SCO Chair's Anti-Porn Act Advances In Utah

iptables -A FORWARD writes "Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah reportedly plans to sign a resolution urging Congress to enact the Internet Community Ports Act. The ICPA proposes that online content be divided by port, rather like TVs have channels with adult and family content, so that certain internet ports will be 'clean' — so-called Community Ports — and others will be 'dirty.' Thus, they hope to remove objectionable content from port 80 and require that it be moved elsewhere (port 666 was already taken by Doom, sorry), so that people could more easily block objectionable content, or have their ISPs do the blocking for them. This concept is being pushed by the CP80 group, which is chaired by Ralph Yarro, who also chairs the SCO Group. That probably explains why they didn't choose to adopt RFC 3514, instead."

I believe I speak for all of us here ...

.. when I say, You have got to be FREAKING KIDDING ME.

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

No, Only SCO would think that the state government of Utah controls the world.

Anybody else would laugh - how the hell do they think that they can make this work, when most of the people in that industry AREN'T IN UTAH!

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

Only SCO would think that the state government of Utah controls the world.

      Well Utah USED TO control the world, until IBM stole it!

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

Well Utah USED TO control the world, until IBM stole it!

I'd prove it, but IBM destroyed the evidence, too.

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

yeah, but I kinda like Mormon porn.

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

It was an April Fool's joke a few years back... look at the date on it...

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

I honestly hope you don't think that is a real RFC. I really really hope that this is just a misunderstood attempt at sarcasm. Just in case it's not. Please check the date on that RFC, and then search through all RFCs for that same date...you might get the joke. Or you may just be very angry about the CHIMP protocol...

Re:I believe I speak for all of us here ...

Umm...what? Where the hell do "hackers" and "malicious packets" come into this?

We're talking about content. And, to be honest, a voluntary system for identifying "adult material" would probably be adhered to. Because it's in the porn industry's best interest.

The porn sites are in business to make money. Period. And they're well aware of negative image that they give the rest of the industry, and that there's a lot of heat on them. Frankly, it helps them a lot to be able to say "look, we provide technical means to allow parents to filter this out for their children." Now they can do business in peace, without the hue and cry of "Think of the Children! We must protect them from teh interwebs!"

Is it possible to circumvent this system? Absolutely. Will some people fail to adhere to it? Without doubt. But most of the "legit" porn industry would probably be relieved to have a system that lets them say they're acting in good faith as responsible citizens.

The problem here is the implementation, not the concept. Segregating content by internet port is just silly. And the underlying concept is somewhat disturbing--I think the notion here is like broadcast and basic TV, and FCC decency standards could be enforced on port 80. Frankly, that has a LOT of negative implications that have nothing to do with porn.

Simpler to implement solutions that would achieve the same effect: Add a new TLD for porn (though IMO the proliferation of TLD's in also flawed, but that's a different rant), adding a specific meta-tag (just as we do today for robots), adding a new attribute to the tag to classify certain images as adult-only, etc. I'm sure there are better ideas than mine out there.

At some point, people who are ACTUALLY concerned about children are going to stop trying to figure out how to somehow outlaw porn and work with the industry to put voluntary controls in place.

Port 69

666 is Doom, but how about 69?

Re:Port 69

Unfortunately port 69 is already assigned. From my /etc/services:

tftp 69/tcp
tftp 69/udp

In any case, the concept is fundamentally flawed. Ports are designed to discriminate by protocol, not by service content. This is just another flawed implementation of RFC3514 [ietf.org].

More information...

More information on this subject, including a detailed discussion of why content segregation is dangerous, can be found in RFC3675 [ietf.org]. It suggests an actual workable solution: PICS tags.

PICS Labels (Platform for Internet Content Selection) is a generalized system for providing "ratings" for Internet accessible material. The PICS documents [w3.org] should be consulted for details. In general, PICS assumes an arbitrarily large number of rating services and rating systems. Each service and system is identified by a URL.

It would be quite reasonable to have multiple PICS services that, in the aggregate, provided 300 bits of label information or more. There could be a PICS service for every community of interest. This sort of technology is really the only reasonable way to make categorizations or labelings of material available in a diverse and dynamic world.

