Utah Governor Wants Net Porn To Be Put In Its Own Port
from the censorship-disguised-as-technology dept
The governor of Utah has signed a resolution (via Broadband Reports) urging Congress to pass a law that would separate the internet into an “adult content channel” and a “family content channel. The proposal involves the “Internet Community Ports Act”, which was created by anti-porn group CP80 (incidentally headed by the chairman of the SCO Group), and seeks to ensure that port 80, which generally carries HTTP traffic, becomes a “clean” port, with objectionable content moved to another port so people could easily block it with a firewall. There are plenty of reasons this isn’t a good idea, apart from how obviously difficult it would be to implement, but the biggest being that it would force the creation of some sort of arbiter of what is and isn’t objectionable — and as the EFF points out, this would be a de facto censor making wholly subjective decisions. This is the same sort of problem with trying to force porn sites to use the proposed .XXX domain. Still, CP80 thinks it’s a great idea, and a member of the group says the Utah resolution shows that “people are crying out” for the government to do something about the scourge of internet porn. Of course, he followed that up by likening the internet to a small appliance: “It’s a toaster, we made it, we can fix it.” This “problem” he cites is one that individuals can seek to solve on their own, should they see fit; lobbying the government for unnecessary, ineffective and impossible to implement laws, let alone laws enabling censorship, won’t do anybody any good.
Comments on “Utah Governor Wants Net Porn To Be Put In Its Own Port”
Thats Impossible
I got a better idea. why don’t they create there own port for a family friendly Internet? Instead of trying to push every thing off of port 80 (Impossible), why not dedicate a new port for websites that have been deemed OK. then everyone just has to block port 80 all together. They can even dedicate a prefix to it. instead of www it would be ffw.
If you think about it, it’s a really stupid idea, but it’s much more likely to succeed.
Re: Thats Impossible
“instead of www it would be ffw.”
Scratch that it should be instead of Http:// or Https:// it would be FFW:// That’s the part that dictates the port.
Re: Re: Thats Impossible
LoL, good point. But you know, this whole legislative move is just way for lazy parents to justify not watching what their children do on the internet.
Re: Re: Thats Impossible
I think they should legislate all malware off the web at the same time. Wait, didn’t they already fail at that?
Re: Re: Thats Impossible
“Scratch that it should be instead of Http:// or Https:// it would be FFW:// That’s the part that dictates the port.”
Actually that dictates the PROTOCOL used ala ftp, http, https, mms, et al. If you use http://www.example.com:8080, it’s the “:8080” that dictates the port.
Re: Thats Impossible
I usually don’t comment-just-for-the-sake-of-support (I do it all the time to hear myself talk, but not usually just to offer up an amen), but in this case I’ll make an exception.
Yeah, what you said. Let the nit-pickers and whiners produce their own solutions rather than force the rest of us to conform to their standards.
Re: Thats Impossible
I think yours is a pretty good idea… create a port or something regulated for “safe” content.
In stead of ports, though, I prefer the idea of REQUIRING some sort of HTML “meta” “rating” tag, or a “rating” HTTP header, even if its value was “unrated” on most sites. Most web sites would rate themselves appropriately. Forcing web sites to at least think about rating themselves would encourage them to do so even if many come back “unrated”, and the result would be very helpful to parents and employers that want to block content with certain ratings without any sort of sanctioned censorship.
Anything that would make parental controls on the web something other than a dirty hack would be wonderful. And, like I said, most content providers would rate themselves appropriately.
Re: Thats Impossible
I actually think your idea is an excellent one and easily implemented, as ffw would include voluntary subscribers who could actually be present on both ports. Whereas good luck on forcing the whole world to follow a US law even if it passed.
Re: Thats Impossible
BRILLIANT!
no, i mean it… awesome idea!
Re: Re: Thats Impossible
ooops
the BRILLIANT goes to the first commenter
kid-friendly stuff on its own port…
Re: Re: Re: That's Impossible
Thank you for the nice words.
But I do agree with the idea that the parents need to take responsibility to raise there kids. Since they don’t want to this is the next best thing.
Hopefully our words here today will reach someone with the power to use them.
Well...
Utah resolution shows that “people are crying out” for the government to do something about the scourge of internet porn.
Maybe people from Utah but I like my adult content like I like my coffee…
Anyway, I can not even begin to imagine the work it would take to do this. And that is a good point of subjectivity. I got a better idea, let’s pull the plug on the internet for Utah! If they do not want the internet with all of it’s dirty content and open-mindedness then they do not deserve to have it.
