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Censorship The Internet Your Rights Online

CP80's Cheryl Preston Suggests "CyberSecurity" Group At ICANN 139

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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CP80's Cheryl Preston Suggests "CyberSecurity" Group At ICANN

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  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:09PM (#27263007)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I have a question:

      If Cheryl B. Preston is a cunt, does that mean she's not allowed on port 80?

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Sonny, I don't like your tone. I think it's time the authorities had a look at your computer.

        I'm a self-appointed guardian of society and I think you are a danger to the rest of us.

        You are un-American, providing aid and comfort to the enemy, and just might be an enemy combatant.

        Proper authorities have been notified.
    • 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

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        And if a complete move from HTTP is too much to ask for, how about a secure P2P front-end to distribute the content so the addresses listed in the logs aren't necessarily the real visitors, yet geographically close by for the applications that depend on that data. This, as it would seem, allow us to continue using HTTP only in a more secure and neutral manner, similar to what Tor is doing but encrypted end-to-end and with more shared bandwidth so the loading times aren't ridiculous.

        It's very difficult to design a proper anonymous network, check out the Freenet and TOR papers and possible attacks for starters. Sure, you can have pretend-anonymous because someone isn't trying or logging but it's the same kind of anonymous you're supposed to have today with warrants for wiretaps. If they don't respect one there's no reason to believe they'll respect the other. You can try having a mini-broadcast with multicast at the end points but it's too easy to tell which host is requesting them and

        • by Nursie ( 632944 )

          Check out oneswarm, they are a torrent-like anonymous p2p network.

          I also have an idea for one, involving connections only to trusted friends and contacts one step removed from them (using TLS and RSA), all traffic moving through a trusted web via multiple hops.

          It's not in any way an easy thing, but the idea are there and the darknets will rise...

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @09:07PM (#27263887)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Furthermore, the problem is only barely attributable to social conservatives, as a great many liberal democrats love this nanny-state stuff.

        Truer words were never spoken.
      • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        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!

        That is so true. I remember watching a news report about someone whose son was killed when he drove his truck into a tree because he was talking on his cellphone.

        The father's response? To campaign for stricter laws against cellphone use while driving.

        Ignoring, of course, that there ALREADY are laws against using the cellphone while driving. Which the father claimed his son knew about. And he claimed that he repeatedly told his son not to drive while talking on the cellphone. His son was too stupid or too ar

      • Agreed. I don't think it's limited to Mormons, either. It has more to do with a desire to work and earn a living while raising kids - without having to watch what the kids are doing.

        More parental (or grandparental) involvement is needed. The 50-60 hour week is really what is the problem here. Maybe not so much during this recession, but that is a big part of the problem.
      • > So dial back the anti-religious bigotry a tad and maybe we can make some
        > progress against the real problem.

        That sounds like collectivism, which suffers from most of the same problems as statism.

    • Maybe they should split the ports...

      Why? Any group is free to go and implement their own private WAN or a VPN. See: China

      • MOD PARENT UP.

        The internet is a great baseline architecture for all. Customize it as you please within your own domain. It may entail some work on your part. Don't fuck it up for everyone else.

  • by rwwyatt ( 963545 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:10PM (#27263019)

    I already added my comments in an email response.

    • It is beyond the scope of ICANN's current mission to address any content
    • It will definitely fail to be all inclusives. Porn Sites do not want to risk selling to minors explicitly.
    • Online Safety is the responsibility of the user. In regards to Children, It is the responsibility of the parent
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Not to mention, ICANN can't even address numerous problems within the DNS/WHOIS infrastructure -- why would I trust them with the authority to decide what content should be filtered?

  • Censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:13PM (#27263053)
    Censorship, no matter for what "righteous" purpose you might intend it, always, always, always, leads to tyranny.
    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:36PM (#27263241) Journal
      Unfortunately, that is often considered to be one of its features, rather than its bugs...
    • Censorship, no matter for what "righteous" purpose you might intend it, always, always, always, leads to tyranny.

      So not true!

      In the US, right after September 11th (2001), certain songs were banned from the radio (Leaving on a Jet Plane, for one); the drawings of Mohammed in Cartoon Wars (South Park episodes) were blackboxed out (despite him being drawn in Super Best Friends, an earlier episode). The 09 F9 11 number has been censored (at least it was attempted).

