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."

Comments

I believe I speak for all of us here ...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. when I say, You have got to be FREAKING KIDDING ME.

dotXXX

[Constantine XVI]

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)

Re:dotXXX

[SCHecklerX]

If they must have something (not that I agree), a .kids would make more sense. Then parents can configure their home proxy to only allow traffic to *that* domain. But, based on crap I see like religious shows on tv having a 'G' rating (WHAT? If anything requires parental guidance...), this would not work either. Maybe require a license to have and keep a .kids TLD or something.

Damn, only leaves 192 other countries!

[elrous0]

And what's to stop porn site from simply relocating to another country and ignoring this law completely?

Re:Sounds like a good idea to me

[Rob T Firefly]

As a parent, I like the idea that I could install a port blocker at home and block the majority of porn content.

Sure, it's a nice idea to think about, but it's also completely and totally impossible to implement or enforce. Suggesting we put all the adult content on this big unregulated international mishmash of an Internet on a specific port is pretty much like saying "we could stop all hunger in the world just by not letting anyone run out of food anymore, and we could stop all war by making sure nobody has a gun who is a war person." It just doesn't work that way.

Sure, you could send your kid into Toys backwards-"R" Us alone without him finding porn (although if your kid is very young you should be going into the damn store with him,) but can you say the same of the Library of Congress? They have naughty books there. The Internet is much more an all-encompassing library than it is a kiddie-friendly toy shop, and it is nobody's responsibility but yours to monitor what your kid does with it.

Re:Sounds like a good idea to me

[saider]

This is not a technology problem. It is a problem of figuring out who gets to set the porn bit. Since the internet is international no one jurisdiction can assert authority. For your meatspace analogy, it would be like you lighting up a joint, and then telling the LA police to piss off because it is legal in Amsterdam.

and In Absurdium

[boyfaceddog]

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!!!

Don't pass laws, create a business incentive

[erik_norgaard]

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.

Re:Enforceable?

[bugnuts]

Clearly unenforcable.

The average Internet surfer is like a dirty sailor, and pr*n is like a prostitute. ... and there's one in every port.