Utah Wants To Give ISPs That Filter a "G-Rating" 328
An anonymous reader writes "HB407 in Utah would create a child-friendly designation for ISPs that block out a range of prohibited materials. Google, Yahoo, and others are fighting the bill, but Rep. Michael Morley says, 'I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography.'"
Fighting pornography? (Score:2, Funny)
Yum.
Hurah for Utah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This means war! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unworkable (Score:5, Funny)
So long as they ... (Score:1, Funny)
Excellent idea! (Score:5, Funny)
We can give a bunch of ISP's g-ratings, then we can consolidate all of them and refer to it as the g-spot.
...and then wait to see how long it takes for them to notice.
Re:This means war! (Score:5, Funny)
It also protects my computer from any use!
Gotta go drain-o my brain now...
Re:Excellent idea! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Multiple issues at issue (Score:2, Funny)
Simple arithmetic, my friend.
Naked Woman: +1
Naked Man: -1
Sex Act: +1
So...
Man+woman+sex=+1-1+1=+1
Man+man+sex=-1-1+1=-1
Woman+woman+sex=+1+1+1=3
As is plainly demonstrated, visual representations of lesbians having sex are 3 times as good as those representing heterosexual couples, whereas visual representations of gays having sex are the opposite of good, which is to say, bad.
For the student: Assign numerical values to various sex acts and intermediate/alternate genders/species and present all permutations for any 4 factors.
Re:Unworkable (Score:5, Funny)
Haha... I am waiting for them to actually ban evolution, not the theory but the phenomenon. That law would have to be intelligently designed.
Obiglatory Response (Score:5, Funny)
The Utah proposal advocates a
(*) technical (*) legislative (*) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting online porn. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Pornographers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(*) It will filter out too much legitimate non-porn content
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop porn for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(*) Users of the web will not put up with it
(*) Google and other legitimate web operators will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from pornographers
(*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(*) Many web operators cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential viewers
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the web
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(*) Huge existing software investment in the net protocols
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than HTTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(*) Willingness and ability of users to install software necessary to make it work
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(*) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of porn
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Dishonesty on the part of pornographers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(*) Internet Explorer
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(*) Website content should not be the subject of legislation
(*) Blacklists suck
(*) Whitelists suck
(*) We should be able to talk about sex without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(*) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(*) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
(*) It's the parent's job to watch what their kid is doing
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(*) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
And we can call addresses to approved sites... (Score:3, Funny)