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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."
Imagine this bill getting passed: you'd get incredibly slow-loading pages, because ISP employees would have to preview every single webpage for offensive material.
;-)
Oh, and SCO would just get blocked
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
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For the sake of maintaining the Utah readership, hopefully this isn't signed into law.
There's that nice and vague word - harmful. Who gets to decide what's harmful? Their parents? The head of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? The local Nazi political party? The Parent Teacher Association? The local DFL?
No thanks - I want to be able to have unfettered access - and just teach my OWN kids where they don't want to go. It's called PARENTING!
If this does come into law, the easiest thing might be for ISPs to bundle a version of NetNanny or the like into its offering. It does allow parents to block sites or groups of sites, and people who don't wish this could disable this. Better than upstream filtering IMO - actaully, the best thing is for this to not happen at all, but the world keeps spinning on in this direction it seems...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
First Amendment still apply in this country anymore?
My MythTV HowTo
This is the start of a short and slippery slope into censorship. The government should have no night to dictate what I can and cannot see or read.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
If Utah was taken off the Internet, would it make a sound?
The proposal , "S.B.260, says: "Upon request by a consumer, a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry.""
Content filtering in this case is not forced, but a choice by the consumer
This is similar to the content filter that my local ISPs in .sg offer.
The states are allowed to impose stricter regulations than the federal ones. They can censor even more than the government does, but not less.
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Most ISP mail filters can't block out 'enhance your p3n15' emails, yet they are supposed to start filtering out naughty images and content? First ammendment applications aside, this is an exercise in futility.
Where the internet is offensive to polygamists.
That way browsers could run checks on it and only display stuff that is suitable.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"If you read the article you'll see that the proposed law only requires ISPs to provide a way for customers to opt-in to a filtering scheme. It does not require them to filter every packet. I don't think the bill is worth the time, but let's at least evaluate it for its real faults and merits, not some sensationalized bunch of baloney.
In the end, I doubt this law would do much. ISPs are being asked by their customers to provide content filtering. $$$ is a much more effective motivator than laws. And those who don't want to spend the money to implement it, don't have to but also will lose customers to those who do. Sounds fair to me.
It's politicians pounding their chests and showing their people that "see, I'm trying to do something"...yet they KNOW this will never fly past the Supreme Court. I mean, come on.
It's like when everyone was trying to pass a law making it illegal to burn the American flag. Of COURSE this would get shot down by the Courts, yet it looks great when re-election comes back around and they get to say "see, I was all for a ban on blah blah blah".
Say what you will on how the Supreme Court will change and then it will start passing these laws, but so far, even the conservative judges can see how un-constitutional these idiot laws are.
Cause it comes down to this...who decides what's "harmful"?
It's BS and yes, it will get shot down. No one will stand for this....and please, don't give me "oh yeah, just wait" crap. That's all speculation.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
This is totally impossible. Utah has a track record of passing laws and fogetting about the constitution. They "traded" a public section around the temple to the LDS church. The church put in all kinds of money to revamp the area and in exchange no one could swear or talk shit about the church in the area. It was deemed a violation of the constitution and everyone was pissed that they had put in all this money and have a silly little thing called "rights" come in and skrew everything up.
The US (or some state) already tried to pass a law that required a warning that anything not suitible for children on the internet required a warning. The ACLU stopped it quick.
This is just some conservative trying to get more votes by proposing an impossibly unconstitutional law. Like when they tried to pass the law that it was okay to display the 10 commandments in schools. They know it is totally illegal, but gets them a lot of press and cred with their voters.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
What will they think of next? Here's a list.
From the article: The measure, S.B.260, says: "Upon request by a consumer, a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry." A service provider is defined as any person or company who "provides an Internet access service to a consumer." Seems like you can still get your porn if you want it. The real question is the rating system discussed later on. Who will have to rate their content? Utah companies or everyone?
This is a far cry from censorship. It's more like the V-Chip we all have to pay for in new televisions. It gives parents the ability to better control the content their children consume and we would all be better off to have such a thing implemented in our ISPs.
Better yet to separate .porn as a domain so that those who want it can find it yet those who don't can block it simply.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
There's "AOL Broadband for Kids", if you want that.
So the free market has this covered. And nobody buys.
Considering the size of Utah's market, if I were a big ISP like AOL, I would simply terminate service for all Utah customers. You can bet that if a couple biggies did that, this'd get repealed damn fast.
The cake is a pie
It is not the ISP's responsibility to ensure that junior doesn't see pr0n.
