Report On The Texas Censorware Bill

www.sorehands.com writes that yesterday, "in Texas, the Committee on Business and Industry heard testimony on HB1295. HB1295 is a bill which, if passed, would require PC sellers in Texas to include censorware on the machines they sell. Under this bill, if a "personal computer" incudes an operating system, the manufacturer would be required to provide fitering software. There are no exceptions for personal computers used for business, or for computers operating systems for which there is no censorware. This bill was prompted by SPAM to the author's, Garcia, AOL account popping up porn before being caught by the AOL parental controls. Garcia also said that downloading and installing the software over the net is too difficult for anyone over 30 years old to install. The committee seemed leary of the bill given that Texas B & C Code Sec 35.101 et seq requires that ISPs provide links to censorware." This lowers Texas on the list of "states to move to" when my lease runs out. Update: 03/21 06:10 PM by T : Jamie points to this earlier post at censorware.net as well.

Comments

Damn it, I'm old and didn't know it

[rw2]

I read the summary and kind of chuckled at how the old people were so out of the loop that they couldn't install censorware. Sadly, I didn't wake up to the fact that I'm turning 33 in a few days until I read your follow-up.

So I declare that the rep is both naive and fascist were before I only thought he was fascist.

--

Re:Network Cards

[haystor]

Well it does say all computers sold with an operating system. That, and I'd bet most people still connect by modem.

What I'm thinking is that if they want to legislate inclusion of censorware because its too complicated for people to possibly install, then they need to legislate the inclusion of other things. In fact, PC sellers should include everything the buyer might ever need on the computer because it would be too difficult to install.

And when I go to fill out my taxes, they should be done for me when I pick up the forms because that is too complicated.

As long as we can just pass laws and make solutions, if I buy a car (I bought a Saturn) then I should be provided with a car that would fill all my possible needs. Choosing the right one is too complicated for me.

Hmm. We could pass a law that all medicine should work, and be applied successfully.

Damn, this is easy.

If he had two brain cells to rub together...

[swordgeek]

"Garcia also said that downloading and installing the software over the net is too difficult for anyone over 30 years old to install."

Maybe Mr. Garcia should learn that just because he's an idiot, not everyone in his age-group is equally idiotic.

Or in other words, "I'm stupid, I've got power, I'm going to keep dangerous objects away from EVERYONE else, because I can."

Time for some cleverness

[rgmoore]

It seems to me that there are two arguments here. One is the common one about censorware being evil and the other is that there is no censorware available for some (i.e. Free Software) operating systems that people want to sell. I don't have any solutions to the first other than to try to stop the legislation from passing, but I do have an idea about the second. Well just install Junkbuster and call it censorware.

If you think about it, Junkbuster is capable of doing everything that people expect from their censorware. It can block a whole list of sites based either on domain names (like whitehouse.com) or regexs (like domains including the word sex). With a bit of work you could make it look just like any other piece of censorware. Of course the big difference is that you'd also include the traditional anti-ad blocklist and a set of instructions- maybe even a shell script- to switch from blocking pr0n to blocking ads. This would allow you to dodge the law while providing something that your customers actually want. It's also easy as hell to disable if you decide to do so.

Re:The Tax?!?!

[TrumpetPower!]

Read the bill that the article links to. The bill doesn't just apply to $2000 machines, but to ``each personal computer sold.''

I've bought a number of $50 machine in my life; three of them (a couple P120s and a 486) are in critical positions in my home network, and have been for more months than I can count. Net Nanny retails for $39.95, not $2.

Why should the price for such computers double for me, an unmarried bachelor of legal age with no kids? Why should I pay for software which I personally not only would never use, but find odious (considering that it's my personal opinion that censorware is one of the worst ways to ``protect'' your children and, yes, you're welcome to have a differing opinion)?

Why should, say, Motorola, which has a very large presence in the Texas state capial, pay for censorware with every computer they buy when their corporate firewall already does such filtering? (I know this from teaching Internet classes for Motorola to Motorolans.)

But wait, there's more! ``Software provided in compliance with Subsection (a) must be compatible with any operating system that is provided by the seller to the purchaser of the personal computer at the time of purchase.'' I'm not aware of any censorware available for Linux, Solaris, BeOS, *BSD, AIX, IRIX, etc. A nice little byproduct of the bill will be to make illegal the sales of computers with those operating systems.

But wait, there's even still more! ``If an operating system is not provided by the seller of the personal computer, the software required under Subsection (a) must be compatible with at least one operating system that may be installed to operate on the computer.'' I can't even buy a Mac SE/30 without an operating system because I'll be installing NetBSD on it, unless there's censorware that'll run on MacOS 7.2

The bill has no provision for computers outside the mainstream. None whatsoever.

This is bad legislation. Frankly, Texas needs to be putting its resources into other areas (perhaps cleaning up after W's environmental mess) than keeping kids from seeing bad pictures.

b&