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.'"

Unworkable

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

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:

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

So they'll just pull an Australia and make it governmentally mandated or something like that.

O'course, now, children will grow up unable to see the Venus de Milo or the Vitruvian Man or any of those other naughty art bits, but that's OK, right? Because it's protecting the children?

And it's not like they'll be able to learn about STDs or how to protect oneself against 'em, but that's OK--without all those nasty naked people, why would they want to have sex?

Re:Unworkable

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

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

[middlemen (765373)]

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:

[baboo_jackal (1021741)]

The whole idea of making laws about porn (outside of preventing abhorrent abuses, like child porn and snuff films, for example) just bothers me.

I'm a conservative, and a Republican, but I just gotta say this is a perfect example of conservative, Republican hypocrisy. (There, I said it.)

I understand that parents want to be able to raise their kids however they see fit - if you want your kid to never see a boobie until he's 18, then fine. If you want your kid to start masturbating to hardcore porn at

Re:

[Otter Escaping North (945051)]

The parent in me understands the concerns at play here; that we want to restrict the nature of the media that our children are exposed to. The geek in me understands why this short-term impossible, medium-to-long-term semi-workable on a small-scale, but undesirable for the ISPs, the search engines, and the like.

The only way you can pull this off is with a trust-system. The ratings analogy seems to conveniently skip over the existing infrastructure of that trust-system. The content producers are respons

Re:Unworkable

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

The weakness in that argument is that it requires that parents take responsibility and make an effort to educate themselves.

Your typical soccer mom "doesn't know anything about computers" and has no interest in doing so--but wants to make sure the kids are safe, because anything other than total and utter safety Just Won't Do.

Now, if you decided to build yourself a cheapass firewall/filter/proxy appliance, form factor about the same as your typical cable modem and priced at about the $50 point you mentioned (with, say, $19.95/month updating service) that you could plug inline between the modem and the home LAN, you could conceivably make a profit--but if it required any activation by the parent more complicated than a typical windows "click yes" wizard and selecting a secret code, you can forget about any sort of widespread adoption.

Re:Unworkable

[BWJones (18351)]

Beyond unworkable, there are other issues at play including 4th Amendment rights. This is covered in Pete Ashdown's blog [peteashdown.org] (Pete is an ISP owner)

Re:

[Brian Gordon (987471)]

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

Re:Unworkable

[milsoRgen (1016505)]

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. [xenu.net] I could totally see CoS getting on board with this and blocking xenu.net to 'protect their children'.

Re:Unworkable

[Moonpie Madness (764217)]

I realize Scientology is generally pretty dumb, but this aspect is particularly absurd.

If you have to be "clear" to a certain level before you can know certain things, how the fuck can a living SP, the opposite of someone who is clear and leveled up, know anything that could be harmful? If the Scions were right, the SP would be dead from the knowledge, so it's absurd to give out this warning. It's just another pathetic and obvious attempt to control the gullible and sick as long as possible to get all them money they can.

Almost as pathetic is this ignorant attempt to censor the internet. Give the porn people their .xxx domain! Make life easy to everyone! But no, that can't happen, because, as the legislator says above, this is about "fighting pornography" and not about keeping it away from kids. Law abiding citizens want pornography. It's legit to want to keep kids away, but not legit to want to "fight" the entire enterprise of adult entertainment. Until men are honest about this issue, their government will continue to go down the wrong path. Parents should also realize that the best way to protect your kids from porn is to give porn a nice, legit domain. The solution is obvious.

Re:

[Gerzel (240421)]

While I don't agree with this attempt at filtering or the idea of "fighting pornography." I also don't see the idea of a .xxx domain name to be a good idea.

Would pornographic sites be forced to move to the domain?
Would non-pornographic sites be forced to not use the domain?

If you want to implement a flag by which sites are able to label themselves as innapropriate for minors or some viewers then that is all well and good but xxx has too strong and specific a connotation to really be workable.

Re:Unworkable

[Sancho (17056)]

I'd really love the idea of a .xxx domain if sane people were deciding which sites go there. Unfortunately, it would just be used as a way to censor any depiction or apparent depiction of sexual acts. Does an R-rated movie trailer deserve to be put on that domain? What about sites with user-generated content that might include sexually explicit material?

What really needs to happen is for people in the US to stop being prudish. Unfortunately, it would probably take a miracle for that to happen in my lifetime.

Re:Unworkable

[jc42 (318812)]

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.

Re:

[Jtheletter (686279)]

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.

