Utah Wants To Give ISPs That Filter a "G-Rating"

An anonymous reader writes "HB407 in Utah would create a child-friendly designation for ISPs that block out a range of prohibited materials. Google, Yahoo, and others are fighting the bill, but Rep. Michael Morley says, 'I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography.'"

Comments

Unworkable

[milsoRgen]

It will never work, the state and/or companies that would try and implement it would needlessly expose themselves to liability once parents who let the computer screen baby sit their kids realize it's not fool proof.

Re:Unworkable

[milsoRgen]

It starts with naked people, who are incredibly dangerous and an affront to any morally upstanding U.S. citizen such as myself. Next we ban anything about drugs that isn't inline with our current policy. Then we ban violence. Then we ban info on anything the state deems illegal or subversive. Then we ban known dissidents from speaking in a non approved forum. Then we are safe.

Re:Unworkable

[milsoRgen]

Utah would create a child-friendly designation for ISPs that block out a range of prohibited materials. Considering a scientologist is lead to believe that certain knowledge they aren't ready for can kill them. I could totally see CoS getting on board with this and blocking xenu.net to 'protect their children'.

Re:Unworkable

[middlemen]

It starts with naked people, who are incredibly dangerous and an affront to any morally upstanding U.S. citizen such as myself. Next we ban anything about drugs that isn't inline with our current policy. Then we ban violence. Then we ban info on anything the state deems illegal or subversive. Then we ban known dissidents from speaking in a non approved forum. Then we are safe.

Haha... I am waiting for them to actually ban evolution, not the theory but the phenomenon. That law would have to be intelligently designed.

Re:Unworkable

[jc42]

Except that's not pornographic. I guess it wouldn't stop the CoS though.

That reminds me of a couple years back, when in one year Yahoo three times killed off their own breast-cancer support-group mailing list. Talking about breasts is porn, y'know, and we can't let impressionable children read about them. (It might be interesting to collect a list of examples of this sort of blocking.)

The problem here isn't limited to computer software. I was a student at the U of Wisconsin back in the late 60s, when there was an attempt to rescind the state's ban on birth-control pills. The problem was that even talking in public about birth control was legally considered pornographic, so the supporters of the bill couldn't get the media to broadcast or publish any of their material. People who tried distributing birth-control literature were arrested and charged with distributing porn. I recall the computer geeks calling this a bug in the legal system, and there didn't seem to be any way to debug the problem. It lasted until the US Supreme Court invalidated such laws. If they hadn't done this, we'd probably still have these laws on the books.

Once censorship becomes legal, it can be very difficult to do anything to fight it. Talking in public against the censorship also becomes illegal, as that would put illegal ideas into young minds.

Filtering

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what a PARENT should be doing. PARENTS should be telling their children what they can and can not see. Not the government, not some company, not anyone else. It's the parents job to raise their children, teach them what's right and wrong, and to allow the to see what they can and can't see. Nobody elses.

Re:Filtering

[xero314]

This is only a tool available to parents to do just what you are suggesting. There is nothing saying you have to have a child friendly ISP, but that you can. I agree that parents should probably know what there kids are doing, but I can't see anything wrong with them having an option available that more matches their ideals.

Re:Filtering

[jarom]

It IS the parents who are doing the job when they chose an ISP that will help them filter the content they don't want from entering their home. I don't see how the company or the government is forcing this on anyone. If you don't want an ISP that filters, choose a different ISP, ie. one that doesn't have a "G" rating per this bill (assuming it passes). If parents want an ISP that filters, let them have one. Just because a company provides a service doesn't mean that everyone needs to use that service. Sure, this could be done by installing a filtering program on the client computer, but that's not foolproof either. Sure, ISP filtering isn't foolproof, but if it isn't working enough to the customer's satisfaction, then they aren't obligated to continue using the service, and they aren't limited to only use the ISP filtering.

This is what capitalism is all about. The ISP is providing a service that is of value to the customer, who in turn gives them money, which is of value to the ISP. As long as there isn't coercion or deception, it sounds like a win-win to me. If the service is not of value to you, don't buy the service. Just don't complain and say that it isn't of value to anyone.

Hurah for Utah!

[Cathoderoytube]

I for one am quite pleased to see Utah fighting outsourcing like this. We no longer need to go to China to get this sort of thing.

New Zealand has an interesting approach to this

[The Ancients]

Here in New Zealand, the government provided funds for Watchdog to develop a filtering system suitable for schools. Part of the deal was that any other ISP had access to the system and could supply their own customers with internet access filtered by the system.

Whilst not perfect, it did provide schools etc with a default option and a starting point for internet access.

Re:!Censorship

[phoenix.bam!]

There is absolutely no need for the government to become involved in this. If a company wants to offer a filtered package, that is something they can advertise. The government has no business rating ISPs based on its arbitrary standards.

Obiglatory Response

[maz2331]

Forgot to use the form....

The Utah proposal advocates a

(*) technical (*) legislative (*) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting online porn. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Pornographers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(*) It will filter out too much legitimate non-porn content
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
(*) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop porn for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(*) Users of the web will not put up with it
(*) Google and other legitimate web operators will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from pornographers
(*) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(*) Many web operators cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential viewers
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(*) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the web
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
(*) Huge existing software investment in the net protocols
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than HTTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(*) Willingness and ability of users to install software necessary to make it work
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
(*) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(*) Extreme profitability of porn
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(*) Technically illiterate politicians
(*) Dishonesty on the part of pornographers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(*) Internet Explorer

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(*) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
(*) Website content should not be the subject of legislation
(*) Blacklists suck
(*) Whitelists suck
(*) We should be able to talk about sex without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(*) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(*) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(*) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
(*) It's the parent's job to watch what their kid is doing

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(*) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!