My friend Cam has started a cause called Fight the New Drug (FTND). That “New Drug” is pornography, and their approach parallels the fight against tobacco.

This is about changing the messaging. For example, if smoking is a way to rebel against authority, then parents and medical experts saying Don’t smoke! only reinforces the rebellion. But if smoking is succumbing to executives at Big Tobacco, then smoking isn’t a form of rebellion at all, it’s a form of conformity. What rebellious kid wants to conform to Big Tobacco executives? That’s the message of The Truth campaign.

Fight the New Drug

Imagine a similar change of messaging around pornography: Pornography isn’t glamorous, it isn’t sexy. Love and romance without pornography is glamorous and sexy. By making the negative externalities of pornography more visible, it would become less appealing. While organizations like CP80 and Lighted Candle Society fight the supply-side of pornography, FTND fights the demand-side.

I’m very excited about this approach.

Mary Eberstadt at Stanford’s Hoover Institution calls pornography the “new tobacco” and said:

Yesterday, smoking was considered unremarkable in a moral sense, whereas pornography was widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by people who consumed it. Today, as a general rule, just the reverse is true. Now it is pornography that is widely (though not universally) said to be value-free, whereas smoking is widely considered disgusting and wrong — including even by many smokers.

Can we change minds again?

Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez said:

…I’ve been flashing back to something Traci Lords once said: “I have to thank Ed Meese for saving my life.” At 18, her career as a porn star ended in a federal raid. How many Tracis are on a computer near you today? And who else is porn harming? It’s a question that our society — which in its rhetoric and culture says it cares about women and children and lives and love — needs to grapple with. If Eberstadt’s comparison is right, the time [is] coming. The shrugs will cease. Yet I hope the turnaround comes, not because the government has made porn highly inconvenient, but because we have decided we want something better. (Smoking Is Out, Porn Is In.)

Seth Godin said you can’t fight an ideavirus (“pornography is okay”) by “challenging the medium in which it spreads.” Instead, you must counter “one ideavirus with another one.”

You don’t counter racism by making the act of uttering racist statements against the law. You do it by spreading an idea (racism is hateful, wrong and stupid) that keeps the racist from expressing his ideas because all his friends will shun him if he does. (“Thinking about this war”.)

Here is some of the FTND messaging, paraphrased:

1. Educate people about the negative effects of pornography and let them choose their pornography involvement for themselves. We do not contest the legality to produce pornographic material.

2. Just because it’s legal to smoke cigarettes, doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Similarly, porn can have devastating effects on you and your loved ones.

3. Although pornography consumption can lead to powerful addictive behaviors, we don’t contest people’s right to view it.

4. People need to be educated about the negative effects of pornography on individuals, families and businesses.

5. We fight against the demand for pornography. Through education, we believe people will no longer want to use porn and those with addictive behavior will seek help from professionals.

6. People addicted to porn often feel they have no options. We’re letting people know that they have a choice.

7. We want to infuse more sexiness into the world. Two committed people together — that is sexy. A lonely, addicted person sitting in front of a computer is not sexy.

Please make a $10 donation to FTND to become a “fighter”. Ten dollars from 1,000 people is better than $10,000 from 1 person. The money will be used to develop messaging campaigns to fight the demand for pornography. This will be a grass-roots movement to make pornography unpopular.

I’ve put in my $10 and I’m hoping many, many more friends will as well.

The New York Times recently asked, Do We Need a New Internet?

…there is a growing belief among engineers and security experts that Internet security and privacy have become so maddeningly elusive that the only way to fix the problem is to start over.

A new Internet might have more security, less anonymity.

As a new and more secure network becomes widely adopted, the current Internet might end up as the bad neighborhood of cyberspace. You would enter at your own risk and keep an eye over your shoulder while you were there.

Stanford’s Clean Slate Project intends to “reinvent the Internet” to “overcome fundamental architectural limitations,” including security.

I’ve previously asked, Is the Internet broken? One place it might be broken is in the ability for parents to protect their children, and interested people to protect themselves, from pornography.

If the university most associated with the invention of our current Internet is willing to reexamine its underpinnings and reinvent it, more incremental changes like CP80 or Larry Lessig’s H2M seem worthy of consideration.

Of course, anonymity can be a virtue. Anonymity allows seekers to learn about a new religion in a low-pressure way or protestors in Iran to orchestrate protests.

