for non-porn smtp, and 80 for non-porn http.... that only leaves 65533 ports for porn. Is that enough? I don't think it's enough.
More information on this subject, including a detailed discussion of why content segregation is dangerous, can be found in RFC3675. It suggests an actual workable solution: PICS tags.
PICS Labels (Platform for Internet Content Selection) is a generalized system for providing "ratings" for Internet accessible material. The PICS documents should be consulted for details. In general, PICS assumes an arbitrarily large number of rating services and rating systems. Each service and system is identified by a URL.
It would be quite reasonable to have multiple PICS services that, in the aggregate, provided 300 bits of label information or more. There could be a PICS service for every community of interest. This sort of technology is really the only reasonable way to make categorizations or labelings of material available in a diverse and dynamic world.
While such PICS label services could be used to distribute government promulgated censorship categories, for example, it is not clear how this is any worse than government censorship via national firewalls.
A PICS rating system is essentially a definition of one or more dimensions and the numeric range of the values that can be assigned in each dimension to a rated object. A service is a source of labels where a label includes actual ratings. Ratings are either specific or generic. A specific rating applies only to the material at a particular URL [RFC 2396] and does not cover anything referenced from it, even included image files. A generic rating applies to the specified URL and to all URLs for which the stated URL is a prefix.
This seems like very much the "right" way of doing it. It:
Also, unlike their proposed port breakage, it can easily be turned off if you don't care about it.
Pirate Party UK
(I know it's not valid. It's a joke, son. Laugh.)
...respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.
That's an Amendment to the Constitution, better known as the First Amendment. The Constitution, folks, was written to restrict government's reach -- it was not written to protect our rights or to restict people.
Our Federal government has absolutely zero power to regulate the Internet. The Interstate Commerce Act has been stretched to give Congress power, but the Act was not intended to actually allow the government to regulate commerce but to prevent the Individual States from perverting commerce between them. Read the Federalist papers to see more on that debate.
We already have anti-porn powers in place -- it's called the Power of Parenting. No government official can legislate control over how a parent decides to introduce their children to various topics. I fear that heavy-handed moralists may decide that sites with breast-feeding or basic sex information might get censored along with bestiality sites. For me, neither matter since I don't have kids, but should I decide to, I want to regulate what my children can look at. I also want to regulate at what age they are free to start deciding for themselves what they want to look at.
I grew up in the early BBS days (1983 or so). My parents didn't regulate me at all. My BBS that I ran, starting in my pre-teens, ended up having a small porn download/sharing section. It was probably viewed by some youths, but the vast majority of visitors there were adults (we did telephone authorization to give people access). I don't recall spending more than a few minutes in that section myself, since I preferred the online forums and the chat area (we were multinode early). My parents both visited the BBS on a few occasions, and they never scolded me for any section. They did warn me to be careful not to break any laws, but in our household, their regulations were the only laws that I had to work to obey. I did obey, until I moved out, at which point I realized that a lot of what my friends' parents restricted them from were the very things they clung to when they reached a point of maturity. Forbidden fruits create many jams, I guess.
Let's keep government out of our households. Let's remember that the Constitution was written to prevent Federal government from going bonkers and destroying our ability to not just choose for ourselves, but also reap what we sow when we make mistakes (and when we work hard). Equalizing everyone's chances is what government tries to do, at the restriction of those outside the box who really can venture forth in success by working hard outside of the box. I don't like the box, and I don't want to be restricted to living there, even if you do.
I'd like to know why this is flagged as censorship. Is it considered censorship that adult movies can't be rated G? Is it censorship that pornography is not allowed in the .gov TLD? Just because it has to be segregated does't mean it is censored.
.com domains are owned by entities in the USA.
Regardless of that, I don't see how this can be enforced, since only a fraction of
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
In Capitalists West Utah notes you upload via dirty port everyday.
In Soviet Russia KGB dirty port always open for you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'm sorry, but I've never in all of my years browsing websites and newsgroups simply 'stumbled' across online porn.
And as far as seeking it out, at least google and such have 'family filters' which actually seem to work pretty well, along with there being personal proxying products that you can use as well. Not that that is a perfect solution, but there *are* already solutions out there for parents/etc who feel the need to block things they don't want their children or themselves to see.
This is almost as funny as the joke.
