So, I have been thinking about this Cambria Struggles in Senate Porn Hearings

[Toby]

The really sad part is, many of us are already doing these things, and Mr. Cambria didn't know enough to say so when given the opportunity.

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by Toby

The really sad part is, many of us are already doing these things, and Mr. Cambria didn't know enough to say so when given the opportunity.

Cambria is a brilliant man, studied material and spoke to what he thought were experts in the field. Unfortunately, this is a common issue with executives. They often chat among themselves and their peers and end up not having a clue what's happening in the trenches. My guess is that he has spoken with Larry Walters who is trying to patent and make a killing on his verification system so he was misinformed about what's happening in the real world.

Cambria obviously was not the guy that should be talking about technology. He was accompanied by 2 high profile executives that also do not know what's happening. It's normal for these folks to jump at the chance to speak in front of congress as it looks great on the resume and a nice story to tell.

Cambria was probably the right guy to deliver a speech.

In the world of securing large scale networks we had a solution for this. We would always pair an executive with a well spoken and well groomed tech guy.

At any rate, it seems clear that we need to educate not only the world but our legal counsel.

[RawAlex]

SirMoby, I fear that you are correct. Some people are almost certainly attempting to manipulate the system to get their product to be the prefered system, thus making a total ass load of money.

It is also clear to me that most of the major studios and larger "name" membership sites don't feel that they would be major losers if free online porn went away. In fact, I am sure that most of them feel that they would profit directly from the removal of free sites, galleries, and TGPs. These woul often be the people that Cambria would be speaking to, and their slanted view of the world can change what it is that is said in public.

Any system for filtering that requires any registration or logging of pages is an unreasonable burden. Any system that requires payment, a credit card, or other action that requires registration by the end client is a unreasonable restriction of free speech (one of the reasons COPA keeps failing).

As a free site webmaster, I am loath to have to go back and register each page I make with ICRA or to make every site into some sort of AVS site that profits a third party. I also feel that this sort of "top down" order within the US would have only the effect to move porn offshore and not limit or restrict it in the slightest. Companies and sites would move to better jurisdictions, and because the net knows few boundries, the porn would still be there, and the children would still have access and nothing will have changed. The USA law makers need to realize that the tail cannot wag the dog, even if the tail is a really big tail.

Alex

[plateman]

well here we go again.... time to worry again? does anyone think this sort of regulation will be drawn out for years or sooner?

the US GOV in there attempt to clean-up porn on the internet and keep it away from minors is a good idea... but the whole world is not gonna go along with it... and look at most adult owners with children using the pc at home most wont even maintain there system or even update to a browser that would filter out porn content...

Also what is the most likely future of our biz we built up?

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by plateman

well here we go again.... time to worry again? does anyone think this sort of regulation will be drawn out for years or sooner?

the US GOV in there attempt to clean-up porn on the internet and keep it away from minors is a good idea... but the whole world is not gonna go along with it... and look at most adult owners with children using the pc at home most wont even maintain there system or even update to a browser that would filter out porn content...

Also what is the most likely future of our biz we built up?

That's all very true but I don't care. I've labeled everything on all of my servers so if parents want to take the time to protect their kids they can.

I would also like to organize, motivate and get moving a solution that would allow more webmasters to more easily label sites and create a website to educate parents in blocking adult sites.

Sure some stuff will slip through but does that mean that we shouldn't accept responsibility and that we should not put forth some effort?

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by plateman

well here we go again.... time to worry again? does anyone think this sort of regulation will be drawn out for years or sooner?

Seems like the normal thing to do in this biz. Everytime I start making progress, something new comes along that threatens to wipe out my entire adult biz.

Originally Posted by plateman

the US GOV in there attempt to clean-up porn on the internet and keep it away from minors is a good idea... but the whole world is not gonna go along with it... and look at most adult owners with children using the pc at home most wont even maintain there system or even update to a browser that would filter out porn content...

This is what gets me too. All the U.S. govt is going to succeed in doing is putting out a lot of hard working American adult webmasters. There will still be loads of free porn everywhere, thus not solving anything. I'm not sure what the government is smoking, but it's gonna be some heavy duty stuff.

Originally Posted by plateman

Also what is the most likely future of our biz we built up?