The tech-savvy, often libertarian-leaning people you find at Slashdot.org tend to dismiss proposals like CP80, considering them antithetical to the nature of the Internet. I like that one Slashdot user offered a thoughtful counterproposal: “The people who want a ‘cleaned kid friendly Internet’ can establish an alternate port where such a thing would be delivered….” (read more)

I think Bill Cosby’s adage applies: “I brought you in this world, and I can take you out.” We built the Internet. If it’s not suiting us well, we can change it. I think the Internet has already been a great tool for good, and will continue to be, but I don’t mind considering proposals that might improve it.

As amazing as the Internet is for commerce, communication, and education, it might have been better. Imagine opening your email and not finding any spam. Imagine your children or your little brother not happening into any pornography.

Pete Ashdown spoke at the Utah Open Source Conference earlier this year. He touted the virtues of the Internet for open communication and open government. He said the Internet is the “only working anarchy” and we “shouldn’t change it.”

At the same conference, Phil Windley quoted Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet, as saying he would have liked it different. “Vint wishes that the original design of the Internet had required that each endpoint…be able to authenticate [itself]….”

Vint is saying every computer on the Internet should identify itself. Anonymity allows bad actors to go unregulated. If authentication and identity were built-in, perhaps we might reduce Internet maladies like spam, phishing, and predatory porn.

Pete, Phil, and Vint are smart people. But they seem to disagree about whether the Internet needs change.

The H2M and CP80 proposals imply that something is broken about the current Internet. If so, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine changing it. People built the Internet and people can change the Internet. It’s supposed to serve us, not the other way around.

I tend to agree that we can do a better job of protecting children from pornography. I’m not sure what the solution is. Perhaps it’s H2M or CP80, or maybe something else. But if we believe the Internet is broken and can be better, we have every right to fix it. To quote Bill Cosby’s father:

You know, I brought you in this world, and I can take you out. And it don’t make no difference to me, I’ll make another one look just like you. (Wikiquote.org)

Even the libertarian and most ardent proponent of free speech should care that we continue to allow pornography to run rampant on the Internet. Here’s why.

A proposal by Larry Lessig called H2M (“Harmful to Minors”) would help parents protect children from pornography. Professor Lessig argues that if government doesn’t help parents block unwanted pornography, the loss of freedom of speech will be even greater because parents will turn to private companies for help:

Parents won’t wait for the government to figure out how best to filter harmful-to-minor speech. They will get what they can to block harmful-to-minor speech even if what they get is private and blocks more speech than necessary. For them it’s better than nothing.

After you watch this video, I think you’ll understand the H2M proposal:

H2M is similar to the CP80 initiative. Each is a proposal for 1. a new law which 2. codifies a technology which 3. allows parents to choose whether to block or allow pornography. Ralph Yarro of CP80 has repeatedly said that Internet filters don’t work. I infer that Larry Lessig thinks filters work well enough that parents will use them but not well enough to protect free speech.

I’ve previously written that the role of proper government is to stay small and allow nonprofit companies to compete for social change. In that light, perhaps I shouldn’t favor any legislation that would regulate the Internet. However, I see Professor Lessig’s point: a well defined law may serve all constituent groups better than no law.

It was a big week for CP80, the anti-pornography group led by Ralph Yarro. The Utah legislature unanimously passed, and Governor Huntsman signed, a non-binding resolution calling on the U.S. government to do something about Internet pornography. The resolution calls on the federal government to “take action to help stop children and employees from accessing Internet pornography.” Mr. Yarro called it a “shot heard ’round the world.”

Slashdot.org picked up the story yesterday — meaning the issue is now in the tech mainstream — but coverage wasn’t positive. Most Slashdot readers carry both an ultra-liberal interpretation of free speech and a disdain for SCO for its junk law suits against IBM, making a story about Ralph Yarro a double negative. (Ralph Yarro is the chairman of the SCO group.)

Like his Slashdot ideologues, Utah ex-senatorial candidate Pete Ashdown criticized CP80 as technologically difficult, expensive, and an inappropriate intrusion by government — three hard-to-believe arguments coming from a techie and left-leaning Democrat. I’ve met Pete and heard him speak several times, and while I believe he’s a family man and a loyal Utahn, I think he’s missing the point here.

Pornography costs business its dollars and our society its morality. An unbridled interpretation of free speech is no excuse, the difficulty of the task is no excuse, and concern about the “image of Utah” is no excuse. Sure, there are technical details to work out, but let’s start somewhere. Even if CP80 isn’t the solution, there’s definitely a problem to solve and Ralph Yarro’s effort is commendable.

Last Thursday we watched Traffic Control, a documentary which highlights Ralph Yarro’s technology initiative to fight pornography called CP80. (I’ve written about CP80 previously.) The quick explanation is that if CP80 were legislated by government, pornography would be split from other content on the Internet into a separate “channel,” making it easier for parents, schools, and businesses who choose to reject it.

