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CP80's Cheryl Preston Suggests "CyberSecurity" Group At ICANN
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Mar 19, 2009 05:59 PM
from the one-frustrated-astronaut dept.
from the one-frustrated-astronaut dept.
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?"
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Technology: Preston Responds On ICANN CyberSafety Constituency 56 comments
An anonymous reader writes "After coverage here on Slashdot and elsewhere, Cheryl Preston has responded. She says that 'some netizens have missed the mark by turning the rather hum-drum constituency formation issue into a rash of (admittedly sometimes quite humorous) charges, allegations, and ad hominem attacks. I can only wish that I had control of some global Mormon conspiracy network, that this were a money-making proposition, and that my powers of persuasion could possibly move ICANN to adopt a content regulatory system...in reality, the CyberSafety constituency is interested in many current GNSO issues, such as Fast Flux Hosting (FFH); the development of a Registrants' Rights Charter; the gathering of identity information on WHOIS; and public order issues with the granting of new Top Level Domain names, to name a few.'"
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Do it like this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a question:
If Cheryl B. Preston is a cunt, does that mean she's not allowed on port 80?
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. I am un-American. As long as that means somebody who doesn't live in the USA.....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe they should split the ports
Your comment is more realistic than you might have originally intended - many already consider the existing internet worthy of a complete redesign, and in comparison to the various ideas for a new node addressing system and more secure flow control protocols, using the existing internet (IPv6) with instead a more P2P-like content distribution system would solve all sorts of problems, namely net neutrality and load/bandwidth issues.
While I think completely redesigning the internet would be overkill as we
Mormon Bashing (Score:5, Insightful)
I recognize that, between Texas polygamy, Mitt Romney, and the Prop 8 hullabaloo, it's socially acceptable to harsh on Mormons, but if this were strictly a Mormon problem, it wouldn't be going anywhere. There are fewer than five million Mormons in the United States, with a significant percentage of those living in the west (mostly Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and Idaho, with a reasonably large population in Wyoming, Colorado, and along the Pacific coast).
I am a student at BYU law school. I was involved in the editing process for a symposium we held on CP80 and other "decency" issues as relating to the internet. We had non-Mormon guests from all over the country, and many were in close agreement with Professor Preston.
They were also all, almost without exception, so technically illiterate that it was painful to read their stuff. Some of the claims they made were so outrageously wrong on a technological level that I spent less time formatting their footnotes than writing comments about how technologically infeasible some of their proposals were--and I'm not even an expert, just a lot more of an expert than these folks. Most of my comments were ignored.
The problem is not Mormons. Furthermore, the problem is only barely attributable to social conservatives, as a great many liberal democrats love this nanny-state stuff.
The problem is people, mostly lawyers, who are accustomed to solving their problems by making up laws. The term for this attitude is "statism" and it is rampant in America. Got a problem? Make a law! Instead of recognizing that the world is imperfect (and the legal system even more so), make a law any time something bothers you!
I am a Mormon, and it will not surprise you to know that Mormons are just as susceptible to statism as everyone else. Professor Preston obviously falls into that category. But I'm Mormon, and I don't, and while I'm hardly representative of my religion, it turns out that I'm not particularly representative of American attitudes toward statism generally.
So dial back the anti-religious bigotry a tad and maybe we can make some progress against the real problem.
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Re: (Score:2)
Truer words were never spoken.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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 everyt
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they should split the ports...
Why? Any group is free to go and implement their own private WAN or a VPN. See: China
I already added my response (Score:5, Insightful)
I already added my comments in an email response.
Censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Censorship. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Virg
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
what else is new? The ATF has been doing that with the tobacco/smoking industry for years.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
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.
what else is new? The ATF (formerly known as revenuers) has been doing that with the tobacco/smoking industry for years.
Special Note: The ATF is harsher on moonshine and firearms (especially firearms). They're even willing to kill unarmed women and children over them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It suggests, to me, that her (organization's) larger goal is to neutralize the pornography industry, not just to limit it to adults.
That explains their other office [cp80.org] in Arlington, VA. Invest in America - buy a congressman!
Re: (Score:2)
You were modded troll, but I think you are correct. I was unaware of the special underwear until someone told me about it. I looked it up and was amazed. They also tell their wives they can't get to heaven without the husband's special password. It's a total crock and is only slightly less insane than the scientologist whack-jobs. I am so sick and tired of these religious idiots - of any flavor - trying to legislate my life according to their hangups and fears. Whatever happened to "land of the free"?
It was free to leave, so it did. How ironic. I'm sick of liberal idiots telling me how to live my life and fund someone else's according to their hangups and fears.
Honestly, I'm not threatened. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Honestly, I'm not threatened. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
If you do not aggressively confront and thwart social conservatives, they will keep beating their drums until a sympathetic ear catches the beat and starts dancing to their tune.
Remember Janet Jackson and the Super Bowl? It took over 4 years (2/2004-6/2008) for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to void the FCC's $500,000 fine. But in the meantime, other fines were handed out and networks self-censored. In other words, damage was done.
