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[FYI] .sex Considered Dangerous



<http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt>


Network Working Group                                    D. Eastlake 3rd
Request for Comments: 3675                         Motorola Laboratories
Category: Informational                                    February 2004


                        .sex Considered Dangerous

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   Periodically there are proposals to mandate the use of a special top
   level name or an IP address bit to flag "adult" or "unsafe" material
   or the like.  This document explains why this is an ill considered
   idea from the legal, philosophical, and particularly, the technical
   points of view.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   2.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
   3.  Legal and Philosophical Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.  Technical Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
       4.1.  Content Filtering Using Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
             4.1.1.  Linguistic Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
             4.1.2.  Explosion of Top Level Domain Names (TLDs) . . .  8
             4.1.3.  You Can't Control What Names Point At You! . . .  9
             4.1.4.  Particular Protocol Difficulties . . . . . . . . 10
                     4.1.4.1.  Electronic Mail (SMTP) . . . . . . . . 10
                     4.1.4.2.  Web Access (HTTP). . . . . . . . . . . 11
                     4.1.4.3.  News (NNTP). . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
                     4.1.4.4.  Internet Relay Chat (IRC). . . . . . . 13
       4.2.  Content Filtering Using IP Addressing. . . . . . . . . . 13
             4.2.1.  Hierarchical Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
             4.2.2.  IP Version 4 Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
             4.2.3.  IP Version 6 Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
       4.3.  PICS Labels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   5.  Security Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   6.  Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
   7.  References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
       7.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
       7.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   8.  Acknowledgement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   9.  Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   10. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

1.  Introduction

   Periodically there are proposals to mandate the use of a special top
   level name or an IP address bit to flag "adult" or "unsafe" material
   or the like.  This document explains why this is an ill considered
   idea from the legal, philosophical, and the technical points of view.

[...]



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