Utah Governor Signs Net-Porn Bill

All Names Have Been writes "House bill 260 has been signed into law by Utah's governor. It creates a list of websites that are not 'safe for children' and forces ISPs to block these sites for those who request it. In addition, content providers who host or create content in Utah for profit must now rate their websites or face 3rd degree felony charges. A similar law in Pennsylvania was struck down last year." (See this earlier story, too.)

Comments

Utah as a religious dictatorship

[revscat]

Look at my sig to know my politics.

I had a friend who just got back from Utah after doing two years worth of contract work. He explained to me how the political situation is there. The Mormons control the polical apparatik, and they in turn are a very top-down organization, with mandates coming from the President, and those mandates very frequently becoming law. No one can oppose them, because so much of the state is Mormon. And there is little disagreement amongst Mormons, because of their inherent loyalty to the church.

So to those who have more familiarity with the region I have two questions. 1) Did this legislation come about as a result of the elders in the church? And 2) Is this basically an accurate summation of Mormon politics? If so, that seems scary to me. I wouldn't want a society where there is so much homogenity, even if everyone were basically like me. Nor do I think rigid hierachical organizations are the best way to run a nation (or state, really).

Re:Utah as a religious dictatorship

[tehdaemon]

"The Mormon church is very much involved in politics. They run the political scene in Utah"

I wish that I could say that this was total nonsense. It is not true, but there is a reason that a person might think that. The Republican Party Leadership in Utah is mostly Mormon. (no surprise, ~70% of Utah is Mormon) It is in the interests of the Republican Leadership in Utah to give this impression. And they do a good, subtle job of it. (It has to be subtle, if it wasn't, church headquarters would do something about it. - as another reply stated.) The truth is that The Republican Party leadership runs politics in Utah, and one of the tools they use to hold power is to cater to a few of the more visible Mormon beliefs. This assures them of most of the mormon vote. It is sad that in one of, if not the most, Republican states, that the republicans still monkey with voting districts etc. to marginalize the Democrats.

It is my opinion that if Church leaders came out and said that being a Republican was evil, most of the Republican leadership would leave the church before leaving the Rebuplican Party. They are Mormon in name, and Republican at heart. Unfortunately, most Utahn's don't see this. Nor did you.

As for the BoM, Most mormons have a simpilistic interpretation of the history in it. (All native Americans decended from BoM people, The Jaredites killed off all Jaredite decendants, Final battle in New York - etc. ) This view is unsupportable from either a logical view or an archaeological one. On the other hand, the BoM does fit several things in history fairly well. It pegs the Olmec civ. timeline within a couple hundred years.[1] In short it is a better guide to Central American history than anything written prior to the early 1900's, and was published 80+ years earlier. It is as good a history book as the Bible is.[2]

"you learn more about a man from his enemies than his friends." And you can learn a lot about someone from the enemies he makes. Most anti-mormons are liars and frauds. The rest are filled with a mild hate that you showed. As for the analogy: Toyota can make a Toyota, The consumer magazine couldn't make a go-cart. I would only trust the magazine for information that was a comparison to other cars, or information that Toyota would want to hide.

People you should not trust for information about a religion are A) Active members of another one (especially ministers etc.) or B) Former members, like yourself.

[1]Both the BoM and archeological evidence have about that margin of error on the subject.

[2] Yes, this means fairly lousy on most points, with a few exceptions.

What am I missing

[Bad D.N.A.]

And this is somehow bad? We rate our movies we rate our TV we rate our Vidio games so what is so different about a web site? Why would toss-the-salad.com have a problem with stating that they are an X rated web site? your company certainly has the right to block you from spending 6 hours a day at sportsline.com running your fantasy baseball league. Why should I not as a parent have the right to say "please block all X rated sites"? I understand that there is a lot of grey area here and perhaps that is the problem. My kids are not old enough yet to worry about but in 5 years I am thinking that slap-the-bitch.com might be a sight I would want blocked.

The problem with this...

[KingSkippus]

The problem with this is that Utah is redefining what an ISP is. Traditionally, it is exactly what it stands for: a provider of Internet service. Nothing more, nothing less. You want access? We'll give it to you.

Now some ISPs provide services on top of mere access. For example, my ISP provides some Web hosting space, some e-mail accounts, and so on. However, there is no law forcing them to do so, they do it to get my business.

Content filtering, which is what this law deals with, is exactly like those other services: something above and beyond what an ISP has to do. Utah has now changed that. No longer is an ISP merely an Internet Service Provider, now they have to muck around with the content they are providing. That's just wrong in my mind.

I love analogies, so I'll present one here. What they have done is essentially the same thing as if they passed a law saying that upon consumer request, courier and mail delivery services have to inspect all packages for sexually explicit material, and if they don't and something offensive gets delivered to someone, it's a felony. A company can't just deliver the mail any more, they are now held responsible for what gets sent and received.

ISPs in Utah have the option of blocking sites or providing customers with third-party filtering products unless they want to risk felony charges under the new law.

My suggestion? If I were an ISP in Utah, I would simply post a link to the Proxomitron on my home page and be done with it. After all, I don't see anything in the article (didn't read the bill) to say that the third-party filtering product that the ISP provides has to cost anything or be easy to use.

Britannica?

[dcclark]

eb.com...

I received a flyer in the mail last week from Rogers (a big cable/internet service hereabouts in Ontario). The headline on the front was "You'll do anything to keep your kids from seeing inappropriate material... so will we." I nearly tossed it (I'm a student in student housing), but I looked again... the REST of the front was an image of an encyclopedia page, one of those standard full-color bits that show a peel-away view of the human body. This one was a muscle diagram, showing the major muscle groups. The sketch was female, and sure enough, the groin and chest areas had been physically cut out of the flyer, apparently to make Rogers' point that parents would reasonably do things like this. The image didn't even have any skin, it was a freakin' muscle diagram just like most of us see in 7th grade science!