And that reminds me of waaaay back when AOL first started censoring chat room names based on a blacklist of words. For two days the "Breast Cancer Survivors Group" was the "Hooters Cancer Survivors Group" before it was fixed. Cancer is not funny, but 'hooters cancer' sure soun

Filtering

[by 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:

[Wandering Wombat (531833)]

The PARENTS are busy looking at PORN, though... they need someone to handle the easy job of raising their children right, since, looking at the world around me, they are not qualified to do it.

Re:Filtering

[xero314 (722674)]

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:

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

This is not something that everyone should be burdened with.

And they're not. The state is providing a service that over 50% of its residents desire or at least approve of. If you don't want to get filtered internet access, then use an ISP that isn't on the list. It's that easy.

why not make the parents aquire their own software for this if they want it?

Because then all the kid has to do is acquire a livecd and they're on the unfiltered internet. If you really want to filter things, you have to do it upstream where the kid doesn't have access to it. There have been ISPs providing filtered internet in Utah for over a decade, this is just the

Re:Filtering

[jarom (899827)]

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.

Fighting pornography?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Is that where naked women hit each other with fish and such?

Yum.

This means war!

[sakdoctor (1087155)]

Can anyone remind me why pornography needs to be "fought"?

Re:This means war!

[Tmack (593755)]

Can anyone remind me why pornography needs to be "fought"?

Goatse?

Re:This means war!

[Tmack (593755)]

To reply to myself... seriously though, "fighting" pr0n is about like the war on drugs. Its a way for politicians to look good in the face of supporters and contributors that dump $$ to their campaigns and give them the votes that keep them in business, while actually doing little towards what it intends to accomplish. Its the "thinkofthechildrens!!!" effect. Because on average most parents these days seem to expect everyone else to protect their kids and make the whole world G rated and safe so they dont have to do anything themselves, and will file lawsuits and cause problems the instant its not. Most people dont have the understanding of how to protect their kids from online pr0n (if they even try), so they expect someone else to do it for them. Its similar reasons that caused such a huge uproar over a nipple being shown on tv, neglecting the fact that most kids suck on one for the first few years of their lives, and for more similar reasons (ultraconservativereligiouscontrolfreaks) that you wont hear swearwords on TV or radio. Its not like parents have a way to filter out such content on there own right??? Ohyeh, V-chip (another government mandated protection bit), and now hardware in dvd players that can actively filter only the "objectionable" content (walk by the dvd players in Target, most have one on a motion activated display setup thing), but we still must prevent obscene material from ever hitting our eternally virgin eyes and ears since the act that makes babies is dirty and should never happen or even be known about!

</rant>

tm

Re:This means war!

[geminidomino (614729)]

That's why I have goatse as my desktop background.
It also protects my computer from any use!

Fixed...

Gotta go drain-o my brain now...

Re:

[Actually, I do RTFA (1058596)]

1. 2girls1cup
2. goatse
3. tubgirl

How about an "adult-friendly" rating ...

[trolltalk.com (1108067)]

... so all those politicians, holy rollers, and "protect the children" types can more easily find their daily dose of pr0n ...

Hurah for Utah!

[Cathoderoytube (1088737)]

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.

Except for that nagging little fact that

[falcon5768 (629591)]

Porn, except for some extreme examples is completely and totally legal in the US. This is just like fighting smoking in adults... you might not like it, but unless you make it illegal you have no fucking argument and need to live with it and STFU.

Re:

[kellyb9 (954229)]

Actually - I'm not really sure what arguement you are trying to make, but you may have just proven the exact opposite point. Pornography IS illegal for children under 18 and 21 in some states. So - in other words, it's actually MORE like fighting smoking in children. I've never seen anyone cry censorship over that.

New Zealand has an interesting approach to this

[The Ancients (626689)]

Here in New Zealand, the government provided funds for Watchdog [watchdog.net.nz] 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.

Surely...

[Channard (693317)]

.. there are several sites dedicated to Fighting Pornography. I guess Senator Morley hasn't been googling very hard.

Ironically...

[Trailer Trash (60756)]

'I think it's a positive thing for those who are looking for a site that is dedicated to fighting pornography.'

It's also a positive thing for those of us looking to avoid ass-clowns and the companies that they run.

!Censorship

[kellyb9 (954229)]

I wouldn't really classify this as censorship personally. I think it's a parents right to filter whatever content they want from their children. You can't really say that it's censorship if you opt-in for it. Under this line of thinking, the do not call list is censorship because you are filtering phone networks for content you don't want. In the end, however, if they were good at parenting they wouldn't really need to do this. It's just another case of children being raised by the next form of entertainment that comes their way - it used to be the tv.