      And look! Nobody lost any civil liberties in the US, right?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by virg_mattes ( 230616 )
        There's one point you messed up here. No songs were "banned" from the radio. ClearChannel put out a list of songs that "may bother listeners" but there was no edict not to play them, and a good number of the songs on their list got airplay on ClearChannel stations, so there didn't seem to be issues with punishment for running them.

        Virg
  • Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:14PM (#27263069) Journal

    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)

      by ncohafmuta ( 577957 )

      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)

        by Hordeking ( 1237940 )

        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.

    • by Yaur ( 1069446 )
      Parental controls are not a good analogy because they are implemented as metadata transmitted in a channel that is typically used to transmit ancillary data.

      This would be more akin to not allowing mature content on VHF channels. The biggest difference here is that you are pushing the decision from the content/content metadata into the transmission layer that shouldn't have any knowledge about what content is being transmitted.
    • 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:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you ever lived in Utah, you'd know they not only want to eliminate "evil" pornography, but also enact all sorts of laws to force everyone to follow LDS guidlines and join their church.

      In the nineties, during a speech to BYU, one of their leaders declared everyone over 25 and not married a "menace to society." Later that year, BYU "off-campus housing" revised their contract so that only students were allowed to live in "off campus housing." Since most single people in Provo go to BYU, this meant nearly

      • by Acius ( 828840 )

        I attended BYU, lived in that same off-campus housing, and have lived in the Provo area for over 20 years. You are exaggerating badly.

        - There are no laws to "force everyone to follow LDS guidlines [sic] and join their church." Even if such a law were possible in America (I hope not!), such a law would be highly repugnant to Mormons, as there is an express prohibition against laws like that in the church's core creed (cf. eleventh article of faith).

        As for laws forcing everyone to follow LDS guidelines: Cigar

        • ... and alcohol are legal in Utah.

          With the exception of beer, alcohol may only be served in private clubs and sold by the state. Alcohol may be served in restaurants, but only if it's mixing is hidden.

          We have shops that legally sell sex toys and pornographic movies, and billboards on the freeways advertising their existence.

          Pornographic movies are illegal in Utah. You are confusing porn with "Made for Cable" skinflicks. As for the billboards, those are advertisements for businesses that exist in Wyoming and Nevada.

  • From the perspective of an ISV that does anything besides simple web browsing having to worry about regulated port numbers seems like an unnecessary headache. What about ports 25 and 53, would those get regulated also? the effort is useless without them and exposes lots of downstream parties to liability if they do. Even if you agree with their stated goal, their approach is totally unworkable IMO.
  • by Tenebrousedge ( 1226584 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `egdesuorbenet'> on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:21PM (#27263121)

    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.

    • by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:42PM (#27263301) Journal

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by couchslug ( 175151 )

        "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.

        • Witness the last eight years as proof of that.
      • by thethibs ( 882667 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @08:41PM (#27263743) Homepage

        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.

        • by Phroggy ( 441 )

          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.

          It's not Christian either. Plenty of bigoted asshats call themselves Christians, but do not follow the teachings of Christ, who brought a message of love, not hatred or judgment. Read Matthew 23 to get an idea what Jesus thought of the asshats in power.

          I find it weird that you make a connection between Muslims and liberalism. I've never heard such a connection suggested before.

          • I find it weird that you make a connection between Muslims and liberalism. I've never heard such a connection suggested before.

            Let's look at it:

            • Strong central government.
            • Regulate everything.
            • Authority of society (aka the state) over individual rights.
            • Rule of influence over the rule of law.
            • A long list of victimless crimes.
            • Conditional property rights.

            Does anything look familiar?

            There is one big difference though: Islamic states don't require their citizens to be defenceless.

            • by Phroggy ( 441 )

              At least a few items on that list sound like things the Republican party fully endorses.

        • They were actively courted. And the movers and shakers of the evangelical movement allied with conservative politicians. I'm not exactly sure why but I'm guessing Roe v. Wade played a part. According to Wikipedia the end of segregation had something to do with it as well.

