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ACLU to Challenge Utah Porn-Blocking Law
delirium of disorder writes "Opponents of a Utah law that requires Internet service providers to offer to block Web sites deemed pornographic filed a lawsuit last Thursday to overturn the measure. The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah is seeking an injunction in federal court in Salt Lake City as part of its lawsuit claiming that the Utah law violates state residents' rights to free expression and unlawfully interferes with interstate commerce. The legislation requires the attorney general to create an official list of Web sites with material that is deemed harmful to minors. Under the law, Internet providers in Utah must provide their customers with a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges."
So, part of the problem with this is that it turns many small Internet providers into de facto censorship organizations responsible for the policing and determination of ALL content hosted through them or make them software companies due to this little inclusion in the law:
260 (3) (a) A service provider may comply with Subsection (1) by:
261 (i) providing network-level in-network filtering to prevent receipt of material harmful to minors;
262 or
263 (ii) providing at the time of a consumer's request under Subsection (1), software for{ }
264 contemporaneous installation on the consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and
265 commercially reasonable manner, receipt of material harmful to minors.
The other major problem of course is that if the first course is taken, then Internet providers are legally *obligated* to be searching your computers or files for content in violation of federal law.
Of course this also begs the question of who determines "adult content" which should make one suspicious of motives as this law comes from a state that had a state appointed "porn czar" who was a self avowed virgin. Also, at one of the major Universities in the state, BYU felt that censorship of sculptures by Auguste Rodin was appropriate for the national tour a couple of years ago. Did they consider that "adult content"? What would they think of Internet sites covering sculptures of Michelangelo's David?
The other seriously maddening thing about this is that the little independent book shop just around the corner from me, The Kings English book shop would not be able to put any books on their website other than childrens books.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
This gives more ammunition to the rabid right in their attempt to make the ACLU the bogeyman for everything "evil" in this world. Of course the rightwing nutjobs forget that the ACLU has also defended Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh. I guess ingrates have short memories.
The target of this legislation also dooms it to failure. Business interests are not going to stand by and allow the Utah legislature make common carrier status a criminal offense. If that were allowed to stand then the phone company would be criminally negligent for obscene phone calls made on their lines.
Never let it be said that the Utah legistlature had real brain power. After all, the state produced Orrin Hatch!
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
And who gets to decide? The Utah legislature?
Not in my country, motherfuckers.
Who needs porn when you're allocated 10 wives?
This is yet another example of a 'feelgood' law, that conservative lawmakers pass to appeal to their base, and to be able to see "See, I am fighting immorality!"
Yet the law is 100 percent ineffective. First of all, there is no way they can ever block every single source of smut on the internet. Seconmd of all, its an opt in system. You choose to have these sites blocked, the ISP isnt blocking them for you. parents can do this already with a number of 'childware' packages already out there.
So really, what is the law good for? Nothing, except appealing to the base.
What good is the ACLU challenge? None either, except making them selves look more like 'champions of pron' to the conservative members of this country.
Its all a bunch of chest thumping.
I bet there is a lot of girl on girl on girl on girl on guy action
Easy for US ISP's to implement: just ask your friends in Saudi Arabia how they did it!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
First China now Utah.. Yea I guess that sounds about right.
So how does this substantially differ from Microsoft filtering certain words and phrases in China?
If I want to block Internet content from my children, this is my right (until they reach the age of majority of course). The same way I can block TV shows. This is MY responsibility and right, not some government appointed watch dog.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Sometimes I think kids are going to grow up completely messed us with the crazy stuff they can see on the web just by typing "sex" in google.
Is forcing ISPs to block that kind of content going to solve the problem? Probably not, but I feel for them.
Personally, I'd like to see a law that makes it illegal for adult context to appear on a URL unless is has a special extension, something like ".xxx". Then it'd be easy for concerned parents (and wives!) to configure the browser to block anything from that extension.
Sam
George Bush stoogie Bill O'Reilly will surely have a ball with this one. Especially since he has already branded it "the most dangerous organization in the country".
if the idea is to keep minnors away from adult material ..
i am wondering why the government or companies are doing the job of parents..
if you let your child out of the net and don't follow what they are doing it is your own damn fault and you are the one to be held liable.. same thing as if your 10 year old is ...
never mind this argument always falls on def ears..
parents need to know what their damn job is and not blame the world..
take some responsiblity
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Under the law, Internet providers in Utah must provide their customers with a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges."