While such PICS label services could be used to distribute government promulgated censorship categories, for example, it is not clear how this is any worse than government censorship via national firewalls.

A PICS rating system is essentially a definition of one or more dimensions and the numeric range of the values that can be assigned in each dimension to a rated object. A service is a source of labels where a label includes actual ratings. Ratings are either specific or generic. A specific rating applies only to the material at a particular URL [RFC 2396 [ietf.org]] and does not cover anything referenced from it, even included image files. A generic rating applies to the specified URL and to all URLs for which the stated URL is a prefix.

This seems like very much the "right" way of doing it. It:

1. Doesn't break any existing systems,
2. Is plenty flexible enough to be used for flagging pr0n as such, but also could be used by services like del.icio.us to suggest similar content to the current page,
3. And gracefully degrades to support systems that are unaware of it.

Also, unlike their proposed port breakage, it can easily be turned off if you don't care about it.

Re:More information...

Porn providers don't have to lie. PICS works without their cooperation.

If you're going to try to set up a "child-safe" browsing experience, you're probably going to check the box that forbids access to unrated sites. Ratings can act as a whitelist just as easily as they can a blacklist.

Porn sites that explicitly label their sites as non-porn sites are acting with malicious intent, and this is a different problem that has a different solution. (PICS ratings bureaus can also require that the rating be digitally signed, or require that the browser ask the bureau for guidance rather than trusting what the site provided.)

Re:Port 69

No, no, no. It stands for "Tube For The Porn". Its all about the Tubes, these days.

While we're at it, TCP stands for "Tube Carrying Porn", and IP is "Internet Porn", which goes to prove that the internet is founded on porn.

ant.

Port Suggestions

How about:

80085

(I know it's not valid. It's a joke, son. Laugh.)

Enforceable?

This is about as enforceable as the .xxx TLD. No matter what you do, you're not going to be able segregate the pr0n from other content. Unless you're SCO, I guess, then maybe you could sue those who don't comply by claiming that your intellectual property is on port 80, therefore you own all of the content on port 80 -- millions of lines of HTML!

Re:Enforceable?

No matter what you do, you're not going to be able segregate the pr0n from other content.

Pah! All you have to do is see if the 'porn' bit is set in the headers.

Re:Enforceable?

Then what if some sneaky ISP (*cough*ATT*cough*Verzion*cough*) just "accidentaly" starts putting pr0n bits in the headers of any pro-Republican(or pro-Democrat, pro-free thought, etc.) site?

Damn, only leaves 192 other countries!

And what's to stop porn site from simply relocating to another country and ignoring this law completely?

Re:Enforceable?

Clearly unenforcable.

The average Internet surfer is like a dirty sailor, and pr*n is like a prostitute. ... and there's one in every port.

dotXXX

What makes this approach that much different from using the .XXX top-level? That's just as easily blocked, and easily passable (ssh or proxy)

Re:dotXXX

If they must have something (not that I agree), a .kids would make more sense. Then parents can configure their home proxy to only allow traffic to *that* domain. But, based on crap I see like religious shows on tv having a 'G' rating (WHAT? If anything requires parental guidance...), this would not work either. Maybe require a license to have and keep a .kids TLD or something.

Re:dotXXX

Wrong.

I run adult web sites and PPC advertising is almost unheard of in the adult world.

In fact, while I have dabbled in a couple of PPC programs, I've found that they haven't stacked up nearly as well as affiliate programs. I don't promote one single PPC program at the moment and haven't in years.

The most common PPC programs are dating services. I know a few people who promote them and I've tried them out but they haven't done well on my sites.

The most common source of revenue for adult webmasters are affiliate programs.

Because....

I can make as much as $0.10 / click with some of my better affiliate programs (with the average being around $0.02 / click) but with PPC they pay like $4.00 / 1000 clicks (or $0.004 / click).

How is that worth it ? A good affiliate program can pay anywhere from $25 - $40 / sign-up or 50% recurring (you get 50% of what the affiliate program makes off of the sale for the entire lifetime of the subscription). So if your traffic is "good" (ie: your surfers like what's on your site and they come from "fresh" sources like search engines, bookmarks, related sites that have "good" traffic as well) then you'll do exponentially better with affiliate programs over PPC.

