The IPv6 working group had given this proposal all due consideration back in
April, 1996.
From owner-ipng Thu Apr 25 12:22:25 1996
To: "vivek (v.) kapil" <vkapil(_at_)bnr(_dot_)ca>,
hinden(_at_)ipsilon(_dot_)com
Cc: ipng(_at_)sunroof(_dot_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com,
ietf(_at_)cnri(_dot_)reston(_dot_)va(_dot_)us
Subject: (IPng 1631) Re: Adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header(was And now,...
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 15:18:49 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(_at_)piermont(_dot_)com>
Sender: owner-ipng(_at_)sunroof(_dot_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com
Precedence: bulk
"vivek (v.) kapil" writes:
hinden(_at_)Ipsilon(_dot_)com writes:
Re: Government trying to put an adult/minor flag in the IPv6 header:
This is, IMHO, a stupid idea. I would not support it.
I would also argue that the government (in this case the US Government)
does not have any jurisdiction here.
Why do you think it is a stupid idea? IMHO, I personally think
there should be a way to identify who is on the Internet. The kind of
material that is floating on the Net is offcourse not for kids'
poor eyes.
I also think there should be a way to mark the contents for its
level of obscenity so that those contents can be barred to appear
in front of those who do not wish to see them.
Besides, having an Adult/Minor flag makes it much easier for
technically astute pedophiles to find targets, and I think we should
help them as much as we can, since there is so much discrimination
against pedophiles that giving them a leg up now and then is probably
required by some anti-discrimination law out there.
Also, I think we should have a whole raft of new flags. I would
propose the following tags:
Subversive/Not Subversive according to
The Government of Iran
The Government of Saudi Arabia
The Government of China
The Government of Singapore
The Government of Libya
The Government of Kenya
The Government of the U.S.
Offensive/Not Offensive to
All Christians
Catholics
Calvinists
Lutherans
Baptists
All Muslims
Shiite Muslims
Sunni Muslims
Hindus
Sikhs
Jews
Nazis
White Supremicists
Black Supremicists
Colorblind People
People with one arm (left)
People with one arm (right)
Gays
Homophobes
Lesbian Separatists
IETF members
Contains/Does not contain data advocating potentially offensive ideas:
Individualist ideas
Ideas advocated by the Democratic Party
Ideas advocated by the Republican Party
Ideas advocated by the Communist Party
Ideas advocated by cattle mutilators
Ideas advocated by Hillary Clinton
Ideas advocated by Ayn Rand
Ideas advocating human rights
Any ideas that require thinking (offensive to stupid people)
Packet is being transmitted by
Someone under the age of 18
Someone under the age of 12
A Jew
A Hindu
A person who is known to advocate ideas considered subversive by
the government of Burkina Faso
Etc. Etc.
I suggest, before we deploy IPv6 too far and cannot make major
technical changes, that we have to put in a mandatory end to end
option, initially with space 256 bits (but extensible via a frequency
coding mechanism), to be called the "naughty bits", to indicate the
presence of any such offensive material in the packet. The IANA will
assign these bits to any group or individual who can articulate a
criterion by which he might be offended. All routers MUST drop any and
all packets not containing the "naughty bits".
Folks have to agree first whether adult/minor flag should be
legalized or not.
Legalized! Pshaw! I advocate the immediate establishment of an
international convention requiring the death penalty for any person or
piece of artificially intelligent software transmitting a packet
without all (and I mean ALL!) defined "naughty bits" asserted. This
will make it easy for people to be protected as you advocate:
I also think there should be a way to mark the contents for its
level of obscenity so that those contents can be barred to appear
in front of those who do not wish to see them.
The advantage of my generalization of your scheme, however, is that it
will permit the Government of Iran to permit data containing, say,
suitably head-to-toe covered pictures of women to be transmitted to
the country, but at the same time allow much less liberal governments
to eliminate any such representational artwork, which, as you know,
goes against the will of Allah, and also permit the
pedonecrobestiophiles on the net to only allow packets containing
pictures of young dead animals being buggered to pass through their
firewall.
The system in question is both necessary to permit the worldwide
automated censorship regime we are all working hard to achieve and is
technically feasible. I advocate the immediate formation of a working
group to rapidly create a standard before its too late and more
Iranian children are traumatized for life by seeing pictures of women
without veils.
Perry
PS apologies to T.C. May for open theft of many of his ideas on this
topic.
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