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CP80's Cheryl Preston Suggests "CyberSecurity" Group At ICANN
Beezlebub33 writes "A new petition has been filed under the GSNO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) of ICANN to create a new constituency the CyberSafety Constituency. Existing constituencies include 'Commercial and Business,' 'gTLD,' 'Registrars,' 'Non-commercial,' etc. The new proposed one on CyberSafety is in the 'interest of balancing free speech and anonymity with the values of protection and safety in developing Internet policy within ICANN.' If that doesn't raise red flags all by itself, consider that the person submitting it is Cheryl B. Preston. She's listed in the petition with the organization Brigham Young University, but she's part of CP80. She's suggested limiting content on port 80 to the 'right' things, and other stuff can go on other ports, so it can be appropriately filtered by the authorities. Guess who gets to decide what goes on which ports?"
Maybe they should split the ports and create Mormon internet and non-Mormon internet... we call port 80!
I already added my comments in an email response.
Censorship, no matter for what "righteous" purpose you might intend it, always, always, always, leads to tyranny.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Meanwhile, Internet pornography metastasizes at an ever more alarming rate. Pornographers find ingenious ways to circumvent filters, attract new categories of viewers, and build economic and political support.
I wonder why she threw that last bit in there.
It suggests, to me, that her (organization's) larger goal is to neutralize the pornography industry, not just to limit it to adults.
... I propose using Internet port designations to separate online content. ... the right of parents to determine the means and materials by which their children are educated.
The right of parents begins at the computer and ends at the modem.
Clinton tried separating TV content with the V-Chip and it went absolutely no where.
The fact that it is inconvienent for ignorant people to regulate their hardware is not a social problem.
Fucking with the structure of the internet is not the right solution.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It sounds scary, but I cannot for a moment believe that this could happen. I hate to drag in the old saw, but "the internet interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it."
I also can't imagine that the rest of the world would appreciate that sort of thing. There'd be international pressure against it. And as I recall, the .xxx TLD issue was pretty close--ICANN really has no motivation to do anything like this, and it would be a move totally at odds with their history (and the principles of the internet in general).
So we're giving time to some nutjob who hasn't got a prayer, and providing something for slashdotters to rant about...par for the course I guess.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
And that is what the proposal would look like if it weren't actually a bad faith, weasel-worded attempt to control what everybody does on the internet...
except that blocking port 80 in that scenario is superfluous. If "good" sites require ssl and a CA that requires a purity test it is trivial to block "evil" content at the browser. Someone just needs to build a browser that obeys those rules and user permissions need to be set up to prevents the children from modifying the software and/or installing other CA certificates, which would need to be done in any case.
One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe internet would be.
...Or how about ICANN and parents growing up and realizing a few things. A) Parents can control what sites their kids visit. B) Information is not "damaging", if a kid want to look up porn and they search for it, they obviously want to look at it and are much less the "innocent kids" then their parents think they are. C) It is not ICANN, the ISPs, or even the government to "patrol" what is online. The internet is honestly one of the few places where true capitalism and freedom is at work (despite efforts to prevent it), and just look at the growth in the last few years, a "closed garden" web like they are suggesting would not have hardly any of the growth the free web is experiencing now.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I've just gone through the CP80 explanations of how the internet works and how filtering does not work but should. "The CP80 Internet Channel Initiative is a solution that can effectively solve the Internet pornography problem." That's fantastic. Let's hear more about that. Oh, all content has to be categorized into adult content and "community" content, which can then only be served on port ranges assigned to the types of content. That'll work. And then we block IP ranges of countries which do not require their internet users to categorize content and abide by the port assignment rules. That'll work.
How afraid can you be of your kids seeing naked people and still leave them unsupervised on the big bad internet, hoping that finally someone has found a working filtering solution when even a totalitarian country like China can't effectively censor the internet? At least the CP80 web site is 100% Flash and skips pages uncontrollably, so the chance of it reaching an audience is slim. Nutjobs.
