The group behind the campaign to take porn off of port 80 is now lobbying ICANN to create a new "Cybersafety Constituency" to assist in the formulation of domain name system policy.
ICANN has been soliciting a lot of comments on its governance and future of late, including one petition to form a CyberSafety Constituency (CSC) within the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group. (NCSG). The petition (PDF) as filed with ICANN is fairly innocuous and harmless-sounding, but the woman doing the filing—Professor Cheryl B. Preston, of Brigham Young University—has ties to other nonprofit organizations that should have been disclosed at some point within the application procedure.
Preston is general counsel for the nonprofit group CP80, which advocates for the creation of an Internet filtration system that would supposedly seek to keep porn and other adult content sandboxed away from the family-friendly tubes. The organization deserves credit for proposing a system that wouldn't automatically cripple Internet access speeds nationwide, force deep packet inspection, or turn ISPs into de facto Internet police. That said, failing to qualify as prima facie terrible does not automatically qualify CP80's legislative baby, the Internet Community Portals Act (ICPA) as a good idea.
Filtering at the port level
CP80's solution to the seemingly intractable problem of Internet filtering is to segregate traffic by port. All "normal" traffic (have fun defining that) would continue to flow over Port 80 or whatever port it's currently assigned to. Adult content, however, would be shifted away from Port 80 (hence the group's name, "Clean Port 80") and on to a new port—let's call it Port XXX. Were CP80's legislation to pass, the Internet would look something like this:
The system as illustrated would allow an ISP to sell access plans to both the filtered and unfiltered Internet, consumers could choose which they want, freedoms are preserved, and everyone goes home happy...at least in theory. CP80's proposal might deserve a small bit of credit for avoiding some of the obvious issues that sank the concept of an adult-content .XXX domain name—except for the massive technical flaws and political challenges inherent to the ICPA's design. If you're already wondering about international governance and enforcement, don't worry—CP80 has anticipated your concerns:
Got that?
The ICANN connection
Professor Preston describes the CSC as a group that would focus on Internet safety issues and cites her personal concern that "as Internet policies are developed at ICANN, the interests of families, children, consumers, victims of cybercrime, religions, and cultures become better represented...we need to carefully craft mechanisms involving law and industry that balance unfettered free speech and anonymity with some protections against exploitation of the most vulnerable, the ability to address and reduce criminal activity, and the right of Internet users to have choices in the nature of their access."
As proposed, the CSC would also function as a global outreach initiative and would attempt to coordinate international responses to what the paper posits are common cross-border, cross- cultural concerns. Again, as written, all of this is very kosher: everyone wants to balance rights and responsibilities, protect the "most vulnerable" from exploitation, and give users freedom of choice. Preston's letter advocating the creation of the CSC is consistent with her work for CP80, but some mention of the latter should occur in any discussion of the former, especially since CP80 makes it clear that they've considered the role ICANN might hypothetically play in the creation and international adoption of ICPA-equivalent legislation.
Preston's omission is made potentially more serious by the fact that CP80 itself isn't exactly a digital city on a hill. The organization is headed by Ralph Yarro III, CEO and largest shareholder of the SCO Group. He's also the Founder/CEO of ThinkAtomic; if you visit that company's website you'll note (for now, at least) that the "Featured Company" of the day is CP80. ThinkAtomic is a prominent backer of CP80, and is listed as providing the group with legal, strategic, medical, and technology contributions. Run down the page, and you'll note a common last name—Ralph, Justin, and Matthew Yarro are all listed as technology contributors.
If the BYU professor is serious about establishing the CSC, she'd do well to distance herself from either CP80 or the CSC petition before ICANN. There's nothing within the CSC's stated mission objective that would automatically create conflict with other actors interested in maintaining free speech and online anonymity. The best way to disperse accusations that she or the organization she currently represents has a hidden agenda is to cut ties with one or the other. Whether people agree or disagree with any particular position a hypothetical CSC might advocate, they won't respect the body as legitimate if its viewed as nothing more than the puppet of a US group.
As for CP80's ICPA proposal, it's a bad idea; there's no way feasibly address the political and technical challenges of the project. Even if all such barriers vanished, there would still remain the age-old question of censorship—who does the censoring and writes the standards? Pretending that these issues are irrelevant because we all agree that protecting children is important is whitewashing the topic at its finest. ICANN is accepting public comment on the issue.
By Joel Hruska
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