March 17, 2007
(word length exceeded with permission)
About the same time I was digging around the obscenitycrimes.org website, I also found out that the Governor of Utah is attempting to resurrect the Internet Community Ports Act by signing a resolution to send to Congress. Before explaining what that Act would do, consider the Morality in Media (hereinafter “MiM”) reaction to another recent proposal to combat obscenity on the Internet.
One of the news items on the obscenitycrimes.com site is an essay signed by many conservative groups that expressed displeasure at the proposed “.XXX” district on the Internet. The .xxx domain would be a voluntary domain that adult content providers could use to designate their content as “adult” such that end users (and other intermediaries) could better filter Internet content. For example, shanasswirlies.com could become shanasswirlies.xxx. Thus, rather than trying to set existing filters to recognize that shanasswirlies.com contained filthy toilet bowl porn, the end user could simply choose to reject all .xxx domains. People on both sides of the debate have criticized this proposed system. The free speech advocates see it as an unnecessary regulation of the Internet, while groups such as MiM argue that it doesn’t go far enough to protect the citizenry from obscenity.
Specifically, an article on obscenitycrimes.org complains that the .XXX proposal has 4 problems. 1) The system would be voluntary. MiM is not happy with a voluntary system yet they recognize any Congressional requirement that adult content providers must use the .XXX domains would be met with Constitutional challenges. 2) The .XXX system would require parents to use filtering software, and MiM feels that parents are either too stupid or indifferent to use such software. MiM prefers to be the morality police for parents, yet this seems to me to encourage parents to further take a passive approach to rearing their children. 3) The .XXX proposal would not scrub the entire Internet clean. 4) MiM feels that prosecutors would become lax in searching for obscenity online. With no evidence to support such a statement, MiM says that once strip clubs and other adult businesses were zoned as “adult” business, enforcement of obscenity dropped off. From my recollection of local news both in Jacksonville and Orlando, the police seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and money buying lap dances at clubs as part of a campaign to enforce ordinances.
So, MiM doesn’t like the .XXX proposal because it’s voluntary, requires parental involvement, wouldn’t scrub the entire Internet, and would somehow result in prosecutors ignoring content on the .xxx level.
As mentioned, both sides of the debate found problems with the system. Recently, another proposal has resurfaced due to the governor of Utah’s signature on a proposal sent to Congress. The Internet Community Ports Act (ICPA) is even more troubling for free speech advocates than the .XXX proposal ever was.
A brief background on ports is necessary. Network traffic to and from a computer contains instructions on which “port” to use. This port number is contained in every data packet. Think of the back of your computer as a massive harbor with over 10,000 ports for ships to come in. Each port is designated for a specific type of ship (or protocol). The busiest port in your harbor is probably port 80 because that is where all http traffic goes. The web sites you visit are all transported via port 80. Other common ports are port 110 (POP mail), port 25 (SMTP mail), port 21 (FTP access), and port 53 (DNS lookups). Thousands of other ports are used for more specialized/proprietary traffic such as online games, network security tools, chat programs, and peer-to-peer file transfer software. Firewall software enables you to block certain ports.
The Internet Community Ports Act proposes to divide the Internet into communities, with that division accomplished by mandating that certain content be assigned to certain ports. CP80, the group developing this system, wants to create an Internet divided into “Open” ports (i.e. the porn ports) and “Community” ports (i.e. the clean ports [porn can’t have a community?]). Internet Service Providers would be required by law to implement technology that would enable them to turn on or off the “Open” ports. Note that ALL “pornography” would be relegated to these restricted ports. Who will make such a determination? According to the organization proposing the system, an administrative body would be put in place. Would web sites with artistic nude images be pushed out of the “Open” internet? Most likely. What process would that web operator have to go through to get on the Community ports? Will there be different ports for different types of porn? Will the courts be clogged with constitutional challenges from administrative agency decisions on what is not appropriate for the Community ports?
Additionally, one of the touted incentives for ISP’s to sign on to the system (aside from being mandated by the government) is the availability of tiered pricing. The proponents liken this to cable TV service in which premium and adult channels are offered for an additional fee. This would be devastating to the consumer and to legitimate adult businesses. The satellite radio industry faces this same economic crisis with the recent green flag to begin merging XM and Sirius. A la carte service will result in higher monthly fees. So, for the web site posting artistic nudes, they may suffer an economic loss or be forced out of business if they are forced to move to the “Open” district of the Internet that requires higher fees and liability. Would a law school be forced to pay higher fees to access the Open ports for research purposes? The consumer who wants to see “lite” adult content may not pay for access if the price is contingent on getting everything else. He currently has the choice – type the web address or not.
There are many, many more problems with both the .XXX approach and this new port-based approach, but the above essay gives a general overview of the bigger issues.
The problem that I see is that these organizations are trying to create an Internet that is completely devoid of expression that they disapprove of. Therefore, the methods they are proposing reflect an all-or-nothing approach. A post on the CP80 forums by a supporter of the proposal shows the complete lack of confidence in a parent’s ability to rear his/her own child:
Right, it is up to the parents. But the parents should be able to make a choice and enforce it. You can’t. And quite frankly, even if you were sitting next to your child. Even if you had a filter and a firewall with a white list, that still would not guarantee that pornography couldn’t slip through.
This is Morality Police in the highest form. Pornography (not obscene content) might “slip through” many places in life, but does that make it illegal? I encourage you to take a look at the cp80.org site and read the “CP80 Solution” section to form your own conclusion.
Kevin Wimberly
March 17, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Outstanding post. Well worth waiving the word limit.
March 18, 2007 at 11:10 pm
You need to show this to Jeff West.
Why is that? kww
March 20, 2007 at 9:38 pm
The people that want to have ports assigned specifically for porn traffic, (so that it can be filtered on router ACL’s), fail to take into consideration that at some point an end user or who ever was sending the jpg or mpeg,(server), would need to specify that the material in the jpg or mpeg was obscene so that the file would be sent over the new “porn port”.
March 20, 2007 at 10:15 pm
That’s a good point. While I don’t think the Act is intended to affect e-mail or P2P type transmissions, the Act does fail to consider the millions of web sites hosted on services such as 1and1 and Go Daddy. It seems theoretically easy to classify major adult entertainment sites as “porn” and to relegate them to the “porn ports,” but that would not stop me or anyone else with a hosting plan from uploading obscene content to our own web sites. Would the burden then be on every hosting company and ISP to monitor every site that they host?
March 30, 2007 at 9:12 am
[...] Fails Again Posted by Kevin Wimberly under unofficial class post As a follow up to my earlier post about the proposed .XXX domain for adult content, it appears that ICANN has rejected the proposal [...]
June 12, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I would like to correct a few statements in the essay above:
1). ISP would not be mandated to offer the service.
2). ICPA would establish a chain of responsibility starting with the content poster, to the hoster, and on up the food chain. Ultimately, someone would be there to pull the plug on something that violated the regulations.
3). CP80 would improve an individual ability to manage his or her environment and would actually increase speech.
4). There are already a wide variety of standards used in our communities, the MPAA, Electronic gaming, music, etc. All of them recognize a line that exists between a adult and a minor. Yes there is some content that walk that line, but 99% of content does not and would be easily categorized. The remaining amount would have to go through a process that starts with someone making the content available and someone else complaining about it.
5). CP80 does not organize websites, it organizes content onto the ports. Playboy could still exist on the community port, it would just need to make sure it’s presence there was sanitized.
6). Ultimately an individual should have the right to choose–a choice that does not exist today, but could.