Traffic Control does a good job of explaining the porn epidemic that is sweeping through the nation, especially among youth. For example, one scene shows an interview with a pornographer who surmised that only a small percentage of youth were interested in pornography, then cut to interviews with high school kids who say almost everyone they know is involved. YouTube and MySpace make it easy for youth to view and even produce porn, and many are doing it.

The movie also has interesting interviews with former porn stars, psychiatrists, business leaders, and Ralph Yarro himself. Porn is sickening even to those who produce it, produces physiological addiction in those who consume it, and drains money and time from businesses.

There will be another free screening of Traffic Control tomorrow, Jan 30, at 7:00 at the Carmike Wynnsong theater in Provo (the Riverwoods.) Get there early to get a seat.

On a side note, I just finished reading John Harmer’s book The War We Must Win. Mr. Harmer has battled a legal war against pornography for many years and now chairs the Lighted Candle Society. For an excellent read, see Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s speech at their annual banquet last year.

From A War We Must Win:

By “drawing the line” I do not mean to exclude ourselves from that society. I do suggest that we must confirm and coalesce our opposition to the surge of degeneracy that now permeates our entertainments, our literature, and our so-called arts. We can no longer casually endure (if not ultimately embrace) the continued downward spiral of our culture’s art, literature, and entertainment into the abyss of vile perversion. As Joshua challenged Israel, so we must accept the challenge to “choose you this day whom ye will serve.” As Christ taught so directly, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Latter-day Saints can no longer accept the false notion that it is possible to honor the covenants we have made, to be loyal to the Godhead who have revealed themselves to us, and at the same time participate, even in the role of a passive observer, in the practices all about us that are leading to greater and greater degeneracy.

UPDATE: Traffic Control is now available for sale on DVD at www.trafficcontroldvd.com.

When you type a website into your browser, it’s the Domain Name System (DNS) that looks up the name and resolves it to an IP address. For example, Yahoo.com resolves (at least for me, today) to the IP address 216.109.112.135. People use the name, but computers need the number. DNS is the “phone book” in between.

(On a side note, wouldn’t it be nice if you could call me at “richardkmiller” on your phone? If the name resolved to my phone number, you wouldn’t have to remember the number and if I changed it I wouldn’t lose anybody.)

A new project called OpenDNS is providing a better DNS service. It catches typos and protects you from known phishing scams. For example, if you type “Yahoo.cmo” into your browser, OpenDNS automatically corrects it to Yahoo.com. If you visit a phishing site, OpenDNS blocks it. If you type in just a word or phrase like “Seinfeld”, it does a search, which you may or may not like.

This service is free and doesn’t require installing anything. You simply change the DNS settings on your computer or your router. I chose the second option so this service is automatically available to everyone in the house. I like it so far, and hopefully my roommates will also find it convenient. I’ll report back if I see anything different.

I’d like to see a service like this that filters porn sites for those that want it.

Via: Matt Mullenweg

As I mentioned before, the Lighted Candle Society is holding a fund-raising dinner on May 3 to help fight pornography. I strongly believe that this is a cause worth supporting. The keynote speaker that evening will be Elder Jeffrey R. Holland.

Tickets to the dinner are $150/person. Funds go towards medical research on the mental consequences of pornography, and a legal fund.

So far I have received checks for 9 people. If you’re interested in joining us at the dinner, please call me or email me today. I’m going to send in the money this weekend to get our tickets.

See the Lighted Candle Society for more information.

I wish I had known that Ralph Yarro was speaking at a UITA event in my neighborhood today. (I’m going to build an RSS scrape of the UITA site so I don’t miss anything in the future.) Ralph is the CEO of Think Atomic, an Internet incubator company whose primary focus right now is CP80. I’ve blogged about CP80 before, a technology solution to pornography.

I met Ralph Yarro at the Utah Valley Business Expo last week and was impressed by how strongly he feels about fighting pornography. I admit I didn’t know who he was until I got home and looked him up on Wikipedia and Groklaw. He has a long, colorful history in the Utah tech industry.

And I forgot to mention previously that a Think Atomic employee told me at the Expo that they are working with the NSA and FBI to build a IP-to-geo database of people who publish pornography. They were using a Google Maps mashup to display the locations.

More: Connect Magazine

At the Utah Valley Business Expo last week I ran into a company that is fighting pornography — CP80. I had subscribed to their newsletter a while ago but didn’t know they were a Utah company. I met their president and some of the employees and was impressed by how strongly they feel about the issue.

