No Porn on Port 80 ?
SCO chairman wants Congress to make port 80 porn free
The governor of Utah signed a nonbinding resolution on Tuesday that calls on the US Congress to do something about the rising tide of Internet pornography, preferably using technology to stick it in a ghetto where those who don’t want to see it don’t have to do so. The resolution, which passed both houses of the Utah legislature, was backed by CP80 (”Clean port 80″), a group founded and headed by Ralph Yarro. CP80’s plan to cleanse the Internet isn’t the only controversy that Yarro’s involved in, though; he also happens to chair the board of directors for SCO.
This is stupid for 3 reason that I thought was obvious to most people.
- The Internet is a GLOBAL network. While the reach of any legislation in the US stops at its borders. MOST porn originates outside of the US, so any such law would be pointless
- Nearly EVERY time technical specifications are legislated it is BAD. This is because legislatures know nearly nothing about technology.
- Lastly, While the WWW works primarily on port 80 it does not exclusively use port 80
Now a year or so back there was movement to add a .porn.xxx domain. ICANN and ISPs could have forced adult sites to migrate there, which would have accomplished what CP80 is now trying to achieve, but ICANN which I think is an arm of Commerce dept. rejected the idea because of pressure from conservatives.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
No Porn on Port 80 ?…
SCO chairman wants Congress to make port 80 porn f……
March 26th, 2007 at 10:33 am
YOu must compleatly understand the solution before you open your mouth. The CP80 solution, has two ways of dealing with the global internet and they are not talking about a single port. Educate yourself. http://www.cp80.org
March 28th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Gill,
It doesn’t matter how many ports they are talking about. They are trying to dictate protocol policy for a specific content. That is NOT how the Internet works.
from cp80.org
Let me make this simple. Choosing ports is a protocol decision, irrespective of the content. Long ago port 80 was chosen for HTTP, 21 for http://FTP. There is no porn port because porn is not a protocol.
The internet already has a way of regulating content and behavior. That is though ICANN and Top Level Domains(TLDs) A ‘dot triple X’ domain would be a perfect place to migrate all adult content. That would have been MUCH easier and far less disruptive to the general public, AND the whole world was behind the new domain, except the Bush administration, and certain conservatives that had his ear.
CP80 is the WRONG way to achieve this goal. The right way was shotdown already.
Another plausible and correct solution would be to sponsor/or build open source router software with built in filters and parental controls. All of the pieces ALREADY exists. All they or anybody interest would have to do is package it together into a firmware that is easy for the average consumer and could be installed on a router.
April 5th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
The problem with CP80 is that is attempts to make the Internet analogous to television. Ports are not channels. You aren’t going to change ports to change the type of content you get.
A .*** TLD isn’t that much of an improvement. Are we going to going to create domains for every type of content that can be distributed? Why not a .blog domain? and a .joke domain? And a .news domain? And a .jackassgettingkickedintheballsbyadonkey domain?
Who would decide which domain your content belongs in? And how would they know an ENTIRE WEBSITE belongs in one TLD or another? Granted, many websites these days are highly specialized and targeted but that’s only today’s trend. Websites are more like venues… its up to the authors to decide what kind of content is out there on a page by page basis. One page could be filled with pr0n while another has postmodern philosophical rantings and another is a news aggregator. It wouldn’t make sense to relegate the entire site to some whacked out TLD because some grandma in Nebraska objects to the appearance of nipples on a web page she voluntarily surfed to.
This isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. AFAIK one of the reasons .*** failed is because the government was going to try to force ICANN to review websites to determine who should be in the .*** TLD. They weren’t interested in playing the role of international internet censor so they dropped it.
I have a simple way to limit children’s access to pr0n. Stop letting your children use the Internet unsupervised at home. Be a PARENT instead of a wage earn who drops by the house after 7 PM to eat dinner and sleep. As for adults… last I checked I didn’t need anybody to tell me what I could and couldn’t look at. Plus anybody who surfs to a porn site probably meant to go there (unless your computer has been turned into a zombie but that’s a different problem altogether).
April 6th, 2007 at 10:04 am
The problem with CP80 is that is attempts to make the Internet analogous to television. Ports are not channels. You aren’t going to change ports to change the type of content you get.
Exactly
Are we going to going to create domains for every type of content that can be distributed?
No But I think we can agree that porn is a special type of content. And requires special treatment.
Who would decide which domain your content belongs in?
Web hosts. Most already have policies about Adult content. Those that allow it could just mandate that a ‘Triple X’ TLD for adult websites.
AFAIK one of the reasons .*** failed is because the government was going to try to force ICANN to review websites to determine who should be in the .*** TLD. They weren’t interested in playing the role of international internet censor so they dropped it.
I heard differently
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/04/03/116257.shtml
I have a simple way to limit children’s access to pr0n.
Absolutly!! None of this takes the place of good parenting, but with so many type of media children have access to it can be hard for some, especially the least tech savy parents, to keep up. A ‘triple X’ TLD could be one tool that parents have in there belt.
May 4th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
The implications of CP80 reach beyond pornography in so many good ways. The frustration is that those who enjoy porn are so up in arms about making things equally organized so those who don’t like porn don’t have to see it. If there was a port for porn, and you like to see porn, you can see it. However, those who don’t can easily block it. This is something I think most people could agree on.
May 6th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
If there was a port for porn, and you like to see porn, you can see it. However, those who don’t can easily block it. This is something I think most people could agree on.
collinevan,
Absolutely. The problem with CP80, is this is the WRONG way to achieve that goal. CP80 is trying to effect what content available on what port. That is not what ports are for. The convention is that different ports are for different protocols. Porn is not a protocol. Those in support of CP80 should lobby the federal government to pressure ICANN give a special domain for porn. It would not have taken a lot of pressure because ICANN was set to do it but was stopped buy the Bush administration.
July 14th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
And there’s the pesky issue of defining pornography. It’s difficult to do in the U.S. How do we reach a worldwide consensus?
My grandmother’s appearance when I took her to the doctor last week would be considered pornography in some countries. She was wearing short pants and her head was uncovered.
July 16th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
dane,
It isn’t even that I disagree with cp80’s desired effect. I have kids and they are more and more becoming aware of what is available on the internet. And I can’t watch them every waking second of the day. But they way do it won’t work, and comprises the power of the Internet in the process. The power of the internet is at the edges, the nodes, each little computer, or not so little, and is connected. The nets job is simply to move bits from one, node to another, and it does this VERY reliably. But cp80 wants the internet to now make a “value judgment.” That’s MY job. I’ll make my own value judgments for me and my children.
I don’t need cp80 or my ISP to tell what is and isn’t porn “I know it when I see it.”
Thanks for stopping by.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:19 am
children must grow up to become adult. and then they’ll decide all ’bout porn - watch it or no