So with that said, I don't have anything to gain by having children hit my sites. They just eat up bandwidth. And adult sites, arguably, burn more bandwidth than any other type of site.

Gah, get your definition straight!

"There is this assumption that you can't control it (the Internet)," Yarro said. "It's a toaster, we made it, we can fix it. ... We can solve the Internet pornography problem tomorrow if we decided to."

Stupid legislators. It's not a fricking toaster, that's rediculous.

It's a series of tubes.

I thought we got that straight a few months ago!

So relieved to find out the internet is a toaster

Now all we need is to figure out a way to get Yarro to open Firefox in the bathtub.

The only reaction necessary

I think we can all agree that the only reaction this requires is a hearty "STFU".

Leaving alone the obvious impracticality of implementation and enforcement (ask Australia about that), this moron thinks that he can legislate morality.

My morality doesn't agree with his. I resent having moral decisions made for me, and I bet the majority of Americans feel the same way. If I want to look at porn, I should be able to look at porn. If someone else doesn't want to look at porn, they don't have to. What exactly is the problem here that requires legislative intervention?

Concepts

He is thinking that ports are like TV channels but what we do need is an .xxx domain and domains ENFORCED properely which is why the internet is in the mess it is. Domain usage is not used correctly as it was intended.

Oh Just great...

So instead of doing something at least partially sensible, like setting up a .xxx TLD for porn sites, We are gonna start breaking web browsing now?

Come ON people! I'm as much for protecting kids from online boobies as the next parent, but messing with the basic structural foundation of the Web? Give me a break!

Methinks we have some legislators that need:

a) A basic IT education (A+ and Net+ would be a good start)
b) a permanent vacation if they don't stop trying to push nonsense laws.

please leave it alone

To all legislators:
        Please leave the internet alone. It works well. People smarter than you created it. It has revolutionized our world. Parents need to take care of their kids, not you. The more changes you make, the more likely you are to break something. Here's a deal. You don't need to get in the news to get my vote. Stay out of the news for a year, and I'll vote for you.

The REAL goal

or have their ISPs do the blocking for them.

      ISP: So, you want to see porn on the internet? You dirty bastard, that's an extra $50 a month and we'll unblock that port for you.

      Of course this would never work since it requires the cooperation of the whole world. As far as I know most online porn sites aren't based in Utah. When will they learn...?

Protocol != Content

Another genius idea from people who know absolutely nothing about how computers or the internet functions. Ports are for protocols, not content. The "content" is just a paticular arrangement of data sent over that protcol.

What these guys really want is to mandate that all IPv6 packets have a TOTC(Think of the children) bit. Defaulted to 1, for "unsafe content". They then pass legislation banning ISPs from handling anything with a TOTC bit of 1. The only way to get a TOTC bit of zero, without breaking the law, is to apply for an extremely expensive licence and audit, available to only the largest corporations.

Entirely coincidentally, the Chinese government's UFTP(Unsafe for the People) bit will occupy exactly the same position in their altered version of the IPv6 protocol, ensuring that the new, saer net will be fully interoperable.

Farfetched? Well, which is more likely? This or competant government that's for the people?

Congress shall make no law...

...respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.

That's an Amendment to the Constitution, better known as the First Amendment. The Constitution, folks, was written to restrict government's reach -- it was not written to protect our rights or to restict people.

Our Federal government has absolutely zero power to regulate the Internet. The Interstate Commerce Act has been stretched to give Congress power, but the Act was not intended to actually allow the government to regulate commerce but to prevent the Individual States from perverting commerce between them. Read the Federalist papers to see more on that debate.

We already have anti-porn powers in place -- it's called the Power of Parenting. No government official can legislate control over how a parent decides to introduce their children to various topics. I fear that heavy-handed moralists may decide that sites with breast-feeding or basic sex information might get censored along with bestiality sites. For me, neither matter since I don't have kids, but should I decide to, I want to regulate what my children can look at. I also want to regulate at what age they are free to start deciding for themselves what they want to look at.