I can't speculate on that, but suddenly mainstream seems so appealing.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

I would also like to organize, motivate and get moving a solution that would allow more webmasters to more easily label sites and create a website to educate parents in blocking adult sites.

Quick question SirMoby.

Would all pages need a label directly within the page?

Would it be possible to submit your domain to a database or something that is setup to hold adult urls, that is checked as surfers browse sites?

For example, maybe a parent could go to the site that is setup to provide info and how to protect their children literature. If they chose to use the technology, they could download your software and install it, that then queries the database when browsing sites for possible adult domains. If it finds that it is an adult site, maybe it could permantly block it, where it would no longer query that domain if attempting to suf it, but just block it out.

I don't know too much about databases, not much at all in fact, so this could be not even possible to do. Or it may cause severe slowdown when browsing.

If this could work, once you submitted the root level domain, it could automaticaly assume any subdomains or directories on that domain are therefore adult as well.

This probably is the dumbest idea yet. But, If I hadn't of ran out of yesterday, I could of probably been a lot more creative.

[walrus]

Interesting were having this debate when in the court rooms pedophiles are getting almost no punishment.

In Wisconson

In Vermont

In Mass.

[LowryBigwood]

Originally Posted by walrus

Interesting were having this debate when in the court rooms pedophiles are getting almost no punishment.

In Wisconson

In Vermont

In Mass.

That is sickening. Wtf is wrong with these judges?

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by LowryBigwood

Quick question SirMoby.

Would all pages need a label directly within the page?

Would it be possible to submit your domain to a database or something that is setup to hold adult urls, that is checked as surfers browse sites?

Right now it's not difficult to use ICRA labels across your entire server or domain. When it's server based you register 1 url and then add it can be added to all domains on the same server.

There's no need to download any software if they're using IE because it's built in. I think if it requires additional software then it's too difficult for parents to use and someone has to maintain that software.

As pointed out by a few others meta tags would be best but I think we need to start educating people on ICRA labels and present a better alternative fast.

[Bill]

I don't see why ICRA is in any way preferable to using meta tags. If we are going to invest energy into something why not pick the better technology first?

I'm not familiar with how the current blocking softwares work - but many of us already put metas on every page to help blocking softwares. How do we find out wether the blocking softwares are reacting to these common metas?

[SirMoby]

Originally Posted by Bill

I don't see why ICRA is in any way preferable to using meta tags. If we are going to invest energy into something why not pick the better technology first?

ICRA labels are not a preferred method but 95% of the computers in homes today support the ICRA labels. Meta tags are far easier and a preferred method but I don't think IE supports them out of the box.

My suggestion is that we make the FSC and the Senate aware that ICRA labels exist but are not a good long term solution and promose the meta tags. Until then, we should support the use of ICRA labels as a temporary solution that needs to be updated.

[RawAlex]

I would not place my faith in a third party solution. What happens if ICRA folds, gets sued into the ground, or otherwise disappears?

Simple solutions are better than complicated ones.

Alex

[Bill]

I also don't like the idea of relying on a third party. There are already way to many thrid partys involved in this problem - varying browsers, varying blocking softwares with proprietary lists, etc.

But, the core idea of somehow getting the FSC , Senate, and others* to start talking about these kinds of solutions, sounds right to me.

The problem being that we have no access to the senate and almost none realistically to the FSC. The FSC has no internet department or experts, or so it seems.

So, does it seem then like the first step is to somehow get the FSC's attention?

What are your thoughts on how to inform the FSC and senate?

* the others being presumably microsoft, apple, and the browser manufacturers.

[Toby]

There's one person on the board at FSC that may be approachable on the topic, Conner Young from YNOT

[bDok]

Originally Posted by MadMax

I've used ICRA tags from the day I learned what they were. I rate every page on every domain the same, as if it had hardcore everywhere...that way I can use a domain-wide tag and not worry about it.

exactly. I just use the hardcore labels. Just would rather say i'm over labeling then under.

Cheers,
B

[walrus]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

I would not place my faith in a third party solution. What happens if ICRA folds, gets sued into the ground, or otherwise disappears?

Simple solutions are better than complicated ones.

Alex

Alex,

Your not, ICRA and a few other ratings services as well as IE uses the W3C consortium Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) and you can study the documentation and put together your meta-tag without using a rating service but to be quite honest it is much easier to let a rating service, like ICRA, generate the tag for you. But if you want to learn more about it and figure out its complex structure http://www.w3.org/PICS/. They also have links to other rating services if ICRA is your problem.

