Utah's governor and state legislature has lent (http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/213120) its weight to efforts to persuade Congress to pass laws requiring adult content providers to stay off port 80, which generally carries HTTP web surfing traffic.

Governor Jon Huntsman last week backed a resolution from the state's parliament calling for the net to be split into "adult content channel" and a "family content". Utah's support for the proposed Internet Community Ports Act lends support to anti-porn group CP80, though it has little bearing on whether Congress will back the idea.

CP80 is led by Ralph Yarro III, the chairman of SCO, who wants porn to be kept off port 80. This would make it easier to block "offensive content" using a firewall. Backers say the CP80 would prevent inadvertent stumbling across pornography, protect children and make it easier to block access to porn from the workplace.

Censorware, or internet-filtering software, is supposed to achieve the same results. But port-exile advocates say their way of blocking internet porn is better.

The technical obstacles to implement CP80 are considerable, and the scheme calls for an arbiter of public taste (i.e. a censor) to decide what kind of content is fit for inclusion of the mainstream internet. The difficulties of getting the .xxx top level domain established also point to another set of potential problems.

Supporters of Internet Community Ports Act argue that the approach preserves all current URLs and current naming conventions, unlike the .xxx top level domain plan. ®

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