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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."

23 of 421 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by jimstapleton · · Score: 4, Funny

    No, Only SCO would think that the state government of Utah controls the world.

    Anybody else would laugh - how the hell do they think that they can make this work, when most of the people in that industry AREN'T IN UTAH!

    --
    34486853790
    Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
  2. Enforceable? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Funny

    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!

  3. Gah, get your definition straight! by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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
  4. Re:Port 69 by PeterBrett · · Score: 4, Informative

    Unfortunately port 69 is already assigned. From my /etc/services:

    tftp 69/tcp
    tftp 69/udp

    In any case, the concept is fundamentally flawed. Ports are designed to discriminate by protocol, not by service content. This is just another flawed implementation of RFC3514.

  5. please leave it alone by BGraves · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. Damn, only leaves 192 other countries! by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  7. Protocol != Content by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!
  8. Re:Sounds like a good idea to me by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  9. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Only SCO would think that the state government of Utah controls the world.

          Well Utah USED TO control the world, until IBM stole it!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  10. Re:Sounds like a good idea to me by saider · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --


    Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
  11. More information... by PeterBrett · · Score: 4, Informative

    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:

    1. Doesn't break any existing systems,
    2. Is plenty flexible enough to be used for flagging pr0n as such, but also could be used by services like del.icio.us to suggest similar content to the current page,
    3. And gracefully degrades to support systems that are unaware of it.

    Also, unlike their proposed port breakage, it can easily be turned off if you don't care about it.

  12. Re:dotXXX by SCHecklerX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. Port Suggestions by jasenj1 · · Score: 4, Funny
    How about:

    80085
    (I know it's not valid. It's a joke, son. Laugh.)
  14. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by Drantin · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was an April Fool's joke a few years back... look at the date on it...

    --
    Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
  15. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by SCPRedMage · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well Utah USED TO control the world, until IBM stole it! I'd prove it, but IBM destroyed the evidence, too.
    --
    My sig can beat up your sig.
  16. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by db32 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I honestly hope you don't think that is a real RFC. I really really hope that this is just a misunderstood attempt at sarcasm. Just in case it's not. Please check the date on that RFC, and then search through all RFCs for that same date...you might get the joke. Or you may just be very angry about the CHIMP protocol...

    --
    The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
  17. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Umm...what? Where the hell do "hackers" and "malicious packets" come into this?

    We're talking about content. And, to be honest, a voluntary system for identifying "adult material" would probably be adhered to. Because it's in the porn industry's best interest.

    The porn sites are in business to make money. Period. And they're well aware of negative image that they give the rest of the industry, and that there's a lot of heat on them. Frankly, it helps them a lot to be able to say "look, we provide technical means to allow parents to filter this out for their children." Now they can do business in peace, without the hue and cry of "Think of the Children! We must protect them from teh interwebs!"

    Is it possible to circumvent this system? Absolutely. Will some people fail to adhere to it? Without doubt. But most of the "legit" porn industry would probably be relieved to have a system that lets them say they're acting in good faith as responsible citizens.

    The problem here is the implementation, not the concept. Segregating content by internet port is just silly. And the underlying concept is somewhat disturbing--I think the notion here is like broadcast and basic TV, and FCC decency standards could be enforced on port 80. Frankly, that has a LOT of negative implications that have nothing to do with porn.

    Simpler to implement solutions that would achieve the same effect: Add a new TLD for porn (though IMO the proliferation of TLD's in also flawed, but that's a different rant), adding a specific meta-tag (just as we do today for robots), adding a new attribute to the tag to classify certain images as adult-only, etc. I'm sure there are better ideas than mine out there.

    At some point, people who are ACTUALLY concerned about children are going to stop trying to figure out how to somehow outlaw porn and work with the industry to put voluntary controls in place.

  18. Re:Port 69 by antonyb · · Score: 4, Funny
    No, no, no. It stands for "Tube For The Porn". Its all about the Tubes, these days.


    While we're at it, TCP stands for "Tube Carrying Porn", and IP is "Internet Porn", which goes to prove that the internet is founded on porn.


    ant.

  19. and In Absurdium by boyfaceddog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  20. Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ... by binarybum · · Score: 4, Funny

    yeah, but I kinda like Mormon porn.

    --
    ôó
  21. There is no "Internet porn problem" by fudgefactor7 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.

  22. Re:shouldn't that read... by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was going to make a hardcore double penetration input-in-the-output-port joke, but then I started thinking about how many networking geeks would jump all over the joke based on the fact that double penetrating the pron port would cause a tcp/ip collision, and therefore no penetration would occur, and I gave it up as a lost cause.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  23. Re:dotXXX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wrong.

    I run adult web sites and PPC advertising is almost unheard of in the adult world.

    In fact, while I have dabbled in a couple of PPC programs, I've found that they haven't stacked up nearly as well as affiliate programs. I don't promote one single PPC program at the moment and haven't in years.

    The most common PPC programs are dating services. I know a few people who promote them and I've tried them out but they haven't done well on my sites.

    The most common source of revenue for adult webmasters are affiliate programs.

    Because....

    I can make as much as $0.10 / click with some of my better affiliate programs (with the average being around $0.02 / click) but with PPC they pay like $4.00 / 1000 clicks (or $0.004 / click).

    How is that worth it ? A good affiliate program can pay anywhere from $25 - $40 / sign-up or 50% recurring (you get 50% of what the affiliate program makes off of the sale for the entire lifetime of the subscription). So if your traffic is "good" (ie: your surfers like what's on your site and they come from "fresh" sources like search engines, bookmarks, related sites that have "good" traffic as well) then you'll do exponentially better with affiliate programs over PPC.

    So with that said, I don't have anything to gain by having children hit my sites. They just eat up bandwidth. And adult sites, arguably, burn more bandwidth than any other type of site.