          I can't say I've ever heard any politician spout anything that comes close to an anti-Christian sentiment, which would be a death sentence for a political career in this country. The Democrats have not pandered to the evangelical movement i

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

        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)

      You should be threatened. Along with the ICANN port == channel stupidity goes tons of legislation that makes the ISPs liable for anything that gets past them. This includes having U.S. ISPs keep a blacklist of "non-compliant" countries. If you're on the blacklist, then all content is considered bad and has to be filtered.
  • should be 7878
  • Alternative proposal (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:30PM (#27263203)

    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.

    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:38PM (#27263269) Journal
      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...
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Yaur ( 1069446 )
      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 int
      • by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <{jmorris} {at} {beau.org}> on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:56PM (#27263431)

        > 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.

        • by Yaur ( 1069446 )
          check out kidzui [kidzui.com] which doesn't use ssl, but does use a whitelist domain model that mostly works.

          HTTPS works just fine... and account permissions can be set up to prevent install from or booting to removable media... no need for a new port. If that really wasn't enough you could set up an external proxy (maybe on the AP) that would do the filtering.

          With a purely HTTPS based approach the only thing that needs to be done is disable HTTP and bundle it only with the safe CA cert.

          > remember my mentio
          • by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
            A number of Australian ISPs have from time to time offered 'clean' feeds that are in some way filtered, but they've alwasy died on the vine from a complete lack of demand from users. If the family PC is in the living room, any peeks at illicit material the kids can sneak while the parents are out of the room won't be that damaging (IMO). Sure, hours of hardcore porn will probably affect your tastes and perhaps behaviours, especially with long-term exposure, but a few minutes? How much more effect could th
          • 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.

    • by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:42PM (#27263307)
      ...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.
      • Hear hear! The voice of reason. Hannity, is that you?
      • > 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.

        Good, then let them do it! I always chuckle at things like this where people (not saying you) get fired up. It's the same thing with the Kansas school board. If they want to retard their community, then let them. It will eventually be clear how misguided they were. Forcing everyone to do the same thing with education and openn

    • by kimvette ( 919543 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:53PM (#27263409) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • by bigbird ( 40392 )

        Moving over here to Australia will soon be almost the same thing!

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        That's actually an idea that has been tried. Slashdot covered a similar effort here [slashdot.org]. Check out the comments there. Not a lot of support, huh? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Slashdot seems to have a way of mixing "Utah", "Mormon", "Porn", and "Censorhip" to make things much more sensational than they really are.
      • K, fine, but then who's going to save you from damnation?

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      Not to be redundant, but that's basically the same thing I said above [slashdot.org] only I suggest a P2P distribution system so as not to break compatibility with the already widely used legacy WAN infrastructure. We are running out of IPv4 address pretty fast, so whatever the solution - use IPv6/IPv8 (coming soon I'm sure). Encryption in addition to an enablement of a P2P internet distribution system that really uses olde HTTP/HTTPS as a backend would solve many of the net issues we now have.

      As stated, while not perf
    • 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.

      • by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) *

        > 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

      • by 1729 ( 581437 )

        Heck, they could even construct their own version of Wikipedia that touts creationism and eliminates or disputes evolution.

        They already did:

        http://www.conservapedia.com/ [conservapedia.com]

    • by xbytor ( 215790 )

      The old AOL needs to come back to life. It would be perfect for people that want an interweb that is safe for business and/or safe for kids.

    • Rule one: all servers running on this new port have to be doing https.

      That's going to work just fine for IRC, right?

      The people who want a 'cleaned kid friendly Internet' can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered.

      No, that'd be a kid friendly World Wide Web.

      And it wouldn't be what the TOTC crowd wants: if you create KidSpace or FaceTube or whatever on there so that little Dick can talk to little Jane, then Dick can bully Jane, and Jane is going to be upset (and kill herself, of course).

      Teh interwebs is a communications medium. If you want to be sure that "only good people" use it to send stuff, you have to destroy what the Internet really is: a many-to-many communication

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19, 2009 @07:47PM (#27263345)

    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.

    • 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

  • Can I play? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We all can agree there are some subjects that we wish our children not to view (XXX, Barney, drugs), and other subjects we do not mind (Disney, Birds, Bees [not together]).

    What about the "grey" subjects? Where should breast cancer research be? How about the arts? OMG (Oh My Golly), nude photos?

    Should John-Boy see that video on how barn yard animals reproduce?