Life imitates comedy which imitates life or something like that. Where is my evil bit anyway? I know I have it stored around here somewere.
dp
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
The .xxx domain is a great idea as far as I'm concerned, and you're telling me that it's "a billion times harder" to get a webserver to run on a port other than 80? Give me a break. Let me introduce you to httpd.conf.
META or whatever - maybe for directories, include some simple unique character prefix (like ac_directoryname), that would make it able to restrict specific sensitive pages/directories instead of whole servers and such.
It is something that could be implemented readily in content creation, be very open as a standard and filtered with much simpler methods then many of the other ones. I think sometimes we are putting too much though into it, maybe the MPAA with nthier broadcast flag/copy bit has us all messed up.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Instead of a black line across the guy's face it should be one of those balls in the mouth with elastic straps around his head...
you don't find a lot of porn by accident
Explain to me why the acronym NSFW was created.
You never get unsolicited emails that have porn photos?
I'd love to have a child-safe internet channel where content was intentionally restricted.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
What exactly is the problem here that requires legislative intervention?
Jeebus doesn't like boobies. True story. Guns are good wholesome fun though, especially when pointed at infidels. Jeebus doesn't like them either.
See:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt
All of the arguements are there already.
It's such a pity that it's so much easier to legislate stupidity than it is to legislate intelligence.
Right, so let's re-code every program ever made that uses sockets to respect the new reserved ports (since 1-1024 are reserved and 1025 and up are dynamically assigned) just so this asshat can sleep well at night.
I've been saying it for years, technology should be licensed the same as motor vehicles.
Open Source, Open Mind
Clearly it's not perfect, but if the majority of that content was segregated, then it would make filtering easier.
Making alcohol and cigarettes illegal for minors does not keep all kids from drinking and smoking, but it does keep lots of kids from doing things that can be harmful to them.
Moving most porn content to an easily identifiable place would help simplify filtering for those of us who want to filter. Perfect? No. Better than current state? Yes.
FWIW, my kids have never been to Toys R Us without me, and I do know exactly what they are doing on line. I love them, and it's my job to look out for them.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
1) Pass legislation to block evil pr0n from innocent kiddies by assigning it to a special port
2) Make it acceptable for an ISP to block an entire port,
3) Pass more legislation forcing some services onto certain ports (and allowing ownership of other ports (just like tv))
4) Buy up ports and force ISPs to pay to use those.
5) Both profit AND control of file sharing.
STOP THIS LAW!!!
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
A link to "The Complete April Fools' Day RFC's" from Groklaw
0 85354813
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070315
A less loony suggestion would have been to use the differentiated services bits that are usually unused anyway and use them to mark pornographic materials.
Doing this would require zero changes to the existing infrastructure, and permit this sort of content advisory on any IP protocol.
--jbs
Block port 80 so I can skip all the useless junk on the internet.
Thank you sir, may I have another?
Flame bait my ass, it's right.
So Utah will advance anti porn law for the internet, but won't approve Jessica's Law? Nice priorities.
I for one welcome our content categorizing overlords. I look forward to getting a cushy government job in the new Ministry of Internet Content Categorization, where I will be paid big bucks to consider content before it is put online so that I can ensure that it is assigned its appropriate port number. For example, this idea could be assigned to Port 0, Dumbass Suggestions.
Life needs more saving throws.
Given the nature of politicians, and the idea that "community standards" should apply. I imagine that this is just the first step in being able to tell an ISP to turn off various ports for a whole community (for values of "community" ranging from village to state). And of course since porn is a relatively (for the most part) private indulgence and one that is viewed as somewhat shameful (even by many who enjoy it), the non-porn users and those who enjoy porn but feel that they should be stopped from using it (for their own good of course) - community standards will probably be set legislatively, compelled to be enforced by ISPs and very, very strict.
.. Not let one state in one country change the how the Internet works for billions of people of hundreds of countries because they're afraid that their kids might see some naked people ..
RFC3514 sounds like any windows system (as a potential zombie) should set the "evil bit" by default.
"Multi-level insecure operating systems may have special levels for
attack programs; the evil bit MUST be set by default on packets
emanating from programs running at such levels"
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Well, with DNS, you can just get someone else registering a non-xxx domain and pointing it at your IP address.
With this one, someone has to actually set up a box to tunnel the traffic to the alternate port.
