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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.)
Utah does not want web hosting businesses to take root in the promised land.
This whole line of thought is so flawed. "Protect the children" seems to take priority over everything including common sense.
Creating rules for criminals, cons, scammers, spammers, and porn distributers is not effective. These people either do not care about laws at all, or they care but still wont stop.
The state of utah can effectively ban the bad sites from being in their state, but this will just lead to Utah residents hosting, or more likely routing to Asia (add obligatory korean joke).
The seen effect is that Utah is clean of all porn sites, but the residents of Utah (and their precious children) are still exposed to all kinds of filth from other areas.
These examples just show why blacklisting doesn't work. If anyone should blacklist it's the citizen, and this should be done by not viewing any site which is in a whitelist.
In this case, I think Utah should strongly encourage sites to identify their strong points, and identify as clean child friendly sites.
The more internet content that can be classified unconditionally as clean, the better for protection. It's possible that Utah will actually help this problem, as only the child friendly minds will be obeying the laws.
I can see that having a censorship vibe with unconditional rules here would discourage legit content providers from participating. A blogger, or community site builder would be infinitly more pleased with conforming to these rules if "friendly" sites were praised, linked highly, or even supported with something simple like a lottery or free hosting.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
On your political position... I think you can see mine as well.
To say that the conservative view is 'gloriously wrong' could be taken the wrong way. The definition of "conservative" is simply unchanged, how things used to be, etc. Now if everything in the past is always wrong, how can we look forward to the future. Looking at this in a pure sense says that in 20 years, the conservatives will be doing what liberals are doing right now.
I'm always skeptical of someone who views the past as completely and utterly inferior. The viewpoint that change is good usually doesn't bother me, but radical changes which lead to scoffing at the past seems both arrogant and wrong from my viewpoint.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I fully realize there is a great difference between what Utah (and other states) are doing compared to China/Iran as the programs are "opt-out" instead of state mandated, but I find the situation a bit funny. Imagine this conversation:
Bush: China, you are evil! You need to give your people "free" access to the internet so they can have free access to all ideas and opinion, not just yours!
China: But this is just our socities norms, we think there are certain things they shouldn't see.
Bush: Yeah, but your socity is STUPID, you atheist bastards. You are all going to HELL!
China: I'm sorry you feel that way, but its our right to decide that on our own.
Bush: If you didn't have so many people worried about blocking the internet and spent the time developing useful technology you could bring more wealth to your people, you are just being stupid!!!
Utah Gov: Psst, Mr President the people of our state want to block pornographic sites.
Bush: Hey, thats a great idea! My lord and saviour will love that!!! Hey, China can we get a download of that blocking software you have?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
I know what you're talking about. I hate politically correctness. Hey I know lets talk about niggers now.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
You're assuming that we have souls.
Which we don't.
Good job having an incorrect opinion, though.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.