Utah governor signs Net-porn bill

[Kevin_Oberman]

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 12:19:40 -0500
From: Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu

>
> CNET's extract is wrong.
>
> The article states
>
> The measure, SB 260, says: "Upon request by a consumer, a service
> provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed
> on the adult content registry."
>
> Its entirely voluntary on the part of the consumer.

  The question is is it required to be affordable?

  "Yes, we offer a pr0n-free internet access for a service
fee of $9.95/packet".

  I remember at a previous job trying to bypass one of
these filters to determine how easy it would be (during the eval,
it's kinda funny to have someone come by and say "try to reach pr0n now!").

  The first person to bypass it was the one that handled postmaster@*

  only takes moments from a spam msg to get there..

  short of having a live person (uh, isn't that called a parent?)
review the material invovled, there will always be a way to bypass
it, someone could hack some major content providers systems and serve
out nothing but content that is restricted.. i don't see much that can be
done to prevent those that truly want access to obtain it.

The law does not require that pr0n be blocked on customer request, only
that access to a list of sites (addresses?) on a published list be
blocked. A very different beast and a task that is not too onerous. No
more so than SPAM RBLs and bogon address RBLs if handled properly.

Any chance that it will block access to pr0n? No. But, within the
limited parameters of the law passed, it might be workable. This is not
a claim that it is a reasonable law or that it will really serve to any
end-user's benefit, only that it's not a huge issue for most ISPs.

Of course, if it is upheld and lots of states jump on the bandwagon with
similar legislation, the scalability of the system comes into question.
There is going to be much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth when
parents discover that it really doesn't work and the demand goes out for
something "better". They will claim that the state promised, but they
won't be taking legal action against the state.

[Rachael_Treu]

(Apparently I am more movd by the topic of saving porn than I ever
imagined... )

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 09:39:39AM -0800, Kevin Oberman said something to the effect of:

..snip snip..

The law does not require that pr0n be blocked on customer request, only
that access to a list of sites (addresses?) on a published list be
blocked. A very different beast and a task that is not too onerous. No
more so than SPAM RBLs and bogon address RBLs if handled properly.

In my opinion...

Actually, it still is pretty onerous, just not as bad as what was
suggested in the former interpretation. Having come from the ISP pool
myself, I wouldn't want to have to manage this list. Unlike bogons
and RBLs, this sort of thing isn't deployed globally, and would have to
be managed inconsistently across interfaces of those who request it.

Who will handle the requests? Who will deploy the changes? Should
large ISPs' core networking teams be handling requests directly from
customers? Will the same teams managing the requests be called in
during major infrastructure changes that might impact the deployment
of such a solution? What liability will the ISP have if the block
list is mistakenly removed from a requester's inteface? All very basic
(and far from being a completel list) that suggest lost man hours to
deploy and maintain.

Perhaps if the government is interested in taking such a matter into
its own hands, an agency should be tasked with managing firewall
services for these customers, at its own (read: taxpayer ) cost.
If governing bodies are even going to *try* to legislate morality in
this realm, they are going to have to fund at least part of it, I
would think...

--ra