Here's a family friendly policy for Mitt Romney to flesh out :
Utah's governor and state legislature has lent its weight to efforts to persuade Congress to pass laws requiring adult content providers to stay off port 80, which generally carries HTTP web surfing traffic......Censorware, or internet-filtering software, is supposed to achieve the same results. But port-exile advocates say their way of blocking internet porn is better.
The technical obstacles to implement CP80 are considerable, and the scheme calls for an arbiter of public taste (i.e. a censor) to decide what kind of content is fit for inclusion of the mainstream internet. The difficulties of getting the .xxx top level domain established also point to another set of potential problems.
Supporters of Internet Community Ports Act argue that the approach preserves all current URLs and current naming conventions, unlike the .xxx top level domain plan.
I'd deal with the censorship issue by first making the scheme voluntary. My guess is that would knock out 75-95% of salacious websites from inadvertent viewing. If there's still a severe residual problem, sure consider 'censorship', but it really isn't censorship if adults are free to access it. It's child protection. If we can forbid plying children with legal drugs, we can forbid sliming them with porn. It might improve the work environment too.
[Ed Note]
I thought I should add a bit of an explanation for those readers without the necessary technical background to understand what this all means:
The internet uses a couple of different transport protocols--ways of encoding and forwarding information from one network node to another. Think of it as a set of rail cars with a common undercarriage. What you build onto the carriages varies according to your type of "freight"--refrigerated, liquid, particulate, passengers, etc... These different types of rail cars correspond to various internet functions like file transfer protocol (FTP), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), email, messanging, etc... Incoming messages feature a code to help the operating system identify which program the message should be routed to. That code is called the port, which is appropriate since it is sort of like going through a specific door to get to where you're going.
CP80 essentially wants to turn one door into two. All web traffic comes across port 80, but the proposal wants to redirect porn to a different port. Since firewalls operate by enabling or disabling ports, theoretically, the entire on-line porn universe could be blocked, preventing accidental or surreptitious viewing by minors.
Posted by Mark Adams on March 21, 2007 1:27 AM
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Comments (5)
I like this idea. I agree with you that making it voluntary will get rid of most of the smut. After that it may be necessary to force the rest to make the change but as you say it wouldn't be censorship. I hadn't heard of this before. Thanks for blogging it.
Posted by Jeremy | March 21, 2007 8:19 AM
Posted on March 21, 2007 08:19
As it happens, one of my colleagues has a meeting with Ralph Yarro today.
I think the proposal has a very good chance for success since it combines technical feasibility with a political strategy for adoption and implementation.
People still have the choice to accept the "community port" so it isn't really a question of censorship. Rather it requires a standard to be agreed upon, acknowledged and enforced on what is appropriate for children to see.
That's the really nice part of the approach--its enforceable both technically and legally.
Posted by Mick Stockinger![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.uncorrelated.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 21, 2007 3:30 PM
Posted on March 21, 2007 15:30
semi-self-regulation. probably the best of "doable solutions". if voted into law, nonUSA ips will comply less often and folks desiring thorough cleansing will still need to block :80 from nonUSA ips. Possibly any foreign cache, proxy, archive, mirrors could also need to be blocked.
Posted by ptt | March 21, 2007 11:13 PM
Posted on March 21, 2007 23:13
Thanks for the technical explanation, Mick.
Any site that doesn't volunteer is making a statement - 'we don't care if we corrupt your children' which makes it more politically acceptable to hit them. or their isp's.
Posted by mark![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.uncorrelated.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 21, 2007 11:52 PM
Posted on March 21, 2007 23:52
PTT,
A good catch on "the catch", but I think you'll see compliance getting progressively larger with "non-US" IPs for the simple reason that they wouldn't want to be blocked at the domain level from the entire US market.
There are plenty of precedents for this type of informal international compliance.
The CE mark is a European compliance certification, but since American and Japanese manufacturers want to sell stuff to Europeans, they had no choice but to comply with the European specificiations. Essentially, Europe determined the electrical emissions standards for the entire global marketplace for electronics.
Posted by arminius![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.uncorrelated.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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March 23, 2007 10:45 AM
Posted on March 23, 2007 10:45