White House Says Feds Should Have Unfettered Access To Mobile Phone Location Info

After Finding No Joy Elsewhere, SCO Chairman Takes Anti-Porn Fight To ICANN

from the silent-majority dept

Wed, Mar 18th 2009 3:41pm — Carlo Longino

A few years ago, Ralph Yarro, the chairman of everybody's favorite tech company, SCO, put forward a plan to ban all internet porn from port 80, the port used by HTTP traffic. He later added that open WiFi should be banned as a means to stop porn. Not surprisingly, his ideas failed to find traction (except with the governor of his home state, Utah) but Yarro and his anti-porn group are pressing on, and are now asking ICANN to set up a "Cybersafety Constituency" to create binding rules on how to deal with net porn. How's this for a binding rule: don't access porn sites, and you won't be bothered with it? The idea that anybody -- let alone ICANN -- should be able to play the role of global web censor is scary, and opens the door to restrictions on all sorts of objectionable, but not illegal, content. As The Register notes, Yarro called for supporters to make comments on the proposal at ICANN's site, and plenty of people from Utah obliged. Wonder what all the people in the state who love net porn think of the proposal...

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Filed Under: domains, icann, porn, port 80, ralph yarro
Companies: sco

12 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2009 @ 4:05pm

Your mom banned you from internet porn
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RD, 18 Mar 2009 @ 4:43pm

uh...
Tell me again HOW its possible to ban JUST porn from everything? Sorry, but FAIL yet again by people who have ZERO CLUE how the internet works. This isnt even possible on a practical level. Even filtering wouldnt catch all of it and the providers of online porn would just find ways around it anyway. Stupid people that exist on this planet, I tell you...
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TDR, 18 Mar 2009 @ 4:54pm

Just one thing to say to Mr. Yarro:

"Here's your sign!"

(if you've heard of Bill Engvall at all, the above shouldn't need any explanation ;))
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2009 @ 5:46pm

SCO - hahaha
Will porn now cost $699 ?
What a bozo
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2009 @ 10:57pm
  
  Re: SCO - hahaha
  don't insult bozo.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2009 @ 7:58pm

Option 1: Encourage parents to take time and talk to their children about sex, porn, etc. and explain things to them like an actual parent should instead of relying on society to raise the children they wanted to have

Option 2: Try to violate the fist amendment by right to freedom of expression/speech, try to outright ban just a certain portion of the internet because a small group of people don't like it and instead of being good parents have to propose ludicrous legislation to "protect" the children.

Guess which option they choose...
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Mr Mike, 18 Mar 2009 @ 8:31pm

Where is all the Porn?
If they ban all the porn sites there will only be about 10 websites left and 7 will be entitled "Where's all the Porn?"
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Weird Harold, 18 Mar 2009 @ 8:49pm

He needs to get laid bigtime.
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Antony Van Couvering, 18 Mar 2009 @ 8:59pm

Yes and they're not the only ones
Thanks for this sane notice. I found out about this a few days ago (March 12) when I was reading their petition and wondering what they hell they were all about. Then I saw the "support" comments and realized from their Stepford quality that I had entered a drone storm, so I wrote a story about it.

Now the same kind of group-think is threatening ICANN from a different direction: the same indefatigable crowd that wants to stop all progress in order to assuage the fears of certain trademark holders. I wrote another article about that.

Things are happening over at ICANN. It's a space to watch.
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Dave, 19 Mar 2009 @ 5:53am

I don't understand
This issue was resolved by RFC 3514. They should just lobby to get it implemented....

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3514.html
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stevie, 22 Apr 2009 @ 8:56pm

i agree
let of tell you something i fully agree with you the people who expose there selfs on the internet have no self respect and are trash . I was checking out chat rooms today and i found one with a fourteen year old exposing her self and much more other younger girls with nude pics that site was called aim chat i think this chat service should been takin off the internet
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stevie, 22 Apr 2009 @ 8:57pm

i agree
let of tell you something i fully agree with you the people who expose there selfs on the internet have no self respect and are trash . I was checking out chat rooms today and i found one with a fourteen year old exposing her self and much more other younger girls with nude pics that site was called aim chat i think this chat service should been takin off the internet
[ link to this | view in chronology ]