However, in both cases, we have legistatures who think that the know what's best for the entire world, and that there's a universal definition of 'offensive' or 'pornography' that works for all societies connected to the internet -- if we were to implement a ban on websites with offensive content, would we have to censor idiotic lawmakers, too? I know they offend me.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
... close off Utah from the rest of the tubes and have them make some tubes of their own? Then they can have all the ports they want, they'd be happy and we'd all have an extra source of jokes. Win-win situation!
So 69 TCP is good. I like 69. Okay that was very 8th grade.
...because humor is NEVER relevant...
Anyone who uses the "meatspace" unless they're talking about a butcher shop cannot be taken seriously.
Your difficulty is that you try to equate real life with the internet and they're not the same thing. There's no "main street", there's no "back alley". It's a flat set of addresses that you can go to for pictures, text, and media. Oh, and to "blog" [snicker]. There's nothing magical about it.
People want to equate the two because they think it's some sort of Gibsonian jump to some future world, and the truth is that while the Internet is important, it's not an evolution for human beings.
All that said, your concern is misplaced. You can do the children a lot more good by making sure we have better standards for child seats. Make sure kids have the right vaccinations. Make sure we spend more time with them. Instead, we think the Internet is the big problem. It's not. This attack on the Internet porn is only because it scares backwards parents because it represents a loss of control. I get that. But in general, if you don't like something, you stop doing it.
I personally find skateboarding dangerous, so my reaction to it is to not do it and not buy a board for my kids. Some people's reaction is to try to ban skateboarding.
"There is this assumption that you can't control it (the Internet)," Yarro said. "It's a toaster, we made it, we can fix it. ... We can solve the Internet pornography problem tomorrow if we decided to."
What Internet Porn problem? Nevermind the silly thought of the 'Net being a toaster.
For every problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious, and wrong."
— Albert Einstein
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
— H. L. Mencken
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
All your ports are belung to Utah
No more Utah porn for me, I guess I will have to move to German Shizer.
1. Ports are for services. Pragmatically, the vast majority of content is served via http and https. It really matters little what content is served over gopher. Even if lots and lots of content is provided over these "other" protocols, moving porn to non-80 and non-443 ports will make a huge difference. Your attempted point about breaking attachments is quite silly.
:)
2. the Internet needs -- it needs parents who discipline their children for doing things children shouldn't do.
I could not agree more that parents need to do the job of parenting, but can you see that putting some structure around content makes the job of parenting easier? I can sign up for cable and use parental controls to block my kids from recording and watching content with certain ratings. This system is imperfect - I think that the ratings are not strict enough, frankly not all content has ratings, and sometimes the ratings seem silly. Should mythbusters be PG? Identifying so-called "adult" content with metadata or by putting (most of) it on another "channel" would make creation of systems to limit access much simpler.
Carp about irresponsible parents if you will, but the tools to do this job which are available today are quite weak, and most parents don't have the technology cops to set up dansguardian and squid, or even configure their routers to block free access to surfing the web. We have the technology, why not make their lives simpler?
Once it's simple, we can really condemn those evil selfish parents for not parenting!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
it is very unlikely that any site would adopt such ideas as moving to a specific port or top level domain on a global scale, basically saying "Don't enter here".
Instead, it is more likely that businesses will adopt the reverse: Invent a means for sites to advertise that they are safe. A ".kids" top level domain would be much more effective than ".xxx", toy stores and other businesses targeting children would make sure to get their site up in that domain to reach their audience.
For the same reason, a technical mean for sites to optionally advertise the content rating should be considered. The current http header lets the client specify a string of preferred languages, this lets servers redirect a request to the best matching language, or accepted formats.
Similarly, one could add a header in the request accepted content classes. The response header should contain the actual classification returned. Servers not returning a classification should be treated as not-rated and may default to block or pass.
The neat thing about this is that search engines will also get the classification header and a search query can restrict to matching classification. This way children won't find undesired results. Also, it provides more granularity, individual URL's can be classified differently.
Of course, there are two problems:
- It can be spoofed - but question is if there is a business incentive to do so.
- Standardizing classification is very difficult, but at national level should be possible. The class codes could be prefixed by the national codes.
Many sites might just remain non-classified, but if schools and institutions say that they only allow classified content, organizations will adopt this to reach their audience. If laws are passed to hold organizations liable for spoofed classification (but not lack of classification) then this might actually work: Those who have a business incentive will get reliable classification and the rest will simply remain unclassified. And no one have to move their domain and reestablish their name.