I have an alternate idea: How about subscribing to a "child-safe" ISP which sanitizes your content for you? Sure, you will have to pay extra for the service, but it is YOU who want the censorship, not I. I'll take the bad with the good if it means that my liberty to choose to produce crud or good content remains intact.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
> except that blocking port 80 in that scenario is superfluous.
To prevent them simply launching an unrestricted Firefox from a USB key. Or undermining the Windows help system which is these days largly a web browser, etc.
> One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe internet would be.
http://www.google.com/ certainly wouldn't pass. If Google didn't offer up a clean search on the alternate port somebody else would certainly fill the hole in the marketplace.
And a few addendums to my original post.
A new protocol name would be required to avoid pahing to keep specifying the port number in URLs. Perhaps shttp: for SafeHTTP? And the browser would have to explicitly know to switch cert chains based on the https or shttp protocol. This whole scheme could be done in a single RFC and a few man hours of hacking on Firefox to produce a proof of concept browser. The rest would be political and marketing to get enough sites to sign on.
And that last part is the sticking point. Others have tried, remember my mention of IE supporting a system to put ratings in the headers? Nobody does. So who would buy a new ssl cert and open up an alternate port unless a whole heck of a lot of political pressure came crashing down.
I'm a libertarian and unless the government mandated this scheme I would actually like to see it done. Got grand kids about to be old enough to use the Internet. And on the current Internet the undesirable stuff comes looking for you whether you are looking for it or not.
Democrat delenda est
The top person behind CP80 is Ralph Yarro, of Canopy / SCO / etc. fame, who tried to defraud the Nordas, IBM, Novell, the creators of Linux, etc. He has no ethics whatsoever, but in his book, banning content that he deems not fit for you is completely appropriate.
These people are technically ignorant, and want to gain by enforcing their new laws what no voluntary-based action of good intent would win them. Ignorant lawsuits, and ignorant laws, not created with a modicum of thought or sympathy for anyone besides the profit in becoming the gateway to control the internet and tax and regulate everything according to their "morals". Never mind that he could just as easily set up some port besides 80 with a technology that enabled whatever degree of filtering he wanted and people who agreed with him could move to that port and technology, but he is a dictator and a fraud at heart.
There are plenty of people in Utah and especially at Brighan Young University (where real dissent is not tolerated) who will blindly follow and greatly praise such a person, both for putting a lid on internet-style free thought, and also in the same breath for trying to eliminate Linux, that hotbed of hackerdom, people who don't know that Windows is what is good for them. As much as they claim to respect your freedom on other ports, don't believe them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Perhaps, because 80% is better than what it is now, they think.
Part of the problem may be that the parents themselves are afraid of the 'net, still. If the parents can't handle the unrequested porn ads, they're going to have a hard time monitoring the kids.
Considering what I've had to go through to be able to monitor myself, I can't say that I blame the parents who don't want to have to harden themselves against it. It's not that the body is dirty or scary, it's that it can be so interesting that it gets in the way of doing necessary things like working and talking to people. You know, relating to the people who are physically near you.
Oh, and I guess there is also that wish for sex to remain a "special" thing.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
That is because to call the Dems "liberal" and the repubs "conservative" is frankly an insult to both words. The "Barry Goldwater style small business leave everybody alone" actual conservatives got ran out of the conservative party by the bible thumpers in the 80s, and likewise the true "let's try something new since the old crap ain't working" liberals got ran out of the dems by the Nancy Pelosi money whores. Now BOTH parties are pro big government, pro blowing lots of cash, pro federal rights over everything.
Frankly the only difference anymore is in the asses they kiss. The repubs kiss the corporate and defense industry booties, while the Dems kiss the Hollywood media and union booties. That is why I hope that the libertarians or greens or somebody steps up to the place but soon, because frankly right now it doesn't matter which you vote for, because both are determined to screw you and the country.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.