I grew up in the early BBS days (1983 or so). My parents didn't regulate me at all. My BBS that I ran, starting in my pre-teens, ended up having a small porn download/sharing section. It was probably viewed by some youths, but the vast majority of visitors there were adults (we did telephone authorization to give people access). I don't recall spending more than a few minutes in that section myself, since I preferred the online forums and the chat area (we were multinode early). My parents both visited the BBS on a few occasions, and they never scolded me for any section. They did warn me to be careful not to break any laws, but in our household, their regulations were the only laws that I had to work to obey. I did obey, until I moved out, at which point I realized that a lot of what my friends' parents restricted them from were the very things they clung to when they reached a point of maturity. Forbidden fruits create many jams, I guess.

Let's keep government out of our households. Let's remember that the Constitution was written to prevent Federal government from going bonkers and destroying our ability to not just choose for ourselves, but also reap what we sow when we make mistakes (and when we work hard). Equalizing everyone's chances is what government tries to do, at the restriction of those outside the box who really can venture forth in success by working hard outside of the box. I don't like the box, and I don't want to be restricted to living there, even if you do.

Censorship?

I'd like to know why this is flagged as censorship. Is it considered censorship that adult movies can't be rated G? Is it censorship that pornography is not allowed in the .gov TLD? Just because it has to be segregated does't mean it is censored.

Regardless of that, I don't see how this can be enforced, since only a fraction of .com domains are owned by entities in the USA.

Dan East

Re:Censorship?

Is it considered censorship that adult movies can't be rated G?

If the US government were to do it, then yes, it would be considered censorship, and a breach of the First Amendment.

Is it censorship that pornography is not allowed in the .gov TLD?

No. The government is not required to host pornography. They are simply not allowed to prevent private individuals from doing so.

Just because it has to be segregated does't mean it is censored.

Any abridgement of the freedom of speech is unconstitutional. That includes legislated categorization, which is why movie ratings are created by the film industry, and not by the government.

This resolution avoids the problem by not actually trying to do anything, but the legislation it calls for would be clearly unconstitutional.

Then again, so is McCain-Feingold.

The Great Firewall of Utah

In Capitalists West Utah notes you upload via dirty port everyday.
In Soviet Russia KGB dirty port always open for you.

'stumbling' across it?

I'm sorry, but I've never in all of my years browsing websites and newsgroups simply 'stumbled' across online porn.

And as far as seeking it out, at least google and such have 'family filters' which actually seem to work pretty well, along with there being personal proxying products that you can use as well. Not that that is a perfect solution, but there *are* already solutions out there for parents/etc who feel the need to block things they don't want their children or themselves to see.

that will work .. let me set the evil bit

This is almost as funny as the joke.

Life imitates comedy which imitates life or something like that. Where is my evil bit anyway? I know I have it stored around here somewere.

dp

Why not HTML tags?

META or whatever - maybe for directories, include some simple unique character prefix (like ac_directoryname), that would make it able to restrict specific sensitive pages/directories instead of whole servers and such.

It is something that could be implemented readily in content creation, be very open as a standard and filtered with much simpler methods then many of the other ones. I think sometimes we are putting too much though into it, maybe the MPAA with nthier broadcast flag/copy bit has us all messed up.

The icon should be updated.

Instead of a black line across the guy's face it should be one of those balls in the mouth with elastic straps around his head...

.sex considered dangerous

See:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt [ietf.org]

All of the arguements are there already.

Idiot.

Right, so let's re-code every program ever made that uses sockets to respect the new reserved ports (since 1-1024 are reserved and 1025 and up are dynamically assigned) just so this asshat can sleep well at night.

I've been saying it for years, technology should be licensed the same as motor vehicles.

and In Absurdium

1) Pass legislation to block evil pr0n from innocent kiddies by assigning it to a special port
2) Make it acceptable for an ISP to block an entire port,
3) Pass more legislation forcing some services onto certain ports (and allowing ownership of other ports (just like tv))
4) Buy up ports and force ISPs to pay to use those.
5) Both profit AND control of file sharing.

STOP THIS LAW!!!

I for one

I for one welcome our content categorizing overlords. I look forward to getting a cushy government job in the new Ministry of Internet Content Categorization, where I will be paid big bucks to consider content before it is put online so that I can ensure that it is assigned its appropriate port number. For example, this idea could be assigned to Port 0, Dumbass Suggestions.