Social conservatives keep demanding laws to regulate everyone because their usual tools of ostracism and shame are only effective within their own communities.
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Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
"Social conservatives" in the US are essentially Christian Taliban. They don't have the power to act with the savagery of Taliban (abortion clinic bombers excepted) but never forget that people who believe in primitive superstitions only function in the modern world by compromising their beliefs.
When they have power, they revert to type.
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Re:Honestly, I'm not threatened. (Score:4, Interesting)
Social conservatives keep demanding laws to regulate everyone because their usual tools of ostracism and shame are only effective within their own communities.
I think if you check current usage, you'll find ostracism and shame are the liberal weapons of choice (environment, sexual preference, and oh! the children). These are techniques they learned from the christians when the christians were liberal.
All this nonsense is christian, not conservative. The christians switched to vote conservative because, faced with a choice between the liberals' anti-christian vitriol and the conservatives' good-humored tolerance, they chose conservative. Can't hardly blame them.
The christians no more define conservatism than the muslims define liberalism; it is in both cases a marriage of convenience. It's odd that no one ever refers to muslims as the religious left, though that is what they are.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Social conservatives keep demanding laws to regulate everyone because their usual tools of ostracism and shame are only effective within their own communities.
Re-reading this, it seems somewhat harsh.
But it isn't. And let me tell you why.
Two out of the three prongs the Supreme Court uses to determine obscenity [usdoj.gov] begins with the phrase: "Whether the average person, applying contemporary adult community standards,"
FTFA by Cheryl B. Preston: "I propose a statute that prohibits knowingly publishing content that is child pornography, obscene, or harmful to minors on Community Ports"
child pornography - illegal and well defined by case law
obscene* - illegal and well defined by case law
harmful to minors - WTF!?
The last time "harmful to minors" and "the internet" were in the same sentence was 1998 when COPA [wikipedia.org] was passed into law. Guess what
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Alternative proposal (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a counter proposal. Leave port 80 just like it is. The people who want a 'cleaned kid friendly Internet' can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered. Do it like this:
Rule one: all servers running on this new port have to be doing https.
Rule two: all certs will use an entirely new chain of trust established by the consortium doing this new safe net. They condition the server keys on a site obeying whatever content rules they put out, revoking the keys of sites who go rogue.
Rule three: A mandatory set of tags describing the content on each page so parents can adjust their browser accordingly to their views. Such a system already exists in IE and could exist in others once someone actually began using the stuff. After all a browser update will probably be required to get the new root certs installed anyway.
Then it is just a matter of blocking port 80 on kids computers. Best done at the AP/router.
Re:Alternative proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe int
Re:Alternative proposal (Score:4, Insightful)
> 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/ [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.
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multiple whitelists (Score:2)
I don't like the idea of systemizing this sort of thing.
The best solution is multiple (competing) whitelists. That way, we don't have a doll manufacturing bribing "the ratings organization" to let their edgy ads into the stream.
The kids will still be exposed to edgy stuff, but when bribes flow things go sour quickly.
It's the monoculture thing.
Re: (Score:2)
And may I be a personal testament to that. After hours and hours of hard core porn, I now have fantasies of Barbara Bush, Laura Bush, Jeff Guckert, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Lynne Cheney, Mitt Romney, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and even Ari Fleisher. I think they are all super duper hot! Pray for me....
My...since we're being honest, after hours upon hours of hardcore porn, I now have fantasies of Barbie and Jenna (Hager) Bush. Life is good.
Re:Alternative proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Alternative proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Moving over here to Australia will soon be almost the same thing!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You're exactly right. All someone has to do is set up a Certificate Authority and they can basically construct their own private internet from the ground up. Heck, they could even construct their own version of Wikipedia that touts creationism and eliminates or disputes evolution.
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> All someone has to do is set up a Certificate Authority and they can basically
> construct their own private internet from the ground up.
Not exactly. You are still asking each website to adopt the system, not recreating every popular site. So no you couldn't have an alternate Wikipedia unless you forked their content onto your own servers. The difference is that the version offered by the new port would be required to be properly tagged for content. They could even have porn, just as long as every
Where do they find these people? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
They are hoping to find an 80% solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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
CP80 = SCO, sort of. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [meridianmagazine.com], 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.
ICANN is Accepting Public Comments on Petition (Score:2, Informative)
Comments on this petition should be sent to ICANN via the email address "cyber-safety-petition@icann.org" mailto:cyber-safety-petition@icann.org [mailto]
Yarro's anti-porn crusaders are currently bombarding ICANN with form letters supporting this censorship initiative. See: http://forum.icann.org/lists/cyber-safety-p [icann.org]
Brilliant failure (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a brilliant attempt at a failure.
It is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard of.
