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Utah Attempts to Block Pornography
Utah’s governor, Jon Huntsman, recently announced his support of CP80. Championed by SCO’s chairman, Ralph Yarro III, CP80 is a measure to force all adult content to be removed from port 80 to make content filtering easier. CP80 would require official content censors to moderate the Internet for taste. This will be a daunting task considering in 2006, the global porn industry reaped more than $97 billion in reported revenue while dominating 25% of all web searches for its 420 million webpages.
Network ports are used to differentiate end points of traffic and are technically arbitrary in use, although standards exist defining which basic services exist on particular ports. Such a measure would serve only to complicate domestic networking as Utah’s bills will not likely bear any weight to the international community’s network policies.
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Can a state block a class of sites? by Michael
Uhm. . . good luck with that.
Interesting, $97 billion in reported revenue. What is it really? And who pays?
Addiction and desire are key by Brandon
While I won’t comment on the details of this bill and its feasibility, it’s easy to see why such legislation is sought:
Thus, it becomes much like a second-hand smoking issue. People can choose to participate in the behavior if they wish, but others should not be exposed to it in order to make that behavior more convenient. People who smoke at my office must leave the building and walk out to the second floor of the parking lot to smoke. Even so, there are frequent complaints from non-smokers who walk through that area on their way into the building. Many, however, simply avoid the smoking area by going down a different staircase; they know where the smoking happens and they can avoid it.
The pornography issue should be similarly contained. Everyone should know where it is and where it isn’t and the only people exposed to it should be adults who look for it. The networking complications that might arise are a small price to pay.
Obviously, I can see this becoming a for/against pornography discussion. Someone will tell me I shouldn’t force my religious standards on other members of a secular society by restricting access to something "only religiously immoral." To those I have two replies:
1. The argument goes both ways. Just as someone who likes pornography doesn’t want to be forced to give it up, someone who doesn’t like pornography (or is trying not to like it anymore) shouldn’t be forced to be exposed to it. Granted, one can be careful with one’s Internet searches and install all kinds of different filtering software to avoid it – but why shouldn’t the dangerous substance be contained like cigarette smoke? I mean, we don’t expect non-smokers to always have an air filtering device at hand.
2. These aren’t religious standards. Those who testified before Congress in 2004 weren’t religious leaders, but clinicians and researchers. Even if you remove divine punishment from consideration, the dangers are obvious. Naomi Wolf wrote of them in her excellent article for the New Yorker entitled "The Porn Myth; In it, she describes that although widespread and readily available pornography has not served to motivate more rapes and other sexual mayhem (as predicted by some, including Andrea Dworkin), it has done to sexuality what agribusiness, processed foods and supersized portions have done for health:
bq. The porn loop is de rigueur, no longer outside the pale; starlets in tabloids boast of learning to strip from professionals; the "cool girls" go with guys to the strip clubs, and even ask for lap dances; college girls are expected to tease guys at keg parties with lesbian kisses à la Britney and Madonna.
bq. But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so. …
bq. The reason to turn off the porn might become, to thoughtful people, not a moral one but, in a way, a physical- and emotional-health one; you might want to rethink your constant access to porn in the same way that, if you want to be an athlete, you rethink your smoking. The evidence is in: Greater supply of the stimulant equals diminished capacity.
The most important and persuasive comment in the article, however, has to do with the family:
bq. I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding female sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time. In many more traditional cultures, it is not prudery that leads them to discourage men from looking at pornography. It is, rather, because these cultures understand male sexuality and what it takes to keep men and women turned on to one another over time—to help men, in particular, to, as the Old Testament puts it, "rejoice with the wife of thy youth; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times." These cultures urge men not to look at porn because they know that a powerful erotic bond between parents is a key element of a strong family.
The next thing you know! by smcbride
The state of Utah will try to limit a hard working man to ten wife’s! With ten wife’s who needs porn?