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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I already added my response (Score:5, Insightful)
I already added my comments in an email response.
Censorship. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Alternative proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternative proposal (Score:2, Insightful)
One has to wonder though if google would pass their test and if not how useful their safe internet would be.
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.
Re:Alternative proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Interesting (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: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.
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.
Re:Interesting (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!
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.
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Re:Honestly, I'm not threatened. (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 happened to COPA... You get +1 poince if you guessed "ruled as unconstitutional multiple times by multiple courts"
Speaking of COPA...
FTFA: "...expensive and imperfect computer-installed filters, which users can hack past, circumvent, or disable, and which must be regularly updated and monitored."
SCOTUS: "filtering's superiority to COPA is confirmed by the explicit findings of the Commission on Child Online Protection, which Congress created to evaluate the relative merits of different means of restricting minors' ability to gain access to harmful materials on the internet."
Once again, Ideology meets Reality... and loses.
*AFAIK, during the Bush Administration, at most 5~10 people/companies were charged with obscenity w/re to distributing (non-child) pornography through the mail &/or internet. A few were convicted and a few cases are still pending. And most of those convictions were won because the federal prosecutors went forum shopping in socially conservative jurisdictions in order to take advantage of 'community standards'.
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 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.
Re:I already added my response (Score:1, Insightful)
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?
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