This is not a law that will be set. It's a resolution for congress to do something. What this means is the governor of Utah will have a "feel good" measure if nothing happens. There are resolutions for things all the time (Idaho had one to make a Napoleon Dynamite day). All it does is make someone feel good. Utah's general legislation ended the 28th of February, there shouldn't be any concern of this becoming a law unless someone in Congress (i.e., Orrin Hatch...) proposes a bill.
I recently spent the weekend at a resort in UTAH. I was shocked to find that the local NBC affiliate does not carry Saturday Night Live. You may say to yourself: Self, What does that have to do with that crazy Mormon cult? Well you'll be shocked to find out that the Mormon Church owns Bonneville Communications which owns the NBC affiliate. They find that SNL is too racy for a Utah audience and choose not to air it.
A little south to BYU and you'll find the Mormon media gestapo at work. Youtube is blocked from the university's firewalls not to mention several other sites.. MTV is banned on and off campus for BYU students. It's like China within our own boarders!
It appears the majority of Utards don't mind that a cult controls what can be seen or heard in Utah. Stand up and be heard people!
I grew up fine without internet access. Why do kids even need email ? (or cell phones)
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I'm sure Congress will go for this. They'll be a set of clean tubes and other tubes will be dirty. Cause it's not all mixed together like in a truck. /Sarcasm
[Insert pithy quote here]
So sites covering things like birth control, sexual health, oh and definitely abortion would all be transfered to ports inaccesable by minors. To be consistant lets also throw in National Geographic, CDC (Center for Disease Control), and any site that discusses the reality of war. What will really frost their tits is having to class the Bible as adult content - Song of Solemen is not kids stuff.
The whole issue with this is that there is no definition of mature content yet they are talking about trying to make it illegal to post it on the standard port. Should we make then the official censors for the internet? I doubt even they would want the job of trying to do real time censoring of the 300M+ websites out there.
It would only be cencorship if the U.S. blocked access to it.
Labeling or sorting content so parents can more easily control what content their children have access to is not censorship, anymore than Slashdot censors their news by tagging some stories with the "gaming" tag and placing them under a different subdomain. Slashdot's strategy enables me to more safely browse their developer and tech articles from work, and is a much appreciated feature.
There is a few things wrong with this technically but actually the legal aspects are even more interesting.
Who is hurt from pornography? Kids? Ya really think so? The only kids that want to see this are the 14, 15, and 16 year olds who jack off to the JC Penny's underwear catalogs. If you deny them from looking at porn.. what exactly are you protecting them from? Besides all of this, it won't work, young kids have been stealing their dads pornos long long before the net was around.
I don't like laws that try to force morality on people.. even the youngest citizens..
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
...Port-a-potty.
IT'S NOT THAT SIMPLE. Can't you just accept the possibility that the armies of people that do this type of thing for a living might just have a reason for saying this is impractical and dangerous? If you are not sufficiently educated and skilled in this area, it is inappropriate for you to be airing your opinion, just as it's inappropriate for legislators to be pushing for this "solution" in the first place.
.xxx is bad, please see RFC3675.
For a thorough consensus discussion of why
In Itchy and Scratchy and Marge, Marge wants to censor a violent cartoon (Itchy & Scratchy). She starts a citizen censorship group, and succeeds. But, when the statue of David comes to town, her group wants his man parts censored, while Marge claims it is art not pornography and therefore shouldn't be. This problem will just come up again with this port episode, as determining art from not isn't that easy.
You have to understand, this is not a bid to clean up the internet, this is a bid to clean up Yarro's reputation. Yarro is a mormon, and his reputation in the church has taken a huge beating with his falling out with the Noorda's and the whole SCO debacle. In Utah, members of the church who are businessmen can expect to have other memebers of the church who are businessmen not want to do business with them if they have a tarnished reputation. So... he is engaging in some very high profile activities to try and look as if he is championing moral behavior. He doesn't give a crap whether this actually passes or not, the whole point is just to make noise. In fact, he doesn't even have to have anyone even believe him. Just as long as there is enough "morality" noise that a person who would prospectively do business with him can point to to say "see... I'm not selling out in doing business with him", then he can still access his business network.
leather straps, you mean leather straps, not elastic. If you're going to gag someone, do it right - none of that cheap crap they try to sell you at the local 'adult toy' store.
