Re: LACC: CDA Court Challenge: Update #6

[Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.net>]

> This would ONLY impact packets that carry pornographic material, and all
> other packets would remain unchanged.  Naturally, you would not be able
> to have Classified Pornographic material under this scheme, but I think
> that's probably an acceptable tradeoff.

Oh, I don't know. The remote satalite imaging lab in reston has been known
for sometime now to have enough resolution to look down a good clean
cleavege, and certainly their perspective is vertical enough.

> Furthermore, any parent that wanted to allow a child to attach to the
> Internet and wanted pornographic protection would be responsible for
> setting their own filter up to limit these packets.  Thus the provider
> of pornographic material and the parent of the child using the net are
> the only two groups affected by this change.  The rest of the net can
> continue unhindered.  ISPs don't have to identify users.  After all, it
> is the parent and the bookstore owner who are responsible for keeping
> children out of the dirty book section, not the bus driver who brings
> the child to the neighborhood or the company that paves the street.

I've thought about this as well. You could also use the IP TOS minimise-cost
bit, which is defunct, doesn't require IP options, is included in every
packet and in most modern unix's and rfc1122 complient TCP/IP protocol
interface stacks can be set at user level with a simple setsockopt() call.
That said, it has a granularity of one.

To my mind, it is value judgement, and a difficult one at that to decide
when information is appropriate or otherwise for a given age group. A
given community may feel the age of maturity is something other than 18, and
physiologically the age of maturity is different for differing racial groups.
It is a strange world where it is permissible to get married at 16 -- and
all that implies, but not permissible to think freely until 18, or 21 in
certain states.

More appropriate would be content flags. Using the security option there is
a resonable number that could be assigned. OPT_R_UPPER_NUDITY,
OPT_R_LOWER_NUDITY, OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY, OPT_R_FEMALE, OPT_R_MALE, OPT_R_BIZARRE,
OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL, OPT_R_BESTIALITY, OPT_R_DISECTION, OPT_R_INTERCOURSE, OPT_R_VIOLENCE and OPT_R_ADVERTISING come to mind. Unlike TOS however, many IP stacks
have no real support for the security option. The value of re-using it then
for this purpose it dubious. There is no reason another IP option couldn't
be added. Perhaps the spare TOS bit could be used as a catch-all until
a content option is implimented.

Most french wouldn't be concerned about OPT_R_FULL_NUDITY provided
OPT_R_HOMOSEXUAL wasn't set.

-- 
"I mean, after all;  you have to consider we're only made out of dust.  That's
 admittedly not  much  to  go  on  and  we  shouldn't  forget  that.  But even
 considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So
 I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we
 can make it. You get me?" - Leo Bulero/PKD
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