Re: Well...
Strong and gritty?
Re: Re: Well...
More like strong with the ability to keep me awake all night.
Re: Re: Re: Well...
Ya, that sounds better 🙂
I’m a sweet and creamy kinda guy.
……coffee, that is…. *cough*
Re: Re: Re: Well...
And I thought you meant…
Straight and Black
Re: Re: Re:2 Well...
Well I never was that picky about my coffee… 😉
Re: Well...
haha! yes, some people here in Utah are a little crazy about the censoring thing. living amongst them is interesting….mmmm… coffee…
oh! i like that idea of “those” people creating their own port. it’s one thing to try to censor. it’s another thing to create your own space…
Re: Well...
black and strong?
“Utah resolution shows that “people are crying out” for the government to do something about the scourge of internet porn.”
People that know how to curb crap like porn are crying out for the n00b’s to start learning how to use a computer.
Show some interest; take a class; STFU about things you don’t really want to stop, unless you are backing your talk with action /rant
World Wide
UMmm when did they get to regulate the World Wide Web ?
It’s not the United States Web.
Maybe they should create there own sites ? http://USW.FamilyFriendly.GOV ????
Wow, my first good idea
How do I propose this idea to Congress?
it will make the family people happy, it will make this Governor happy, and it will make me happy because they can shut up.
Ports, smorts...
Ethical porn sites (some may find that a contradiction in terms) probably already support PICS and the like anyway. Those that don’t probably wouldn’t use this system either, especially when you consider that, once again, the US isn’t the only country on the internet.
Further, I know that if I was a site operator, I’d resist being shuffled off to some odd port where some state or ISP or anyone with half a brain (literally) could block my business. Or is the idea to pass more laws that prevent US companies from competing in a global market? (grin)
Again we’re faced with a proposal that has no chance of succeeding, all in the interests of appearing to be “doing something”.
Re: Ports, smorts...
Well and you would always have the people who will throw smutty images on the “family friendly” port just to be confrontational about it.
Port 80 is just a number
Not to mention that an internet port really is just a number. Though port 80 is typically used by web, it can be used by many other protocols. Web sites can also be hosted on ports other than 80. 80 is simply a standard.
There is no way that this law should pass. The .xxx has a greater chance of succeeding.
The problem will then become, who defines what is xxx and what isn’t. Our own FTC can’t even give clear rules on what is allowed on our airwaves. Radio and TV are forced to push the limits in order to get a feel for the limits.
Another problem is domains themselves. It is nearly impossible to keep .com’s in the US. .Com is a US domain, but most of the world actually has .com sites. You can be certain that porn sites in other countries will continue to run on these domains or ports.
Porn and the web
As far as porn goes, it is serious a problem in some cases. I like nudity as much as the next guy, but it has been proven that over exposure to porn can cause psychological damage (Just look at some of the people at a LAN party). Of course this doesn’t mean I think it should be blow off the face of the earth either.
Personally, I don’t watch porn, but I also don’t think my beliefs or ideas should override someone else’s. Part of the problem is the stigma our society has with nudity in general, and part of it is a lack of education. Rather then just talking to their kids about it, parents make a big deal about it. Of course, if your parents freak out over, you are going to have to check it out.
What I think needs to happen is that parents need to be educated about computers in general, and kids need to be educated about sex and porn before their friends explain it to them.
Re: Porn and the web
I agree with what youv’e said,I don’t watch or get any popups from porn sites,once in a great while I might get a voice mail message through my yahoo messenger inviting me to look at a site,usually I see these in the morning my pc runs 24 hrs,a quick report,delete all gone. I no longer have small kids to watch,they all have their own and watch what they want.Education on the criers shoulders not ours. It appears the govenor here’s the voters cries but not of the Disabled,Elderly,Hungry,sick and uninsured in this country,it’s just another way to find out what we are looking at.P.S The united States and Somalia are the only two industrialized nations in the world! not to have signed a childrens rights protection act.
So what are they doing using the children to get what THEY want.
Who would decide whats family friendly and whats not family friendly, the FCC? And what about other countries? This idea is stupid. Just leave the net the way it is and make it faster.
May cause no changes at all
IIRC from my brief acquaintance with network programming, on UNIX systems at least, when a server is contacted by a client, that connection is assigned its own unique unused port for the actual communication part, so that the server can continue to listen on the original port. So, if your Web server is running on UNIX, at least, no objectionable content will ever pass through port 80. No problem!
coffee...