This is basic stuff, but for some reason people (lawmakers) can't understand it.
.kids TLD combined with PICS tags would work fine.
You can't blanket label 'unsafe' content.
It doesn't work, simply because some of those who produce the 'unsafe' content aren't going to follow the labeling. Whether it is ports, PICS, or even the evil bit. (Apr 1 coming soon)
You CAN produce a blanket 'safe' content network and deny all other content. '.kids' is a great idea as long as it's set up properly. With strict guidelines and large financial penalties for breaking the rules a
This also goes for hosts who have their firewalls set up wrong, DENY ALL, allow some.
The reason the US govt brings obscenity suits in Georgia is because they have some of the strictest obscenity laws around. It has to be pretty bad to get classed as obscene in NYC, but rural Georgia didn't stop treating consenting oral sex between a married couple as worse than armed robbery until SCOTUS said they couldn't enforce the sodomy laws anymore.
So, when you post pictures of your donkey sex vacation on the web, expect a summons from the Federal Court in the GA district - even if you are living in NYC where you can see the same picture spray painted on the subway trains.
I think we need to just stick to the RFC that defines ports.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
What would stop the people that this law seeks to "protect" from using a proxy service on port 80 to access the censored information? As far as I understand proxies (which isn't a lot), nothing. Quite a few of the network applications I have installed have settings to connect to port 80 instead of the default port, if only to avoid corporate firewalls.
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENPEEPERS! DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKSEN. IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS. ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
I claim port 69.
Learn to love Alaska
I find Pat Robertson and his American Taliban offensive, can we get them banned from port 80 as well?
Having a .xxx domain was a bad thing. Having to support an additional port for content is better? Let the firewall configuration wars begin!
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
This is really no different than having the .xxx TLD. Not only will it be opposed for the same reasons, but also those not wishing to have their adult content blocked will simply ignore the division and shove their stuff through the "Family Channels". Total waste of time.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
CP80 is good enough to list their corporate contribution partners right here: http://cp80.org/content/sponsors-partners/contribu tion-partners. If you are a customer of any of these, why not write them a letter expressing your displeasure with the flawed implementation of this idea...
I thought of a similar way to clean up the internet, if you will, but this guy is coming at it from the wrong direction. Rather than bending everyone else to your will, he needs to just segregate himself. I figured it something like this: 1. establish a new port number, but this will be the clean port rather than the dirty port. 2. the US government mandates that all servers 'broadcasting' on this port must be inside the US, ie, no foreign servers. requires configuration on routers that go overseas 3. optionally have something like an ssl certificate to be required for servers.. new browsers may require it, etc. 4. 'clean' sites may 'broadcast' on both port 80 and the new port. try to get all .gov and .edu sites to broadcast on both. family friendly .com sites would follow. There could be a license of some type required to broadcast on the new port that would pay for enforcement efforts.
5. once there is enough content availabe on the new port that people can realistically go about their business without port 80, ISP's then give customers the option to block port 80. businesses may choose to do the same. people who keep port 80 would have access to both.
6. get the big browsers to put in native support for the new port and maybe the big operating systems too so you can lock down your kids' pc's, etc
I like this approach the best for a number of reasons:
* sites that don't want to deal with the new port can simply stick with port 80, and nothing changes
* users that don't want to deal with the new port can simply stick with port 80, and nothing changes
* making the new port US-only would not step on anybody's toes internationally, because they weren't using the port anyway
* making the new port US-only would establish a jurisdiction which we could really control
* if the new port did not require an ssl certificate or whatever, then 99% of web sites right this very minute could go into their config and start broadcasting on a new port, meaning low burden on admins.. of course over time more options may be developed, etc
* spammers and porn sites would be tempted only very briefly before deciding it's just not worth it to mess with trying to make money on it
the US isn't the only country on the internet.
Nor are the standards of what's pornographic or not. Would Sports Illustrated's swimsuit section be required to move? Maxim? They're not considered porn for by the majority of americans, but what about countries like Iran? Do we really want the mutaween deciding what's porn? What about classical art, which frequently features nudity? Would a medical site with pictures of genital areas be required to move? How do we handle a mixed site?
Having the porn sites voluntarily register on lists, or using a specific header is one thing. Mandating it is another.
I don't read AC A human right
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Please put
tags at the end of lines. Pressing the Enter key doesn't work here!
