back to article No pr0n, no interference - puritan broadband is go

The FCC has completed tests confirming that deployment of its porn-and-cost-free network won't interfere with incumbent operators, as already established by Ofcom and Czech deployments. The tests were completed during September, and state unequivocally that a deployment of Time Division Duplexing technology won't interfere …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    technological advancement without P0rn?

    Time to take the internet away from the puritanical i think, until they learn to be grateful to the porn industry for the extensive list of things they have done to further mankind.

    There are only two things man strives to do, and has done since cave dwelling days.

    1) share pictures of naked women (as seen in cave paintings onwards)

    2) throw bigger rocks further.

    Thank you porn for making the internet commercially viable.

    Thank you porn for pushing the VCR into the commercial world.

    And thank you porn for making Blu-ray the de facto standard.

  2. Charles
    Alert

    Collateral damage?

    Has anyone contacted the FCC about how it would be at all possible to filter out objectionable content without filtering out legitimate content? For example, encrypted porn look all the same to a content filter as an encrypted shopping transaction. On a different tack, how can a site differentiate between a home-built porn site and a blog criticizing abortion?

  3. Jeremy
    Happy

    Ok, I'll say it...

    Define what is inappropriate...

  4. Michael

    @Charles

    At a guess, they'd sign up to one of the big filtering services and turn everything on. Then any time someone complained about the huge holes, biased policing or the mass of false positives, they'd just point at the software and say "but it's the INDUSTRY STANDARD!"

    Which is probably a good reason for all the big filtering companies to turn down the offer.

  5. Steve

    Hey, FCC....

    ...can you spell VPN?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    is that a typo ?

    "There's also the problem of finding a filtering technology to remove all that grot, and one that the whole USA finds acceptable."

    should that not read:-

    There's also the problem of finding a filtering technology to remove all that grot, and one that on the whole, finds the USA acceptable.

  7. Dave Murray
    Stop

    Error

    "FCC to auction off the 25MHz of spectrum"

    "It remains to be seen if anyone will be tempted to bid for the spectrum, which starts at 2155MHz "

    So which is it? 25MHz or 25GHz?

    Be nice if you could catch an error that's 2 paragraphs from the correct answer before publication.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    RE: OK, I'll say it

    Inappropriate iz vat zee government tellz you it iz.... there iz nothing to see here, move along... vere are your papers citizen??

  9. Bill Ray (Written by Reg staff)

    Re: Error

    Er... 25MHz of spectrum; starting at 2155MHz and stretching to 2180MHz, the "MHz" is used both as measure of quantity and position within the radio spectrum.

    Perhaps I've been doing this job too long.

    Bill.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    @jeremy - Define what is inappropriate

    Innappropriate is whatever you want to look at.

    Innappropriate is whatever you think about.

    Innappropriate is whatever the bluenoses tell you it is.

    Innappropriate is where your hands are right now.

    how far down this road do you really want to go? these people are sick, sick, sick; but still think they're well enough to tell everyone else what is Innappropriate.

  11. Joe Zeff
    Paris Hilton

    It's not going to be possible

    They're not going to manage to keep their network pr0n free no matter how they filter it. If nothing else, purveyors of XXX content will work out code words that will skip around any blocking software. After all, this is the Internet we're talking about, and in the long run, it will treat blocking software like any other damaged segment and work around it.

    Paris, because she, at least, knows what the Internet is for!

  12. Chris Pasiuk

    Defining what's inappropriate... hmmm...

    Oh the wheels on the bus go round and round... just like this plan will never get off the ground. It'll be bogged up in politics till something new and great (and shiny perhaps) distracts us yanks into spending more money elsewhere.

    Honestly though, it should be delegated to the same services used by public libraries that also prevent people from using those systems to access 'inappropriate' material (theoretically) the real stopper is who's library are they going to pattern off of? NYC's or Wichita's? :P

  13. Ken Hagan Gold badge
    Joke

    How to filter inappropriate content

    Offer such a rubbish service that no-one can really do anything beyond checking their email?

    Require the use of IPsec with ESP, as in a VPN, so you can deny all knowledge of the data folks are pulling through?