So the obvious message was, "We will keep your kids from seeing legitimate, educational material. We will go overboard just like you."

Will the lists in Utah be "reasonable," with ideas like that being supposedly "mainstream"? I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Utah makes TX and FL look good some times

[spagetti_code]

<dons bullet proof vest>
<dons helmet>
Actually - I dont think this is a bad law.
ducks

I agree with the intent of the sadly not-very-well-known RSACi system whereby sites have ratings and people configure their browser to show sites with ratings they want to see. This permits individuals to make choices for themselves as to the type of content they (and their family) see. It looks like this law simply forces people to rate their sites.

Further, the law permits you to ask your ISP to block content you deem inappropriate.

No-one is getting censored here, no content is being blocked if you dont want it.

Note that as far as I can tell, firefox doesn't support RSACi.

Re:Cool Job Opportunity

[Skuld-Chan]

I used to have a job at a company called Rulespace "training" content recognition engines (a cluster of linux machines called the ontobot). Basically (and yes I really got paid for this) all I did was sift through mountains of porn clicking accept/decline all day long. There was other content too, but 90% of it was porn.

Ultimately what it did was desensitize me to porn :(.

Re:Update from Utah

[fyngyrz]

...the defining charactoristic(sic) is something that you cannot apply scientific rigor to.

Actually, it is. We call it "irrationality." A belief in something that has no falsifiable basis in reality.

This is what the other posters are alluding to when they handwave about it is no surprise that Utah would pass a censorship bill such as this one -- it's a "mommy law", where the state (or the nation) attempts to be everybody's mommy. By its very nature, it is defective, repressive and -- here we have it -- irrational.

This is why Democracy is a lousy form of government.

Utah, and the US in general, are not examples of democracy. They are both degenerate examples of a republic. Your representatives decide what is going to happen, not you. Their votes count; you don't even get one. What you can do, perhaps, is throw the perpetrators out next time there is a round of elections. But then again, party politics can prevent that, too. You're not in control. That's what a republic is about -- the citizens don't have any direct control at all. At least unless they are willing to pick up weapons and change the system.

Re:Utah makes TX and FL look good some times

[swv3752]

Well, seeing how it is a static list, cheap ISP could just give a new hosts file.

I just want to know how one goes about applying for the job to compile the list. :)

Re:Cover for science censorship?

[Corpus_Callosum]

You're assuming that we have souls.
Which we don't.
Good job having an incorrect opinion, though.

Well, I guess we can just throw away thousands of years of philosophy, theology and literature regarding this issue. You settled it ;-)

Seriously, though, you should open your eyes a little bit. This topic is deeper and broader than you can possibly imagine. Here are a couple of ideas to get you thinking about the issue of soul.

(1) The Omega Point theory: As the universe matures and accellerates towards a colapse, the oldest surviving civilizations begin making use of the energy in that collapse to increase computational power. As we head closer to the end, computational power is increasing faster than the collapse of the universe at such a rate that the subjective experience (inside the computer) is that there will be an infinte number of processing cycles before the *end*. Given infinite processing cycles, simulations can be run of the entire universe and during those simulations, the brain/body state (soul) of all sentient creatures can be extracted and effectively resurrected in the eternal simulation (heaven). This idea has been posited and worked through by a physicist of some renown - go google on "omega point".

(2) Pure conjecture, but to keep you thinking: If it turns out to be true that there are more than 4 dimensions to our universe and that energy interactions may occur outside of these 4 then it is conceivable that your brain (which is nothing but a big biological circuit) is transmitting information (hollistically) to spaces that we have no experience with. It is entirely possible to speculate on any number of possible ways that these interactions may seed alternate or future existances for the dynamic system that we think of as the human mind (or soul). One such idea is that phyisical existance in this four dimensional reality is much like a seed, giving birth to an awareness that is seated in the brain, but that slowly develops an alternative carrier in this other dimension. The brain being so totally consumed by the senses of the body that the meek senses that come from interactions outside of those 4 dimensions cannot develop until the body itself is gone. This could explain much of the paranormal, the soul and the afterlife.

But these are just ideas, possibly even very silly ones. I point these out so that you have something to think about. Because this topic is not so simple and it is not just about a biblical god or a mystical invisible soul. It is a question of science.

Re:gee its ok

[Tassach]

Why is it a religious issue to not want your children to see something like that old slashdot favorite image with "goat" in the name?

It's my job as a parent to determine what I want my kids to see on the computer. It's not the government's job to make a list of what's not OK for my kids to look at. The government has no Constitutional authority to maintain such a list nor to mandate it's use. The courts have consistantly ruled that this kind of censorship is unconstitutional.

Personally, I'd rather have my kids see Bob Goatse in all his glory than have them stumble across this poisonous filth accidentially. Somehow I doubt the things I think are offensive will find their way on to the list.

One flaw with our system of government is that politicians are not punished for intentionally passing legislation they know to be unconstitutional. Politicians who sponsor, vote for, or enact unconstitutional laws should be held criminally liable for their malfeasance.

Virtually every elected official in the country has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. By willfully violating this oath they should by rights forfeit their office.

It's my opinon that promoting and lobbying for blatantly unconstituional laws constitutes seditious conspiricy under US law. IMHO The governer of Utah should be arrested, stripped of power, and sent to Federal PMITA prison for 20 years.