Nobody can read that horrible mess.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Something like this could kind of work, but wow did they not get it right.
.clean domain sites on port 81 using SSL" as an uglier-but-more-idiot-proof alternative to a different URL schema.
... and even then they'd still need a whitelist or certification based system to control who gets access to their declared "clean" bit. Lets not get started on what's counted as "clean" once the creationists, scientologists, video-game-nazis, the completely humourless, etc get their hands on it. The only permitted content could soon be:
... because they'd have to DO REAL WORK and SPEND MONEY to maintain a workable system since it'd require ongoing provider certification and content review with a whitelist-like inclusion model.
If they proposed a new alternate HTTP port (SSL mandatory) for content-controlled services, combined with an SSL certificate authority that only handed certs out to validated and approved hosts whose content had been examined, this could almost work. A CRL published by their "clean sites" CA could ensure that sites could be de-validated, causing users to get a warning from their browser when visiting the site or with simple browser configuration to be blocked from access entirely. Minor browser changes would be needed to support a different URL scheme ("boring:// " or whatever) to use the port/cert system - something MS could easily push out in Windows Update since it'd really just be a protocol alias for "https://domain.blah:someport" with a different trusted CA list and mandatory CRL checking. FF and Opera could also easily support it. A little bit of DNS abuse could introduce a convention like "connect to
Of course, instead they proposed to take over an existing service and push anything they don't like to "somewhere else" - without any consideration of how the hell this could ever work. Which, of course, it can't without completely redesigning the Internet
<html>
<head><title>Blank</title></head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Why don't these twits find someone who understands the network and protocols to help them design something that might kinda half work? Oh, yeah
be right back, i'm gonna go jerk off to porn i downloaded through port 80 through a proxy in utah in protest.
I saw these guys last year at a technology expo here in Utah. They had these really cool T-Shirts they were giving out to everyone who signed their petition. The shirts had nothing to do with CP80 or pr0n or anything like that. It had some cool nuclear age artwork from the 50's on it.
I talked with the guy for a bit and found out what they were trying to do. I told him it was a dumb idea and it would never work and it's not enforceable. He didn't have any great answers - just kept saying "we'll make them move to another port" emphasizing "make."
Figuring that it could never work, I signed their petition in the name of getting a free T-shirt. Looking back, it was a mistake, because apparently this thing is going somewhere despite its complete lack of reason. I sold my soul and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
I haven't ever worn the T-shirt.
or else!
I'd prefer it if we got the "good" content to move to a different port and leave everything else on 80. The "good" servers could serve on both 80 and the "good" port. That way, if I want only allow my children to browse good sites, I just have to allow the "good" port and block all others. This seems much more sensible.
It amazes me how many times each year outrageous laws are being passed to "protect the children". I mean can't you see the folly of this? This is yet another attempt of the government to ruin our lives by imposing total control. It's just ridiculous!
Obviously the correct port number for porn is....
Port 6969
Better than current state? Yes.
/. bristle when societal issues are being solved by technical measures. Spam, pr0n, piracy, etc. Technical solutions to societal problems rarely work and usually wind up causing more problems than they solve. I hope you see that in this example of a really, really, bad idea for a law.
I hear what you are saying...but you're not getting it.
You assume that porn providers want to help. Maybe some do. But I am certain most do not. Hell, most are not even in the USA. Why would you think that a law in the US has any bearing on the behavior going on in another country? It doesn't. So you have to assume that most porn providers - at least - are not cooperative. I am not saying they are predatory or working against the US, I am just saying they couldn't care less about what we enact or don't enact here in the USA (porn-wise). They, simply, are indifferent.
So, exactly, how do you force ANY technical solution around the world when most of the world doesn't give a crap and continues to do things the way THEY want to do it'????
This is the reason that we here on
Finally, someone is taking me seriously and tyring to add the layer the IOS model has been missing for years. The new ISO Model Layer 1 - Physical Layer 2 - Data Link Layer 3 - Network Layer 4 - Transport Layer 5 - Session Layer 6 - Presentation Layer 7 - Application Layer 8 - Politics
The problem is that there is no universal standard on what is ok for kids. Furthermore, what is appropriate for an older kid would not be appropriate for a younger kid (but that older kid probably isn't ready to handle the wide variety of information on the full Internet).