There are several consumer software products which are relatively inexpensive that do the job of filtering web content. Hell, many companies bundle this in with their consumer firewall software. If parents desire web content filtering, they should be able to go to the store and buy software that will do the job.
No government, at any level, should be forcing the ISP to do the job of the parents.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
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
To answer your question: Back then, judges decided what didn't meet "community standards" for "decency", based on testimony from "community leaders". The above concepts no longer carry much weight. So I'd expect some state regulatory agency to trot out psychologists and other "experts" who would claim that small kids who see porn will grow up to be rapists and serial killers.
Anyway, I agree with you: this is a job for parents. Who would be better served by tracking and controlling their kids internet usage, instead of leaving it up to some unreliable ISP filter. It's ironic that conservative groups whine about "big government", but never hesitate to call for more intrusive government action when it suits their agenda.
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)
Questioning the sanity of Utah leaders is close to the real issue.
It is not necessary to be intelligent to get elected. It is only necessary to be popular. Many politicians have very little analytical ability. In this case, they can't see all the reasons this idea won't work.
Note to political leaders: Avoid embarrassment! Whenever you are considering a law involving computers, have Slashdot make it a story first. Hundreds of thousands of Slashdot readers will gladly tell you if there are problems with your idea. It's free, and it's quick. You will get at least 500 comments in 24 hours, if your idea is especially embarrassing. Many of the comments will be useless, but there are a lot of very smart Slashdot readers.
You could filter out the ENTIRE internet except for one, blank white page, and someone would accuse you of being racist. Ok, if you make it blue, they will accuse you of being anti-linux. Red? Commie! Yellow? Well, I guess I am chicken...
I have heared from a former mormon the following: - Mormons believe if you are not "good" in this life, you return as a black person in the next. - Before a Mormon virgin is married, she is forced to be bathed (fully nude) by a group of clergy elders in the temple, all alone. - The only way a person goes to hell is if they were a Mormon, and decided to not be anymore. Mormons go to heaven, non-mormons go to heaven, but "lost" mormons know the truth, chose against it, and therefore go to hell.
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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.
--
make install -not war
that makes it illegal to pass a law that cannot be enforced, or that cannot be reasonably followed by even 1% of the people it covers.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
And as is consistently pointed out when LDS-dominated Utah officials and residents make this grand proclamation, talk is cheap. When it comes to actually enforcing these laws, things are quite a bit different.
How very cute. If we don't agree with this government-enforced nonsense, we must be bad parents.
Well I see you that load of horse shit and raise you one. I think the crappiest parents are the ones who need the organs of state to preserve their precious offspring from the Internet. A good parent has a relationship with his or her child, keeps an eye on what his or her child is doing, and is proactive in matters of pornography. Simply not letting young children on unsupervised computers ought to do the trick.
Passing these laws is a sign of lazy parents who are unwilling to do the heavy work. Do you think public libraries should censor that you consider filthy? How about book stores, should they prevented from selling the Joy of Sex?
"For the children" is a cheap political ploy that apparently you have bought into.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Specializing in high speed caching of the internet's raunchiest and most controversial sites.
It would be interestng to compare the bandwidth statistics, even in Utah.
pr0n is a multi-billion dollar industry that doesn't exist.
..don't panic
I'm thinking... this is the USA... and this is different to Iran and China... how?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I know that there was some worry about borderline sites (breast cancer, anatomy, etc.) being forced into XXX status. It seems to me that a review board could decide on those, or, even individual ISPs or users that block XXX urls could whitelist the borderline ones. All in all it seems too small an issue to derail the whole idea.
I have heard it said that this won't stop foreign sites. This is true,but if all US porn was put under an XXX domain, that would be big step. And remember, the porn isn't being banned. People, companies and ISPs would be able to make their own choices about what sites to let in. As for who gets the new XXX domain names, I say that existing .com porn site holders should get the right of first refusal.
I like porn as much as the next guy. At the same time, I don't think it ought to be accessible at schools, libraries, work, etc. To people who cry "censorship!" at this, what would happen if you took out a Penthouse in home-room in gradeschool, or sat there at work reading a Playboy? Access to porn should be something I am able to block, allow etc. based on my own choices either on my machine or by choosing an ISP with XXX blocking policies that fit my needs.
Ok so China... but Iran? I mean come on isn't Islam close *enough*?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Neither is Utah. They are Mormon.
Mormonism has about as much in common with christianity as Islam does, or the Branch Davidians for that matter.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...