I thought it was black and bitter…
as for the bill, watch the conservatives make a lot of mouth-noises… all the while knowing it has no chance of passing, let alone working.
But they’ll go home and shop around their support of this oh, so important to our childrens’ sake bill to the church-goers.
(Idiots will believe Anything!)
agree
Just like Gore said the internet being an information superhighway, the Internet should be managed as such.
Just like the satelllite airwave is managed and channelized so people can choose what channels they want to watch, blocking porn material via the port designation is a wonderful idea.
You wouldn’t allow a F-16 to run on a regular state highway because it would cause a lot of chaos, likewise we need to manage the information highway with “lanes” for different nature of traffic.
It not a censorship but merely a “managed” information sharing mechanism, if you call “porn” sites information sharing.
Re: agree
Excelent argument. Breath of fresh air( rational thinking ) among all these ‘coffee’ lovers.
Re: Re: agree
Yes, an excellent idea to ruin the internet.
Re: Re: agree
Absolutely stupid.
Who decides what is and isn’t porn?
Is a naked body porn? If so is a picture of a statue of a naked body porn? How about a person in a bathing suit? What about a person in a bathing suit in a suggestive pose? What *exactly* is a ‘suggestive’ pose?
Stupid idea. Totally useless. .xxx is better because most adult content will go there. After all, if they can save the tiny amount of bandwidth used by kids who end up on porn sites that’ll mean more of their audience is likely to have a credit card they can buy stuff with. Duh.
Re: agree
It’s not so simple…. and quoting Al Gore is a very dangerous proposition. Also, following it up with an example of monopolization is not much better.
I don’t know what your back ground in computer science is, but this idea is flawed. This law is a joke for us IT people. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t watch porn, and I think it is very detrimental in large doses.
In order for this to work you would either have to get a federal law (which won’t happen), or EVERY state to sign off on it. If not, you are in essence violating interstate trade laws and that would get very murky very quick. You are also coming into dangerous ground with peoples liberties and international regulations. You can’t exactly dictate that EVERYONE in the world is going to put their porn on a different port. Most of them would ignore it out of spite. You would then have to figure out who is responsible for regulating it and what you do to punish it. In the end, your just working your way toward a massive filtration of information the likes of China or Iran, with the exception that it makes YOU happy.
SOLID IDEA
I think this is a very good idea. This is going to be costly but effective. Port blocking is much more effective than content filtering, besides there is going to be a law that can be applied to lawbreakers. This is rather good idea compared to others.
Now that I think about it the implementation won’t require much changes. It is either an warning index page on port 80 with all links going to OTHER port or a quick redirection from 80 to OTHER port. The sites won’t lose their rankings in search engines and still going to be just as easy for all you ‘coffee’ lovers to access pr0n. I say that because I know. My company serves web on other port than 80, but it still looks as 80.
Besides why would you care if pr0n industry will spend some extra bucks? Of course that is if you are not in that industry.
What I am worried about is that pr0n industry will quickly find a work around.
Re: SOLID IDEA
Anyone who wants to see it will find a way around. I personally run a few circumventor websites to ensure that. If they work on the crazy stuff our school uses (for example, it blocks any website with ‘ebay’ in the URL I discovered) it would work just as well on this.
It’s useless, and far too expensive, and impossible to implement. You can’t change a worldwide communications network that much once it’s already running worldwide. I’m sure China and the other totalitarian regimes would love it, but I have a feeling the rest of the world would put up quite a fight.
Why even mention the state?
I question the inclusion in this article of the state that said governor was from, seeing as how it bears no relevance to the subject matter. Why mention the state at all? Not that I’m a Utah fan… but why all the hate?
As for the ideas put forth so far, I vote for the html tag option… now how many degrees of filtering should there be? Porn=maybe, Porn=yes, Porn=very yes, Porn=no… (yes I know thats not how tags work, but seeing as how there are only a few tags allowed on this BB I just improvised).
All the other suggested options will prove to be only hype… Then again any effort to pass laws punishing content originators who misrepresent their content using html tags will prove impossible too, so bottom line is that no system will work unless the content originators buy in and regulate themselves.
And then there’s the itty bitty problem of sites that point to other sites to display their content in a context different from the one which the originator intended. The madness will never end…
Why don’t our lawmakers try to pass laws to govern the pull of the moon on the ocean too?
Re: Why even mention the state?
