Internet Zoning Initiative, and why it's stupid

Usually I'm not very vocal about 'policy' ideas.  Things that may become law in other words..  But I read this article as a recommendation from Marc Sachs.  We were sitting in the ISC chat room last night, he asked us if we had read it, and I said no.  So I grabbed the pdf and here I am blogging about it.

So essentially what the Internet Zoning Initiative is, is the ability (trying to become a requirement) for lawmakers to tell web providers to essentially make different "channels" out of the web.

For instance, if you had a website that had normal content and adult content, it would require you to run a "Child-free" website on port 80, then, using virtual hosting, run your adult website on port 69.  (Or whatever.)  Here's an example they give in their pdf:

Now, this, to me, is like asking a kid to click on, "Are you above the age of 18?  Yes, or No".  If a teenager (or adult for that matter) wants to go and look at whatever they want to look at, what are they going to click? 

Yeah, I can just imagine a kid now, sitting behind his desk at home, "Oh wait, I'm not 18, let me click No."  Come on people.

All you are doing is saying that basically the kid has to either click on the link on your port 80 website to go to your port 69 website.  OOhh!!  What protection!  Even that, hey, I can just add http://urlgoeshere:69 to my browser address bar, and thusly, I am there man!

I think this whole idea is founded well.  Okay, so you want to protect kids on the internet, fine.  I have no problem with that idea.  But the idea that you have here is a bit off base.  I've heard that OS X's parental controls are quite good.  However, never having tested them, I can't endorse them either yet.  But the idea of putting porn on a totally different port isn't going to solve a THING.

The only idea that I have ever seen that was at least descent was the invention of the ".xxx" domain for 'adult' content.  That's at least blockable and instantly distinguishable.  

Besides, let's look at the corporate implications for this.  Inline proxies would have to start listening on, essentially all ports.  IDS/IPS's would have to normalize http over any port, there would be all kinds of holes poked in the firewalls..  It's just not feasible.  Sorry, try again.

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