As a bit of background, Internet traffic is divided into separate “channels” which are called “ports”. For example, port 80 is for web pages, port 443 for secure web pages, port 25 for email between ISP’s, and port 5190 for AOL Instant Messenger. There are over 65,000 ports in all, and many of them go unused.

CP80 is advocating that pornographic web sites be transmitted, by law, over a separate port. (The company was originally named Clean Port 80, implying that only “clean”, non-pornographic material should be transmitted over port 80.) This is similar to separate cable channels for TV shows.

If all pornographic material were transmitted over a separate port, it would be easy for filtering software to work — simply disallow content from the “porn channel”. This would make it easy for parents and schools to protect children from pornography. As it is now, internet filtering programs generally don’t work well because they have to maintain a database of “bad sites” or look for “bad words” in the text.

Like the idea of a separate TLD for porn sites, CP80 will only work if all porn publishers are required by law to transmit over a separate channel and the law well enforced.

If CP80 can get the right legislation passed, this is an intuitive solution to the problem. They’ve already met with all the Utah Congressmen. Senator Orrin Hatch said pornography is a “clear and present danger to children and families,” an interesting choice of words since those words represent the legal basis for limiting free speech.

More: Utahn tries new tack in battle over Net porn

This week I met someone who I believe will be a hero and role model to me for the rest of my life.

One of my life ambitions — though not the strongest — has been to go to law school and become an attorney. (I worked one summer at a great law firm in Las Vegas and really enjoyed the work, the people, and the “banker’s hours”.) I envisioned practicing law for ~20 years to support my family, then retire early and use my legal degree and experience to mount a legal front against pornography.

This week I attended a luncheon with John Harmer, Chairman of the Lighted Candle Society, who has been doing this for decades. Mr. Harmer practiced law in California, became a state senator, and then in 1974 was appointed to be Lt. Governor under Governor Ronald Reagan. He has been litigating against pornographers since 1964. At the luncheon he explained the history behind the battle:

• In 1960s porn was produced by organized crime. Now there are four publicly-traded hard-core porn companies on Wall Street.
• In the 60s, it was easy to get a conviction in court against lewd material. Now mainstream magazines like Cosmopolitan and Vogue contain material more lewd that the material with which Mr. Harmer obtained convictions in the 60′s.
• Litigating against pornography became harder in 1973 after the Miller vs. California Supreme Court decision, which sets three criteria for defining what is considered lewd, one of which is that lewd material violates “contemporary community standards”.
• Up until 2004, AT&T made $220M/year from an adult TV channel it owned, one of many mainstream companies that profit from pornography.
• In 2004 Forbes said pornography was a $56 billion industry.
• The porn industry has used fake witnesses in court, who have received phony sexology degrees from mail-away colleges, to argue that pornography doesn’t violate “contemporary community standards”.
• Pornography is a huge productivity drain on businesses — 70% of pornography usage happens at work.
• Cherilyn Bacon, who hosted the luncheon, asked Kevin Rollins of Dell about pornography when he spoke at the BYU Management Society meeting last week and was impressed with his answer. Mr. Rollins said Dell has a zero tolerance policy for pornography — employees found using it are immediately terminated.

The point of the luncheon was to raise funds for the Lighted Candle Society. They have five goals or “smooth stones” (a reference to the David and Goliath story) — Prevention, Action Programs, Research, Guarding the Light, and Healing. Money donated to the society might fund, for instance, medical research to show the negative physiological effects of pornography or resources to help local attorneys properly prosecute pornography cases.

Come with me to the Lighted Candle Society’s fundraising dinner in May. A table of 10 costs $1500 so I’m hoping to get at least 9 other people to pitch in $150 each to go in on a table with me. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland will be the speaker that night, and the money will go to what I consider a great cause. It’s on May 3 at 7:00 PM at the Little America Hotel in SLC. If you’re interested, leave a comment below or email me at richardkmiller AT gmail.

I believe time will prove that pornography is damaging enough to families and societies that it’s worth fighting like an illegal drug. I also believe there are people ensnared in it that want our help to escape it. We can be the ones to do it.

Today I heard some quotes from the Founding Fathers on the U.S. Constitution. When pornography and flag-burning are legal, but prayer in schools is not, you start to wonder if something is wrong with the Constitution until you get insight into the mindset of the Founders:

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams, 2nd President of the United States

More quotes.

Dear Larry Page, Sergey Brin & Co.,

I am a huge Google/Gmail/GoogleMaps/GoogleSMS fan and a web developer. If rumors are true about your developing a merchant system to compete with PayPal Pro services, I will be excited to use it.