I suggest that all Utah ISP's implement this with feature with a link from their home page "Click here to disable access to pornographic web sites" that leads directly to the ISP's account termination page.
How can it be a violation if it is an optional service offered to those who want it?
MadOgre.com
I grew up in Salt Lake City, and am (as you may have guessed) not a big fan of pornography. But at the same time, there's a right way to solve this, and a wrong way to solve this.
Legislating that ISPs have the responsibility to provide ways to block a list of offensive websites is a good idea and a bad implementation. That kind of censorship belongs on the consumer, not on the ISP. We might as well expect handgun realtors to provide a list of movies that children shouldn't watch to keep them from becoming violent. Sure, it's something to do about the problem, but it is the wrong thing.
I think the availability to minors of pornography is a huge problem, but there is (or at least there was) a real industry building up out of censorship tools for the internet, which provide the kind of services that this law was supposed to enforce anyway.
So I fail to see the need for such odd legislation. The right of censorship in the home has always been protected as a right of the individual, excepting those 'expressions' which have been defined by society has harmful enough to legislate against (i.e. kiddie porn). But within the bounds of what society has legislated to be acceptable, the right to refuse or accept media still belongs to the end user.
And please, if the problem is that you're trying to protect your children, please notice that it is *your* responsibility to look after and protect your children. Don't leave something so important to anybody else.
In Soviet Russia, us are belong to all your base.
What is the big deal? Just compile the official list into a hosts file with all addresses set to 127.0.0.1 and make it available on your web site for download. That is about 30 minutes of work and then you comply with the damn law and can get on with your business. It isn't worth arguing about this crap.
Oh well, what the hell...
Even if they do get this one overturned the crazy politicians will come out with another stupid law that will have to be overturned.
It is an endless cycle of incompetence.
Once upon a time, if you killed people, stole a signifigant amount of money, or trafficed drugs you were a felon.. Seems now everything is a felon... I wonder what % of the US is felons????
Just who is going to draw the hard line between those various types of pornography? You?
This is the responsibility of the parent, not the state. There's miriads of [even free] software you could set up to block access to sites you deem pornographic -- and the best solution is to simply have the computer in the living room where *you* can see and make decisions about what sites your children visit.
The state can't make those decisions for you. You can more than bet that they will deem accessing art that includes nudes (photographic or not) to be pornography, but not accessing quasi-pornographic sexual innuendo laced garbage from the MTV web site as such.
Sure there are many spots where the line is clear, but there is a big gray area too.
First case nudity? How much nudity does it consist to be pornography. Some culture would say a woman showing her face would be pronographic, while other cultures say it is not the nudity but their positions, that consitutes pornography. If you come up with any rule on what pornography is I am sure you can find an example that uses that rule and is not pornograph or you will find that this rule will not cover all of pornography. So if we as humans cannot make the difference all the time then how the heck are we sopose to get computers to do it for us?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Porn sites can be classified in the following:
.xxx domains.
* Link sites. Youknow, those with lots of links to pics / movie samples
* The ones with pics / movie samples (usually they're hidden pages inside paysites - but sometimes they're hosted by the same company)
* paysites or AVS
* And in the future: websites with
A little analysis could be made to detect these easily. Anyway, it's not fair to dismiss a law because it can't be implemented yet (remember the "who needs 4-cores, anyway" discussion?). One thing is sure: if it's not allowed to be implemented, it CAN'T be implemented.
Frankly, I don't see the problem saying "hello, this is Ms. Smith and I'd like to block porn sites from your ISP. Thank you".
Just because (AFAIK) most ppl in here like porn, doesn't make porn censorship "the boogeyman". Sure, the parents have lots of responsibility regarding their children, but give them a break. How're parents supposed to watch over their child if they're denied the tools needed for it?
The ACLU's argument against this law fails to mention that filtering can only be done on request of the customer.
Now why would the ACLU leave out that most important detail?
The ACLU does not believe in States' rights. The ACLU believes in civil liberties. You must be thinking of the ASRU (American States' Rights Union.) I don't think that organization exists, though. You should feel free to create it.
;)
Then, when a state wants to implement slavery, your organization could say, "Hey, the people of this fine state want slavery, so our organization supports it." Or, when a state wants to ban guns, your organization could say, "Well, the state should do what it wants." You would need to be consistent, of course.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
From the summary: "Under the law, Internet providers in Utah must provide their customers with a way to disable access to sites on the list or face felony charges."