By way of example, you wouldn't let your 5 year old watch Gremlins unless you want him in your bed scared poopless crying all night for the next 5-10 days. By the same token, your 11 year old daughter should be able to handle stuffed-animal violence (and anyway can internalize the difference between movies and real life), but do you really want to answer the question: "When I turn 18, will I get a webcam, too?"
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Ever seen older versions of the Marylin Monroe article?
The people who create these schemes to regulate the internet are the same people who create the schemes that regulate health care, the enviornment, education, buisness, safety, etc.
Most of the regulations that govern every aspect of our lives nowadays are just as crude and misguided as attempts to regulate the internet. The only different is people on Slashdot have the expertise in internet technology to understand how stupid the laws governing the internet are - where as they don't have the expertise in other fields to understand the flaws in those kinds of laws.
For the average voter, the majority of whom don't understand how the technology works, these laws seem totally reasonable. These laws seem as reasonable to them as some law governing education sounds to you.
You need to understand that the law is a pretty slow and crude tool, and there is no way a lawmaker can be an expert in every subject they are supposed to regulate (let alone your average voter who selects the lawmaker). If you are the type that thinks society needs significant regulation, then the internet being regulated in this way is the price you pay for a regulated society. You accept these kinds of restrictions being put on you in the same way you are willing to place greater restrictions on doctors, or teachers, or whoever, despite their expertise. Every field of human endeavor has to deal with some pretty stupid laws once in a while, why do you imagine your thing is immune. Either become an Anarchist or Libertarian, or suck it up and charge it to the game.
This is the reason that we here on /. bristle when societal issues are being solved by technical measures
Riiiiight. 'cause you've been a part of the community for so long, and I'm such a newcomer that I fail to understand the culture here. Uh Huh.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Why is ist allways the incompetents that try to do this? This approach has zero chance of working. All it takes is for the server admins to add the second port to their config. At least Apache does not care at all on how many ports it is serving its contents. Then there will be the proxies, translating from one port to another.
Somehow these people seem to think, that they can create two separate worlds. Complete BS from both a technical point of view and from how the ''objectionable'' content gets into the web. Incompetents....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't think this is accurate. I believe the majority of traffic nowadays is due to BitTorrent. NNTP isn't that far behind HTTP, either, so saying "vast majority" isn't right.
OK, so "vast majority" in terms of raw bit count - of course you're right. "Vast majority" in terms of pictures? Absolutely http(s)
What you're saying on this point is factually accurate, but irrelevant to the discussion.
The fact that I can download images of DVDs, TV shows, music, or anything else is irrelevant because the majority of views on the intarweb are through a browser, and filtering that would accomplish my goals, even if bittorrent and nntp are huge bandwidth hogs.
FWIW, I'm not going to let my kids have access to unrestricted nntp feeds, either. There's lots of crap out there.
If your goal is to filter the Interweb, PICS labels were designed for this purpose,
Great. How many sites use that?
or if you don't want to wait on sites to label, there's lots of filtering software out there.
And while I'm comfortable with my implementation and management of squid/dansguardian plus custom filters, most parents could not possibly figure out how that works. I work in IT at a Fortune 100 company, and most of my coworkers couldn't do it. (Outside of the small percentage of really geeky ones.)
These parents should make it clear that the demand exists, and ISPs will offer these services.
Most parents eyes glaze over when geeks start to talk about IP addresses. They are not informed enough to talk about PICS labels.
Why don't we leave the technical details to the people that actually understand how the Internet works?
It's not the same as foam engine blocks. There frankly is little reason from a technical perspective that this would not be feasible. I get that people get ticked when some piddly group like a state government tries to define technology standards for the whole world, but porn and violent content are a major problem and should be filtered from people who need the filters. (You don't want to be filtered? OK by me. What you pollute your brain with is your business - within limits.)
Current technology is pretty crappy when it comes to filtering, and it makes sense to me that passing some laws about how to characterize the content is an attempt to address the real issue.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
We clearly need IPv7, which will raise the number of network ports available to Unix systems to 2^256. Then we will divide those port ranges in a meaningful way - for example one half of the ports will be allocated to various American universities.