[Bill]

Really? Well, what's the code then? If it's a simple universal code why isn't it as commonly known as <meta name="rating" content="Adult"> or it's variations?

If it's a universal code there must be some script somewhere to generate it. I wonder where that script would be?

On a related note, contacting Connor Young sounds good, but we had better have a coherent message, and we'd better be able to speak more loudly than in the past, because so far we haven't managed to get much attention.

[SirMoby]

It's really very simple. ICRA is a poor long term solution but it is available today. It would be better to tell Senate that we're using this poor system today but everyone would be better off with a better system such as ......

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Bill

Really? Well, what's the code then? If it's a simple universal code why isn't it as commonly known as <meta name="rating" content="Adult"> or it's variations?

If it's a universal code there must be some script somewhere to generate it. I wonder where that script would be?

Before I got a bit sarcastic, I personally would have followed the link I provided and looked through the document there. All the information you asked for is contained right there.

I never said it was a simple tag, I did say the documentation was there for someone to read and the instructions are available if you want to do them yourself. If you don't, you have a choice of more than 1 place to go to have the tag generated for you.

[PR_Tom]

I checked out the PICS format for a bit, and it seems to me that ICRA is (basically) a high-level implementation of PICS guidelines which seems to only make use of the third-best method. (the meta tag method)

Best method according to the specs is for the server to send the headers with each request. This would seem to be the simplest solution for Adult servers to use, wouldnt it?

cd34 or some server guru should check out that link, as I'm pretty sure Apache could probably be set up to send those headers for every single request sent to a server.

[MeatPounder]

LOL, I know from my server stats that I always hit peaks of traffic during US business hrs, that implies that an awful lot of of US workers are browsing porn on the job

The use of ICRA labels will sure cut that down...LMAO

[Bill]

Well, sorry Walrus, I do feel a bit sarcastic about it, because we've had this conversation more than a few times, and each time that page comes up, and each time I'm left with the conclusion that PICS page is utterly impenetrable, and each time it turns out there isn't any simple way to write one's own simple PICS code.

I could be wrong, but I defy anyone here, except maybe cd34, to go to that page and come away with an understanding of how to write a PICS code for their own pages within less than two hours. Hell, within less than a day.

Have you read it? I have, and I still don't have the slightest idea what the fuck they are talking about.

An impenetrable standard is just as bad as no standard at all. Actually, it's worse than no standard.

If it's a simple matter to set servers to send PICS responses to requests, why isn't everyone doing this already? Why isn't this the default setting offered by adult hosts?

However, I personally don't think this conversation should be about ICRA, or even about forcing computer manufacturers to put a nonexistent v-chip into all computers.

It should be about figuring out a better way to give webmasters a political voice.

[Bill]

So, talking about the political voice aspect of this, here are some of the issues that I'm seeing in this problem...

It's probably not practical to think about organizing webmasters - it's been tried before and has failed every time.

But, if we want a voice, we would need some type of organization.

It seems to me that the most practical thing would be to try to get the FSC to establish a genuinely effective "Internet Department". To ally ourselves with that older established organization, but to _make_ them institute some organizational changes so that our concerns and issues get put on the political table alongside the concerns of the video manufacturers and bookstore owners.

This means something like witholding this years membershio fees unless they establish a real internet department, with someone like Connor Young in charge, a department that listens to us and which brings the FSC into the 21st century.

So, thats my suggestion, a letter writing campaign in which we say we will withold membership unless an internet department is established.

There should be a carrot, too - that is, we should commit to doubling our contribution when an internet department is established.

[chadknowslaw]

What would really work? Something that is simple and easy to implement but makes it more difficult for kids to access porn [nothing will ever be foolproof. Check out any popular bar to see underage people drinking, even after they have given a real live bouncer an "ID" ].
If the industry is pro-active and presents a solution that we can work with, we will be better off than a stupid solution that the government will most certainly conjure up. Look at what they did with the 2257 law! If that had been in place, Traci Lords would still have appeared in all those videos. I don't mean to be on a soapbox, but that stupid law does not require the producer to log the date the image was made--which is absolutely necessary to determine if it is CP or not.