Not only will a lot of slashdotters probably not RTFA, they won't even RTFS (Read the F-ing Summary). All this law did was say, "if your customers ask you for a porn-block tool, you have to make it available to them."
It doesn't say you have to monitor content. It doesn't say you have to censor stuff yourself. All it says is that if your customers choose to exercise THEIR right to control what comes into THEIR home (and ONLY their home), part of being an ISP in Utah means you have to have that tool available to them.
The analagous law would be forcing ISPs to provide popup blocker software to those who want it. Would slashdotters be up in arms over something like this? Or is it somehow "different" because "pop-ups are evil and porn is good?"
If I was an ISP in Utah, I would have already entered into a contract with some third-party "netnanny" service or something. If it's not against the law, I would simply refer customers to the netnanny service (they would have to pay for the extra service). If that's illegal, I just raise my rates to cover the bulk purchase of netnanny software and include it on my install CD.
So yeah I have already seen about 6 posts looking something like, "those crazy right wing nut jobs want to stop the righteous and omniscient ACLU from protecting my civil liberties!" Seems to be the trend on /. recently, which makes it less interesting for me to read.
However, despite whether you may think this is a left vs right issue or whatever, I find it highly disturbing that the more liberal groups continue their attempts to strip the rights of states to have their own laws, especially in a representative government.
The problem I really have here is that while all you pro-ACLU people continue to scream about the ACLU protecting my right to free speech, it seems that the ACLU is restricting the right of the people of Utah (in this case) to elect a government which is representative of their ideals and beliefs.
Remember, our representatives are put into their positions in order to act on our behalf. Who is to say the people of Utah do not want this law? Maybe they do. If they do not, they could elect individuals who would overturn said law.
Now I don't necessarily agree with this law and I don't necessarily dislike the ACLU, but this rabid attack on how the "right" is bad and the "left" is good is really starting to get simply immature and sickening.
Why does the ACLU care?
If the ISP MUST make a service available, there is nothing that states that I must use that service.
This is just another attempt of the side of the ACLU to stretch their stupidity...
If they really wanted to do something, they should tackle the illegal gun laws that strip citizens of the Right to Keep and Bear arms...you know, the second amendment...
But the freaks at the ACLU are only after whatever gets them the bucks...dirty b@$t@rd$...
--E--
From what I've gathered, the ACLU's objection is, of course, motivated by the fact that they reject censorship in any form. But the argument is legitimate.
Their argument is that the state is requiring ISP's to provide a particular service whether they like it or not. They are dictating how ISP's are "permitted" to do business, asserting that they need the state's blessing to run that particular type of business. I guess what really gets me is the government's attitude that ISP's are allowed to do business by the grace and goodwill of the government, not because it's one of the founding principles of this nation.
It's like if you ran a restaurant, and the government came along and said, "I see you serve cheeseburgers. Some people don't like to eat meat, and most people agree that eating cheeseburgers all the time is downright harmful. You'd better start serving some healthy vegetarian entrees or we'll close you down."
If the state of Utah still insists on making porn-blocking more widely available, the better approach would have been to make money available to the ISP's in the form of tax breaks or low-interest loans to encourage them to offer porn-blocking services to their customers. I'd still object on the grounds that the government is promoting censorship, but at least they wouldn't be forcing ISP's to do it at gunpoint like they are now.
The most daming question, though, is this: who gets to determine what constitutes a naughty web site? For some, a place like /. would be considered pretty taboo because people use bad language here. Any form of censorship necessarily imposes some person's view of morality on others.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
How about tackling the cause rather than the effect?
Puberty?
We are talking about Mormons. God chooses for them to have kids, and God is their moral guide. Stop pretending that these people have a choice.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
However, they are up against a very steep wall of not being able to find a majority voice to contend with Utah's propensity to legislate their moral values
It doesn't matter if the ACLU does not find a majority voice, they're using the court system to contest the law. They only need a handful of justices to defeat Utah's propensity to legislate their moral values.
-py
How're parents supposed to watch over their child if they're denied the tools needed for it?
Here's an idea: use the computer together??? What a revelation!
Alas, it's lazy-assed parents who lack the time to spend with their kids who are the problem... The Internet isn't there as an entertainer.
