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Utah Considers Forcing ISPs to Filter Content
tipsymonkey writes "Cnet is running an article on how the Utah governor is considering signing a law that forces ISPs to filter content deemed harmful to minors. This would apply to large scale ISPs like AOL as well. They have until March 22 to decide whether or not to sign this into law."
More likely: ISPs would leave that State alone and move to other, more sane ones.
Linux is not Windows
That way browsers could run checks on it and only display stuff that is suitable.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!""This is a far cry from censorship."
It's _one step_ from censorship: first you force ISPs to build the infrastructure to censor content, then you force them to turn it on permanently a few years down the line.
"It's more like the V-Chip we all have to pay for in new televisions"
Which was just as stupid, and another example of backdoor censorship. Made a few bucks for electronics companies, though.
If people want a censored ISP, then they can go to an ISP which chooses to censor content. If they don't want a censored ISP they can go to an ISP that doesn't censor content. It's none of the government's god-damn business whether people choose to have someone else censor their use of the Internet or not.
May I sue the state if my child gets to see a harmful site because they didn't list it?
Please note, the requirement is that the ISPs provide a mechanism by which their customers may, at their option, disable access to those sites from their account. This is on a per-customer basis, which is an improvement over Pennsylvania's statewide effort that was thrown out recently. The list of blocked sites would be an official state list, meaning it's prone to public scrutiny, which is a positive step away from the secret list content filters.
Unfortunately, implementing this requires one of two things:
1) IP-level filtering, which will block non-adult sites on the same hosting services.
2) Transparent proxying, which breaks lots of things, and is relatively easy to circumvent unless even more things are broken.
As far as I can tell, the law creates a registry which the service providers must either block or provide customers software to block. It doesn't seem to require that they clairvoyantly block proxies, which is technically infeasible. Unfortunately, the full text is not available, as the Utah legistlature's web server is returning an error on the text as amended, which is 10 times as long as the text as introduced.
While this is a stupid use of taxpayer money, I don't find the issue of a central, publicly-scrutinizable list of adult sites to be blocked voluntarily to be a bad thing. The real danger is that they will mandate that it be used in schools, libraries, etc., in which case it's truly a 1st Amendment issue. The amount of money they've allocated to build the registry ($100,000) is about enough money to run a dozen obscenity cases if you're REALLY lucky, so the list is going to be full of errors. This is bad policy regardless, but if it is used anywhere in any state-run institution, whether or not by mandate, it's censorship, and mistaken censorship at that.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Don't forget one of the justices is pretty much at death's door and the idiots of this country, in spite of knowing this all along, went ahead and elected someone simply because he was hailing the holy book. Once the laws are changed, whether they abide by constitutionalist principles or not, if the courts are stacked against you you lose.
step 1: paint the internet as evil mean and nasty. Get the brainwashed masses on your side (from both the left and the right) by demonizing the internet as a haven for pornographers and child molestors.
step 2: stack the courts
step 3: get a judgement against one of those non-pornographic child model sites you've been demonizing that equates their content with porn.
step 4: now you can define porn any way you like, the SCOTUS won't stop you because they're stacked 5-4 for the bible beaters and you have a precedent saying porn isn't about content it's about intent of the viewer. Now EVERYTHING "we don't like" can be called porn. Say bye-bye to freedom of expression on the internet, hello to the new corporate padlocks "to protect the children."
step 5: profit! (at least if you're a giant media corp)
And when Slashdotter corporations donate to their campaigns, politicians will actually care what Slashdotters say, even if our comments are insightful. And when Slashdotters actually organize as voters in districts, politicians will actually care what we read.
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make install -not war
Well, I wouldn't call Puritans nonconformists. They wanted everyone to conform.. to THEIR ideals, forcibly if need be. (Which is why they were kicked out of England, and then out of Holland -- they didn't leave either *voluntarily*.)
Unfortunately, that's a lot of the foundation for America's mindset; even lo these several centuries later, Puritanism rears its ugly head. Not that America is alone in having such issues, but it does run completely counter to what we *supposedly* stand for.
BTW, what *did* Jefferson believe? I don't recall anything about that from my gleefully-dirt-digging high school US-history teacher (if she'd known, she would have told us!)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've always like the idea of banning someone from government office if they violate their oath to uphold the constitution by voting for an excessive number of bills later struck down as unconstitutional.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.