    Route all content through to a Chinese ISP and rely on the Great Wall to filter it?

    Only allow connections to www.theregister.co.uk?

  14. Paul
    Thumb Down

    No Pr0n, No Internet

    No seriously, it might seem trivial but that no porn rule is going to completely cripple this. Someone already pointed out that they won't be able to allow encryption on this, but even without encryption trying to filter out all porn is a fool's errand. The only way I can see it working is on a whitelist basis. They could only allow access to a limited number of pre-approved sites, obviously not including any that contain user-submitted content.

  15. Daniel Garcia
    Paris Hilton

    FAIL!!!!

    The same reason they dont get that this proyect will FAIL is why they got so much problem with human reproductive actiontime and its joy..... STUPIDITY (mentally driven by fairy tales ofc)

    Paris Hilton for President ( for sure a lesser evil)!

  16. Charles

    @Dave Murray

    That was *not* a typo. 25MHz represents the bandwidth to be made available for this project. 2155MHz happens to be the low-end frequency the stuff's supposed to transmit in.

    @Paul: No way that'd fly in America. That flies smack into the 1st Amendment freedom of speech and/or freedom of the press. Since it's the government who's auctioning off the spectrum and dictating the rules, anything that involves a whitelist would soon find itself in front of a federal court explaining why the 1st Amendment is being overlooked. Blacklists at least have a chance (having a precedent with the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission), provided the blacklist is confirmed to contain material patently obscene.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Rather limited choice envisioned.

    I see another problem.

    There is no way all those whining, self important Puritans can possibly agree on what sites ARE suitable.

    At best the "Puritan WWW" would have one or two websites!!!!

    Even a weather site would not be allowed, as they show the world as round, something the Flat Earthers would never allow!!!!

    Paris Is that a tear in her eye because they wont let her on their internet????

  18. Wayland Sothcott
    Flame

    Fahrenheit.451

    I just downloaded via Bit Torrent and watched Fahrenheit.451.

    In this 1966 film, houses are fireproof and everyone is glued to their flat screen TVs and pop prozac pills all day. The fire brigade hunt for books which are illegal since they make people unhappy. They make a big pile of books and one fireman gets to use the flame thrower to burn them.

    The hero is a fireman who gets curious about people who read books.

    A remake of this film is probably Equilibrium.

    The same theme of banned cultural possessions shows up in V for Vendetta

    At the moment we have the upper hand. But slowly little by little the book burners are gaining more power. They may only be able to keep the 2100MHz band free of smut and hate crimes at the moment but they have bigger amitions. As in Fahrenheit.451 there will always be subversives who buck the system but they will be hunted down and possibly even shopped by their own neighbours.

    In terms of networking using a VPN would attract attention. I can see for our own safety that we will have to submit to some sort of escrow system. Rember when encryption was going to require that the keys be held a government agency who were not going to leave them on a CD on a train. This could still come back under a different guise.

    Icon, fire burning at 451F

  19. Tim

    Not so inappropriate

    A vicar is travelling for an ecclesiastical conference and checks into a hotel. At the end of the checking in process, he calls the manager over and asks "Excuse me my son, but is the pron on my room TV disabled? " The manager replies, "No, it's normal stuff, you sick bast**d".

    Tim#3

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Am I missing something?

    1) Encryption makes it impossible to know what the content is

    2) VPNs?

    3) It's environmentally unfriendly - you stop the naughtiness on the web, millions of trees will die to make <cough> artistic literature

    4) Pron was the innovator on the web - ok, it was designed for bubble chambers, but I bet there were pictures of boobs before the first week was up, and the pron industry is (indirectly) responsible for building the thing in the first place. Why lock out those to whom we owe so much?

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    To Quote Dr Cox...

    'I'm fairly sure if they took porn off the internet, there'd only be one website left, and it'd be called Bring back the porn! '

  22. Michael

    @ AC

    No, if they took the porn off the internet it would just be 80% pictures of cats.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    This will fail

    For one reason: no pr0n.

    Without pron, nobody will want their crappy service.

    Paris because...

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like