Of course we will not be able to remember those long port numbers, which is why we will use convenient hierarchical ASCII names, which are then resolved to port numbers by a network of servers known as the Port Name System (PNS). Then people can filter out all traffic to http://playboy.com/ connecting on port pns://porn.playboy.us. Except for those in the UK, who will block port pns://pornography.playboy.co.uk. Of course, there will be ways to circumvent that - like people setting up ad-hoc port names like pns://totally-not-porn.cs.stanford.edu, but maybe we can filter those out by mandating that all porn will be forwarded by routers only at certain intervals, where home users can then block it.
To that end, I propose a hierarchical naming scheme for intervals...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
How would "properly enforcing" domains help anything? First of all, actually getting there is not easy as not everyone is of the opinion that porn is so bad it needs to be separated from everything else. (And if we have .xxx, why not .software, .art and .sport? And once we have those, why not .oss, .linux and .quake? After a while the TLD namespace starts resembling a one-level web ontology.)
.com, net and .org TLDs. We could enforce these, but what about websites that are both commercial in nature (making .com mandtory) and for a certain country (making the ccTLD mandatory)? Should .com only be used for multinational corporations who aren't tied to one country? What about organizations (.org) that provide informations (.info)?
.xxx. What about online sex shops? They sell (.com) porn (.xxx). What about those who only carry relatively few porn articles? Is fetish clothing porn? If it's not, does it become porn when you add a dildo? If it is, is all clothing made of, say, PVC porn? Are gas masks porn? Is a garden gnome with his pants down porn?
.com* part for child-safe material and a .xxx one for anything which shows naked buttocks? Maybe dynamically decided based on the visitors' IP blocks? Once we start dynamically reassigining TLDs we have turned the domain name system into a crude tagging mechanism - TLD 2.0.
.int TLD should be the logical TLD to enforce - unfortunately they're not established by international treaty, either. I went with .com since they do have a commercial component and there is no .community TLD yet.
Also, it's impossible to group things "properly" because they don't always neatly fit into one category. Example one, the
Second example,
And what about websites showing stuff which is considered pornographic in one legislation but non-pornographic in another? Who decides? ICANN? The US DoC? The UN? Why should one country care about what another declares to be porn?
What about art communities like deviantART? Do they have to split their website into a
Strict separation at the TLD level is unenforcable because not everything can be easily categorized - and in some cases it's even impossible without putting the whole internet under the legislation of one nation, which is unenforcable as well. (Hello, country-specific namespaces...)
* deviantART is neither fully commercial nor a network nor an organisation and their community is international, thus the
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
... to archive your favorite internet porn before it's too late.
You're assuming that the politicians actually want a well thought out and workable solution. They don't.
They want to pass a quick 'we're doing something about porn, think of the children, vote for us' piece of legislation that will have no significant effect at all. If they actually did anything that really solved the problem (assuming there even is a problem, which is also debatable) they would have no easy way of drumming up a few votes the next time they needed them.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Try this: you want the website for Net SNMP package. It's either www.net-snmp.org or www.netsnmp.org. One's the right site, the other is porn ads. You wanna guess which one I hit first at work?
Just duplicate HTTP to httporn://whatever.com with a different porn-I-mean-port.
...get plenty of hardcore Mormon porn from here. ;-)
It makes more sense to me to declare some none default port as the "clean" port. Then have a cerification process for anyone who wants to use that port. Net Nanny type software and even FireFox and IE could be made aware port "G" (whatever number) is the G rated port. Countries and jurisdictions worldwide could adopt policies and law for people who post non "G" rated material to the "G" port. Countries and juristictions could out right filter out other juristictions that allow non "clean" material to the "G" port.
Meanwhile port 80 continues unincumbered. No "freedom of speach" issues to derail the plan.
NOTE: The "G" rated is probably a trademark of the MPA so some other similar rating scheme would be needed.
... Ralph Yarro, probably one of the bigger scumbags in the computing industry, enriching himself off of his enfeebled employer (Mr. Noorda) and, as a result, making off with cash that, for the most part, should have gone to charities and Mr. Noorda's son. I guess now he feels he needs to make up for his bordering on criminal behavior by making himself *look* like a paragon of virtue, fighting pr0n on the internet.... Yeah. uh huh. Pardon me while I projectile vomit.
I guess, after reading all the posts, it doesn't seem that everyone is so upset about regulating pornography so much as they simply don't like the idea of a group of people they didn't elect making the decision about what content is on the Internet and what content is not.
... wait a sec ... are we talking about the United States or ICANN.
I can't rememeber.