Because Utah is filled with 95% over zealous, super insane Mormon neat freaks who believe their living in their own perfect world and everyone else should adhere to their “clean and pure” ways of living. When I read this article’s title, I didn’t have to read any further. “UTAH Governor Wants Net Porn To Be Put in its Own Port” tells me all I need to know.
I think we should remove UTAH from the USA and it should be its own little country. Then make all of their websites start with UWW (Utah Wide Web) or websites with .lds (latter day saints) domains and use port 666. This way we can all easily block any crazy BS they try to force on us.
In all fairness, this is one of the better ideas to come out of officials … he seems to understand the internet and need to sanitize it for children.
Personally, the passive “family port” seems better than active “porn” port and ban.
the internet should be free
I think the whole point of this argument should be do we really want to be more like China? Yes we have the ability to censor the net. But should we? There are 100’s of products that will block p0rn. Do we really need this law to do it for us?
And who will determine what is p0rn and what is art or free speech. And further what about sites like Youtube that allow people to post their own content will we hold them accountable for the things people post. And message boards like this would all that coffee talk be enough to get Techdirt banned from port 80.
Censorship is almost always bad for commerce and freedom. This is a very bad idea from a closed minded little person with no idea of how difficult and costly it would be to implement and how ineffective it would be.
the internet should be free
To quote Adam Smith Writer of the book “The Wealth of Nations”
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.“
Port 80???
Maybe we should force the politicians to use a separate port. That way, their inane mutterings can be easily blocked.
Bill
Guess Who??
It’s worth pointing out that Utah’s Governor Huntsman is a Conservative Republican who started out in politics in the Reagan Administration.
Remember this next election.
I wonder if his first name is “Mike”?
Wow
I mean, If parents ever tried acting like actual parents, this wouldn’t be an issue. Instead of banning all pornographic content and describing how it defiles everything, lets simply either not make it a big deal (nothing to care about, therefore nothing that special to bother with seeing more then once or twice) or try actually talking with kids of why it’s negative.
it has to be...
everything comes back to having a whitelist of safe sites.. the port number/TLD/proto/whatever is just another way of segregating the good from the bad. And since nobody seems to like the idea of government censoring this for us, then the obvious answer is for an independent organization to do so.
thus: exactly what we have now, babysitter software that can run on either your computer or home router or at the ISP. if you dont like how it filters, you are free to disagree and get a different “brand” of filter.
anything else (ports/protocols/etc) winds up being filtered by a single (monopoly) body, which will never satisfy everone in deciding what is decent AND in policing the content to keep its lists up to date.
so we’re back to the same, sorta lame, solutions we already have today… until i perfect my skin detection filter 😉
Why doesn’t someone just create a subscription based web proxy / content filtering service…?? People who are offended can either learn to implement their own content filters and do it themselves or pay a nominal fee per month to ensure a team of professionals is proactively screening content…
An all out ban will never work, static algorithms will not work, different ports would require complete front-to-back global cooperation, and having .xxx domains would require every sleazy website OP to register properly with a .xxx domain name. Further the point is true… How can a computer with hard logic differentiate between art and pornography all on its own…
My solution is to make this an OPT in service that people can pay for… Unless of course the local state / country government wants to intercede and force the issue, in which case I think the Govt should pay from private funds, not collected taxes… I also recommend people evacuate the area immediately…
Ultimately if you want this type of service it has already been largely proven (for most intensive purposes) in corporate environments to handle spam and content restrictions… Why not just make the service larger in scope and reel in a larger demographic…??
I am sure there are people offended in Utah just as their likely is people feeling the same way in Amsterdam even though these places have almost completely different outlooks on sexuality, puritanism, etc…
The moment we give up our choice to decide is the day we all just sold our souls…
Ax.
I agree with the “parents need to be more proactive” stance than moving the “material” to another port. If I took my kids into the bookstore I would be sure to steer them to the kids section and not to the adult section (if there was one). My kids have their own computer in the living room, where we can see them. They don’t use it unless they have permission. We monitor them without “hovering” over them. If parents would be parents than a lot of problems would be solved.
Ignorance When It Comes To Technology
I’m sure I can think of a few ports to choose from that would be appropriate.
But seriously…
I think almost everyone here agrees that this is impossible to do regardless of how one may feel about content segregation. And, therefore, we all know how dumb an idea this is given the impractical nature of it. The only thing this idea does do, however, is expose how ignorant policy makers and elected officials are about technology and the internet.