    Who gets to make the call on intelligent design or evolution?

    A.C.

  • by expro ( 597113 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @08:40PM (#27263737)

    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.

    • Have you every met Ralph Yarro? I have. At Brigham Young University, at a discussion concerning CP80 and potential solutions to what is, in my opinion, a scourge of porn that is more available than it every should be. He's actually a decent guy. I'm with him on this one. I gave him a bit of a hard time for the whole SCO-Linux lawsuit, and we agreed to disagree on that matter, but I'm behind him here.

      You know, you might be a little more open about your biases and agenda (BYU, where real dissent is not

      • You demonstrate the point. That you, as a BYU alumnus, would respond to defend Ralph Yarro was perfect, while ultimately ignoring the moral dimension of his actions, which are clearly on the record. I do not think getting close enough to feel the mesmerizing effect he apparently radiates for the likes of you would make a difference to me. I see plenty of people like him.

        At BYU, obviously, any mention of sex or anything aligned against the prejudices of the hierarchy (anti-war? anti proposition 8?) is immora

      • I'm sure Ralph Yarro can be a respectable, even charming fellow. However, his grasp of SCO's legal situation was drastically flawed. Likewise, his grasp of the "vexing problem" of pornography as demonstrated by CP80 is also drastically flawed. I'm not seeing much so far that supports the idea that the guy has any technical understanding.

        I should also note that Ralph Yarro's concern for the "effect of porn on the lives of young university students" would be better directed towards an upbringing where thes

  • Members of the general public and encouraged to submit comments to ICANN until 5 April on this proposed constituency from CP80/Robert Yarro. See: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#cybersafety [icann.org]

    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)

    by JWSmythe ( 446288 ) <jwsmythe@nospam.jwsmythe.com> on Thursday March 19, 2009 @09:36PM (#27264015) Homepage Journal

    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

    • You may have different ownership of porn.com and porn.net.

      Whoa... There's more than one porn site on the internet?

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      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....

      • It was more like, her parents, and some other parents in the neighborhood are very conservative. If they are caught holding hands, then it's very likely she will be forbidden from playing with him at all.

        He seems to like her, so I gave him some friendly guy advice.

        In actuality, I told him something like, "You can't do that there. I know you like her, and apparently she likes you, so if you're going to hold hands or whatever, don't do it right in front of the hou

    • > Some clients would only view every few months, or even every few years.

      Sorry, what? I was following you until this.

      • If you like the site porn_example.com, you'll probably remember the name. But if they're forced to move to porn_example_3.xxx (because 1 and 2 were already taken), you'd have no idea how to get there. Well, except for the fact that I'm sure someone would make the site pornoogle.com to index them. :)

        Renaming a web site, just like moving a company physical location, would have a huge negative impact on it's existing customer base.

        Back to the article, if they wan

  • Not port 80 (Score:3, Funny)

    by russotto ( 537200 ) on Thursday March 19, 2009 @09:44PM (#27264057) Journal
    How about this? We keep Port 80, but they get all the IPV4 ports above 70000.
  • 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

  • Notice that CP80's "Get Involved" discussions page [cp80.org] is 404?
  • 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)

      by bradbury ( 33372 )

      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

      • by smoker2 ( 750216 )

        Welcome to England where it appears that big brother will always be watching you.

        And yet I have British Telecom as an ISP and no ports are blocked at all. I suspect they throttle bittorrent at busy times, but I have a way around that (they seem to rely on DNS lookups - I use a third party DNS server).

        If verizon blocked all http traffic, you wouldn't see any web pages at all.

        • by bradbury ( 33372 )

          I am fairly sure Verizon is not blocking outgoing requests on port 80. What it is blocking is consumer (vs. business) DSL lines on incoming requests on port 80. I believe that because the port addresses are part of the "public" part of TCP/IP commununications that it is possible for providers to filter them. Blocking bittorrent streams on the other hand requires much greater examination of the packets, where they are coming from / going to in part because they may be operating on non-standard ports (I'm

  • Existing constituencies include 'Commercial and Business,' 'gTLD,' 'Registrars,' 'Non-commercial,' etc.

    I'm not sure what Gay Transgendered Lesbian Dykes have to do with this issue.

  • I have a simpler solution for them right here:
    RFC 3514 [faqs.org]

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