IMO, I'm going to whitelist shit my kid needs to do his/her homework: Wikipedia, Dictionary, Google maps, etc... Perhaps some kids game sites. If they need more for a project, I sit down to help them. They need the independance, but they can't be unleased online without supervision.
Truth is, kids will find porn anyway - they'll have a friend with lazy, irresponsible parents.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I believe the biggest reason, nay EXCUSE for this is political fricking correctness and "your an idiot, we'll do the thinking for you" from teh government.
Lets see, (In Australia) they have had kneejerk reactions because parents reverse over kids in the schoolyard
Problem: Kids aren't being taught to stay the hell away from cars, i mean even at the age of 6 i knew not to go anywhere near cars unless mum was holding my hand.
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There was the "Port Arthur Massacre" in Tasmania, as well as all these shootings in the US. They enforce tighter gun control as a result, sure its a safety issue, but still.
Problem: People are fucked and some think they can take away their pain/bring awareness to their plight by putting it on/through others or can just have fun "experiencing" doom for themselves. People have always been screwed in the head and something should be done about the cause of the problem in the persons hear, NOT taking away s persons ability to get hold of a sidearm.
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Little 8 year old Johnny gets a spam in his mailbox asvertising hard sex and proceeds to bang a 3-4 year old cause he saw it on the internet. (seriously it happened within the last week, sick, ain't it?)
Problem: Two things here;
1) Spammers should be taken out into a field and shot, that's a given.
2) PARENTAL CONTROL for when their kid uses their computer. The parent should be running some form of a net nanny software and/or only allow the kid to use the computer under strict parental supervision. Admittedly some of these 8 year olds are 10 times cluier than their parents on computers, but still parents should put in some form of EFFORT on this stuff.
Around the time a 28.8k modem was hot shit I knew my neighbours watched their kids online, and THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL for an adult to do that. But now it seems no one is taking responsibility for their children or themselves so the do gooders are trying to nanny everyone for their own good.
And lastly while im still in the mood for a good bitch, you want to see handholding? you should see the draconian measures that are put in place by the Australian/state governments where i am in regards to traffic laws. Some are sensible, yet others are way upfucked. Forget teaching people how to drive safely then putting them in control of a vehicle, oh no, we'll give them out like candy to every muthafucker that walks through the transport office's doors. Then because the average ability is so LOW they will keep stupidly low tolerances on the road, totally ignoring the concept of the "85th percentile".
As a side note, i see parents EXPECTING teachers and everyone else to raise their kids for them and aren't taking responsibility for their kids anywhere by damned sight as well as they ought.
So many of the kids i see now days need a good clip round the ear or a smack on the arse. But oh no, you can't do that anymore as it's seen as assault rather than a disciplinary action. I know that I wouldn't have been such a little fucker at school had the cane still been used as punishment.
The world is going to hell in a politically correct idiot proofed handbasket, it looks like were all along for the ride.
p.s. excuse the rant, wow i feel better now!!!
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know when your gonna get food poisoning.
What did the butchers do? They created new cuts of meat with new names that weren't on the price-controlled list. In short, they worked around the problem faster than the government could respond.
Gun manufacturers did similar things when so-called (so-called, because they're not really) "Assault Rifles" were banned by manufacture and model. Make a cosmetic change and slap on a new model number.
How can this be applicable here? The Utah AG is going ban sites by name. How fast can he update the list? How fast can he distribute it? Answer: not fast enough!
Consider this example of a workaround. A page with absolutely no infringing content that can't be legally banned. On it a link stating "Utah residents click here to access our site". Link changes daily -- even hourly. How do you put the target site on a ban list and distribute it fast enough? Won't happen.
This law is a feel good farce that won't stop anyone with an ounce of inventiveness on the web. End of comment.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I agree! I do not have children, but if I did, every computer in the house would connect to the internet through a proxy server. I would log all activity and I would read the logs. Then I would make sure my children knew I was watching them. I think this is a better solution than outright censorship. For one thing it allows children the freedom to make mistakes. It also empowers them to make good choices. Besides the internet is too big to effectivly censor.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
I'm Mormon. You are forgetting abortion and gambling.
Go ahead and whitelist wikipedia, then your kid will simply go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porn.
That beeing said the best way to check what you kid see on the internet is to only allow it on a computer in the living room. No kid surf porn in the living room.