If they did know how the technology worked, they’d know that blocking access to material deemed inappropriate for a particular age group comes from education, awareness, and good parenting. It’s too bad they can’t legislate that.
I dont understand.
I’m from Europe.
What is a “Utah”?
Re: I dont understand.
It’s a thing that makes the rest of the USA look good.
Why don’t the anti-porn folk move to their own port instead of censoring port 80?
Good and Bad
Okay, so I got one more for the coffee thing…
hot and stimulating!
I think that filters these days are more than adequate enough to capture suggestive material. The problem is most parents incorrectly use these filters and then blame the internet that little Johnny saw a naked lady. Maybe that money should go towards education classes and not censorship of the internet.
Maybe we should just officialize (W3C style, not government style) the tags that are already commonly in use: NSFW and SFW. We could also add a middle-ground PNSFW (possibly not safe for work) or something similar. I mean, people already label links like that a lot of the time anyway so it’s reasonable to assume that people might actually buy into it voluntarily.
That sort of system helps everyone: The people who are looking for pr0n can find it easier, and the same goes for the people who want to block it.
Of course, this wouldn’t provide 100% coverage, but it would free up a lot of time on the blocker’s end that they could spend categorizing the rest.
Where’s all of this content coming from, – that the Governor of Utah has alluded to? I find it somewhat difficult to find FREE coffee…
…on another note, using a separate protocol and/or port only makes it easier for hacks to target.
…on another-nother note, I think someone should look into the potential benefits of setting up a server farm (kinda like starbucks), in the vast, vast, wasteland that is Utah…
Why doesn’t Utah create it’s own internet segregated from the rest of the world?
Problem solved
P.S. Anyone who claims that this is a good idea, knows little to nothing about how the internet works. This idea is impossible. Because this idea will be impossible to properly implement, it is a bad idea.
There are much better ideas such as proxy services…
UTAH SHOULD BAN HOTMAIL.com
Hotmail.com…
Create a free email account using random letters and numbers that nobody could ever guess like JJ00173 at hotmail.com. Within 48 hours you will have 10-20 porn spams in your mailbox.
And what is porn
Like a previous poster mentions, who decided what is and isn’t “porn”? Most people can agree that hardcore pictures and video are “porn”, but what about Playboy style images?
What about the Sports Illustrated Swuimsuitt edition- there’s no nudity, but it’s sexy. Is this porn? Not to me, but it might be to some highly conservative people. And what if one of these people decided that the entire SI site should be on the “bad” port just for showing these “porn” images?
And how long until the fallout from this new rule hits? Will medical sites with nudity be consigned to the “bad” port? What happens when people try to do legitimate research, but can’t? Will a woman looking for information on breast cancer be denied information because the medical sites are on a blocked “bad” port?
What about people doing research about art? Will Michaelango’s “David” be on the bad port because it’s nude? Does this mean people won’t be able to visit the virtual Louvre? Or will art sites and museums have to remove anything that anyone could possibly ever construe as being “porn”?
And who’s going to administer the list of sites on the port? Will the list contains billions of individual pages or only top-level domains? Will this list be forever playing catch-up with sleazy sites that change domain names every-other-day?
Watch it.
Hey, take it easy on the Mormon-targeted jabs. I myself am LDS, and I agree that this idea that Utah has is quite ridiculous. Paranoid parents who have NO understanding of technology are the ones who see this as a “simple” solution. Simple education about Internet use is the solution, not attempting to ban whole portions of it.
It saddens me to see so many comments revolving around removing Utah from the US and how LDS families are over the top. Utah Mormons do live in a bubble, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs to make stereotypical comments about them. I’m a Mormon who lives outside of Utah, and I am better educated than the typical LDS family. While I do oppose pornography and things of the like, you won’t see my ignorantly leading campaigns to nuke the Internet. I just avoid it because that is my right to do so.
I understand that the comments made may have been in good fun, but please stop.
Utah
In understand that until recently the most famous landmark in Utah was some cliff that when viewed from certain angle could be construed to resemble an old man with constipation. Apparently when it crumbled people actually started crying. Or I might be thinking of Idaho, which is a completely made up word btw, anyway who gives a fuck. They both blow chunks.
It would still be http and https. That part does not dictate the port. A family safe url would look like http://www.disney.com:88
But you could get your browser to automatically select port 88 instead of 80 which is default. So in that browser it would just be
http://www.disney.com
It makes perfect since. The forces of the free market would have already accomplished this if the ports weren’t already enforced with the most retarded waste of port protocols. There is plenty of room for this port.