However, after seeing an open letter from pornographer Sam Sugar to Google. I must express my concerns with a Google payment system supporting the adult industry. Contrary to Mr. Sugar’s rhetoric, support the adult/porn industry is the wrong thing to do. It goes against Google’s mantra of doing no evil. Pornography is a filthy tar in our society; common maybe, but definitely the stuff of back alleys and less-reputable companies. Don’t let pornography tarnish the Google name. I personally would avoid and discredit a Google payment system if it were to support the porn industry. PayPal, who has chosen to avoid the financially and morally risky adult industry, is the baseline. If Google does at least this much, I have no doubts that the Google payment system will be the best in the world.

Richard K Miller

via

I’ve blogged before about wanting to start or be involved in an Anti-Pornography Campaign.

I saw a funny commercial on TV the other day and wasn’t surprised at the end to see, when the product was revealed, that it was a beer ad. Beer companies almost always have entertaining commercials. Not surprising — they have huge war chests of cash to afford expensive ad agencies that can make creative commercials. Budweiser reported having $228M at the end of 2004. Why so much cash? Huge profit margins. Above-average profit margins. For 2004, Budweiser reported a 15% net profit margin on $14.9B in revenue. Compare that with the 2004 net profit margins of other profitable companies: GE (10.9%), IBM (8.8%), Dell (6.2%), JetBlue Airways (3.7%), Apple Computer (3.3%). I’m not sure if it would be fair to include Microsoft among the companies I compare (22.2% net profit margin for 2004) since it is a convicted monopolist.

But that’s exactly my point about the beer companies. You learn in economics classes that the only way to consistently earn above-average returns is to have an economic rent — e.g., a patent for a lucrative invention, ownership of natural resources, a monopoly position in the market, etc. Without the economic “rent”, no one can maintain above-average returns because competitors enter the market place and drive profit margins toward zero. It’s hard for the every-day corporation to be profitable. Budweiser, on the other hand, had similar net profit margins (14-15%) for 2003 and 2002 as well.

My guess is that if we had financial statements for pornography companies we’d see similarly high profit margins — probably even higher than beer. Alcohol is widely known to be an addictive substance, and the same understanding about the addictive properties of pornography is growing too. Therein lies the economic “rent” — alcohol and porn companies bank on selling addictive substances, thus “monopolizing” your morality. I wonder if antitrust law has any place in the legal fight against pornography on the grounds of pornography being a monopoly on morality.

richard miller

During the Christmas break, I received a junk email (spam) with am extremely offensive pornographic image. It was a direct assault on everything wholesome and good in my life — a nuisance of the vilest kind. I changed my settings in the Apple Mail program to only show images in emails after I’ve clicked “OK”, so I shouldn’t ever have that problem again. And I’m fortunate not to have had that problem often, but I decided it was just one too many times. I want revenge.

I decided I am going to launch an anti pornography campaign. I’ve studied serial killer Ted Bundy a bit and I know he was highly influenced by pornography. He grew up in a good, Christian home where his parents worked hard and didn’t smoke or drink. Before he was executed, he said his atrocities couldn’t be blamed on his family. But as a boy, he found smutty magazines in a dumpster near his house and thus “dove into the trash”. He became more and more consumed by porn and required harder and harder material to satisfy himself. Eventually the coarseness of his pornographic diet led him to rape and kill 36 women. (Thirty-six is the official count; some believe it may be more than 100.)

And he’s not the only one. Many a serial killer were influenced by pornography — Gary Bishop, Jeffrey Dahmer. Surveys tell that those who view pornography feel an increased desire to commit rape. Undoubtedly pornography is even sewing the seeds of a future serial killer today. Pornography is everyone’s problem — it’s a societal threat that could ruin us if we let it.

It’s ridiculous to say, “I have the right to view pornography in my own home. It is my business. Like illegal drugs, pornography usage by *anyone* affects *everyone*. Playboy ought to be as illegal as cocaine. We breed tomorrow’s serial killers and rapists today by letting pornography spread through our society. In the meantime, marriages are destroyed and homes are broken. I’ve seen very few episodes of Friends, but several of the ones I’ve seen included “light-hearted” and “fun” references to pornography. But the story always stops there. They never show “Chandler the rapist” or “Ross the serial killer” — those don’t make for fun shows.

I told Dave and Brian about my idea over the break, and they both liked it and seemed glad to help. Dave, who just graduated from BYU in advertising, even put together some rough drafts for billboards. You can see his drafts at http://www.richardkmiller.com/apc/.

Originally my intentions were to save this campaign for a few years down the road when I can entirely fund the campaign myself, but Dave and Brian have changed my mind — I think we can do it now. We’ll look into prices of renting a billboard in Las Vegas, and then we’ll start fund raising. We certainly need it now.

richard miller