Freedom or George Bush
Synergy is your friend
They can give the M$ uses a hosts file with the AG's list in it. Bam! those sites do not come up. This is only at the CUSTOMER'S request. It does not remove Pr0n from those who want it. The ACLU is showing how far into hell they are going looking for clients.
This is a link of the final text of the bill as signed into law (I assume that is wghat "enrolled copy" means):
0 260.pdf
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2005/bills/hbillenr/hb
The link provided by slashdot is an intermediate version that was still being amended.
Yes, but should the government be forcing this "option." If it's an option that consumers want, then it can be offered as a service. That's how the free market works, you choose your service provider based on quality, price, and offerings.
Non-disclaimer: I'm a BYU student.
BYU doesn't offer a theology degree. *Every* student is required to take religion courses, since the church doesn't have professional clergy it would be redundant.
Exactly right.
To officially teach religion you need either a BS or MS (can't remember which) in something - doesn't matter what. (Yes! Even biology! Just to head that off...) To teach religion at a Church-run university you need a PhD. I have a friend who is getting a PhD in CS just so he can teach religion at BYU.
(No, it's not strange. He happens to be very good at both but finds ancient languages more interesting.)
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I'm glad I'm not the only guy around here who believes in government mandated castration.
So, for his PhD, he's working in Algol, APL and Fortran? (Given my .sig, I should include BCPL. I won't.)
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
So how does that fit in the OSI model? Is it:
1. The Physical Layer
2. The Data Link Layer
3. The Network Layer
4. The Transport Layer
4.5 The Pr0n Layer
5. The Session Layer
6. The Presentation Layer
6.5 The Presentation of Pr0n Layer
7. The Application Layer
8. The Financial Layer
9. The Political Layer
That's too bad. The ACLU does not defend Nazi marches and protests; the ACLU defends their rights to march and protest. I personally suspect that most ACLU members find those people reprehensible - but they recognize that they have a right to an opinion, and the right to express that opinion - no matter how jacked up that opinion is.
Though most Americans often forget, the US was found on the principle that all speech has value, and that society as a whole is diminished by censorship. If you want to know where most of these beliefs came from try Jonathan Swift's On Liberty.
Why should it make a difference whether it's "art" or not? The first amendment doesn't say anything about art. Nor does it say anything about quality. If it did, better than 90 percent of everything produced as entertainment, no matter the subject matter, would have to be censored.
Note, Rowan v Post Office has almost nothing to do with the proposed law since ISPs aren't forcing porn on anybody.
a) People choose what they do on the internet
b) People choose whether or not to patronize a particular ISP.
A fitting analogy is not whether the federal government can stop people from shoving porn in your mailbox, but whether the state government could mandate that all video rental stores must offer family friendly censored versions of all videos.
I am not a lawyer and I won't conjecture as to whether such a regulation at the state-level would be constitutional. I do know, however, that such a law would be, in my opinion, a bad law.
...these beliefs came from try Jonathan Swift's On Liberty.
[Pedantic Bastard] I think you mean John Stuart Mill, not Jonathan Swift.[/pedantic Bastard]
Nice Marmot
Theoretically, this is bad. In practice, NSDAP would win the first democratic elections in West Germany after 1945.
In 1945 Germany was an occupied territory under reconstruction, pretty well under martial law.
Germany today is populated with generally good people with a generally good democracy and generally respecting rights and freedoms. It's time for Germany to start acting like it!
Sure there are stupid people, people who believe stupid things and say stupid things. However they are not criminals if they never actally *do* anything. Having "bad ideas" and "saying those bad ideas" does not make one a criminal. If it did then the list of criminals would go **WAY** beyond Nazi-ideas. If it did then I'd damn well want to be at the head of the committee making up that list of "criminally-bad ideas". I'd put censorship at the top of the list and make sure the censorship advocates are the first ones put in prison.
Germany, like pretty much every country on earth, has a black stain in it's past. Well it's time to get over it. One side of my family was wiped out in the holocaust. Well, the people who did it are DEAD and BURIED. The past should not be forgotten, but the past should not become some crippling scar currupting the present.
If someone says the holocaust never happened, well they are an idiot and it should loudly be pointed out that they are an idiot, and you might even want to keep an eye on them, however it does not make them a criminal.
If that sort of idiot wants to have a parade I'll be at the front of the line on the court house steps defending their right to do so, and then I'll be at the front of the line at the parade making sure everyone knows what idiots they are.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.