I used to work in adult entertainment. One of the big (BIG) things is availability to customers. Regardless if it's mainstream or not, most customers (readers here excluded) are barely functional on the Internet. They have a hard time trying to even go to a site. I'm amazed at how many people have to go to their home page, which happens to be a search engine, to type the url into the search box to get the site. They can't grasp that you enter it in the address bar. If httpp (http for porn) is put on port 81? We're suppose to believe that they can type http://porn.example.com81/ [porn.example.com81] or httpp://porn.example.com?? It'll never happen.
At times, I tried to move things off to other ports. You'd be amazed how many people couldn't grasp the concept. Even putting a mail server web client on http://mail.example.com:8080/ [example.com] completely throws them, even though you write it down for them, and it's right in front of them when they try to go there.
Other options have been attempted over the years. The meta tag pics-label was suppose to show what kind of content you were serving up. On very rare occasions, I see it used. Usually I don't.
There were other site rating tags that came and went. They weren't generally used by the browsers. They weren't implemented very frequently on web sites. In the end, they died. If someone was running an adult web site, they honestly wouldn't want to run the risk of having their content blocked by the provider, when the customer did want to view it. So, nothing identifying to say "porn".
Even the .xxx TLD was a spiffy keen idea, but that didn't have a prayer. "Please move all of your domains to the .xxx TLD. Ya, right. First problem. You may have different ownership of porn.com and porn.net. They'd both have to complete for that new position. Then you have to tell all of your viewers, "Go to porn.xxx, we're shutting down porn.com in 30 days". Some clients would only view every few months, or even every few years. They wouldn't have seen the memo, and would then be out of luck. No one, regardless of the business they're in, wants to lose their customer base because they had to move. That's why when you see a physical storefront move, you'll usually see a note taped in the front window saying "We've moved to 14 main street, 3 blocks over. Come visit us there!" those moves are usually unavoidable. It's better for a business to expand to a second location, than to ever shut down their first one. Frequently, it's a death sentence.
I know killing off the adult entertainment industry is a motive in wanting to force them to move. It won't work, but it'll really shake up the industry. New companies will get lucky and make more money. Old companies will be very very upset that they went from multi-million dollar empires, down to nothing. In the end, sites will still pop up as .com's on port 80, and they'll make good money by avoiding the new found filters.
If it wasn't an idea that would hurt things, why not move the mainstream sites over to a new "safer" place?
It then brings up the question, what's "safe". What's safe for my kid may not be safe for your kid. I run a news site. We carry news. What if you didn't want your kid to know about wars, or famine, rape, murder, drugs, or gay/lesbian/bi sexual preferences? Better not let them read the news.
Is a woman showing cleavage acceptable? How about in a bikini? Lingerie? Topless? Full frontal nudity? Implied sexual intercourse? Obvious and visual sexual intercourse? You may not want a 10 year old seeing too much cleveage, so should that be in the porn domain? Now you've moved things in
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Whoa... There's more than one porn site on the internet?
Re: (Score:2)
Dammit, supervise your children! I have kids. My friends have kids. I talk to them about things. I tell them what is age appropriate and what isn't. A 13 year old wants to see a dirty magazine or web site. I don't let him (or her). I explain "that isn't appropriate for you right now. When you're older". I had to tell the son of a friend, who is 13, that holding hands and prolonged hugging isn't appropriate quite yet. "Look, later on it's fine. When you two are older, I'll chaperone you two to the movies. It will be age appropriate eventually, just not right now. Go ride your bicycle, play basketball, have fun. You have an awful long time to learn about that other stuff, and we'll talk more about it then."
13 years old and not appropriate to hold hands? Something tells me you're in for more than a few surprises over the next five years....
Not port 80 (Score:3, Funny)
Just won't work and why (Score:2)
As many, many, *MANY* others have said, CP80 just wouldn't work. I'm going to ignore any technical reasons for the moment. Let's just grant them that a system could easily be put in place to sign users up for "Community Ports" (filtered) or "Open Ports" (non-filtered). Ok, we have that system ready to go. Now what?
First of all, we need to determine what gets filtered. That seems easy. Cheryl Preston said we just need to filter the "material harmful to minors." Except, who decides what is harmful to m
Would like to discuss, but... (Score:2)
Already filtering port 80... (Score:2)
I hate to inform people but Verizon hosting DSL lines in the vicinity of Boston is already filtering port 80. This is in an attempt to force people to upgrade from a personal DSL line to a business DSL line. So it is not a content based filter but an incoming/outgoing based filter on that specific port. But it could be argued that in a content neutral specific environment none of the incoming or outgoing content should be filtered.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In case this isn't clear, this is an attempt to try and keep people from running web servers (on port 80) off of a "personal" DSL line. I have ample examples of the various Bots (Google, Yahoo, MS, etc.) browsing my web site on port 8080, but that never took place when I only had port 80 open. Most presumably because Verizon blocked the traffic.
Now of course Verizon could resort to blocking all incoming/outgoing http traffic but this would require more CPU intensive time on their routers.
And then of cours
Re:Obviously the pr0n port (Score:5, Funny)
Why not 6969? It's the "KFC++ port" - "More than just finger-licking good!"
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