Re:!Censorship

[phoenix.bam! (642635)]

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.

tag war

[mapkinase (958129)]

That is not "censorship". I strongly advise all trigger-taggy-happy types to go and check what censorship means.

This works so well too...

[downix (84795)]

I mean, nobody can possibly use anonymizing services, proxy servers, filters, or encryption to circumvent such things. And even if they could, such systems are completely unheard of outside of a small club.

Oh, you want to know the clubs name? Why, it's name is EVERYBODY! We meet at the bar!

filter does not imply child friendly

[fermion (181285)]

This is going to do nothing but cause a false sense of security, will not block the soft stuff that most kids are perfectly happy with anyway, and will block legitimate sites. I often use an ISP connection that is highly filtered to weed out content not appropriate for kids. I sometimes even go further on put on google full safe search. The stuff that is supposed to filtered is still there, and often shows up on otherwise innocuous searches. OTOH, I have been blocked from perfectly reasonable content, for reasons I cannot fantom. I have had similar results on filtered pubic access connections.

The reality is that not everything can be filtered. Combine that with the fact that nearly every kid over the age of 10 have access to proxy server, and the whole notion of a g-rated filtered pipe becomes quite humorous. The only way to remotely sell a legitimate rated service is to white list acceptable sites. It si time consuming, but effective. There are still tricks to get around it, but the bar is significantly raised.

Excellent idea!

[brennanw (5761)]

We can give a bunch of ISP's g-ratings, then we can consolidate all of them and refer to it as the g-spot.

...and then wait to see how long it takes for them to notice.

AOL?

[skelly33 (891182)]

I never got onto the whole AOL thing when it first came out because it had a lot of proprietary crap that broke from established standards, so I don't have any direct experience with their original interface. But I seem to remember something about a child safe online environment being one of their schticks originally, was it not? If so, does that still hold true today?

Multiple issues at issue

[smooth wombat (796938)]

From the blurb, it is first said that the bill would designate ISPs who block a range of prohibited materials as child friendly. Then the quote specifically says about blocking pornography. So which is it? Is Utah going to be a nanny state and tell its citizens what is and is not prohibited or is it going after just pornography?

What is considered "a range of prohibited materials"? Pornography in all its forms or just porn between two men (but not two women*)? What about transvestite or shemale sex? Does

double plus good!

[mbaGeek (1219224)]

porn is never the issue "free speech" is the issue

and of course there is no "right" to not be offended ;-)

Filter this site

[morcheeba (260908)]

I found a website they need to censor. It has gross pictures [utah.gov], pictures of dead people [utah.gov], and a giant phallus! [utah.gov] There are even naked breasts [utah.gov]. Would someone think of the children?!

"Accidentally" landing at a porn site these days?

[TheDarkener (198348)]

I don't know about you, but it's been a LONG time since I got any porno pop-ups or redirections during regular web usage. Years, in fact. I think the thing is, people who WANT to find porn, WILL find porn. Those who aren't interested in searching for/looking at porn, really won't.

The only exception I can think of is spam, which is completely different than what they're trying to do here anyway.

Responsibility lies with YOU, not with those who wish to host a porn site, for legitimate reasons.

Why legislate? Leave it to the market.

[Haeleth (414428)]

Why the hell does this need legislation? If Utah's parents want to use ISPs that block certain kinds of material, then they can surely just choose to use ISPs that block those kinds of material, regardless of whether there's a law like this in place or not. We live in a capitalist society - if there's demand for that kind of blocking, then the market will provide it, without any need for the government to stick its nose in.

And of course the market will provide a better solution, because different ISPs can try different kinds of blocking, and give their customers more choice and more control, and see what there's actually a market for, instead of trying to force a single government-mandated standard on everyone.

This kind of issue is a situation where there is no need, and no place, for a one-size-fits-all government-coercion approach; this is about personal choice and personal morality, not the provision of essential services. On many issues (notably healthcare) I come down on the side of government involvement, but this is just ridiculous.

What the fuck are they? "Utahians?" "Utahans?"

[Didion Sprague (615213)]

I think Utah folks (and everybody else, for that matter) should consider the up-side to pornography. Most geeks (and non-geeks) have strengthened their dominant arms/fingers/hands considerably since the advent of insta-porn. Increased strength means your base metabolic rate increases -- which points the way to increased weight loss. It's a win-win.

A couple more:

- There's a link between visual stimulation and increased brain activity. This is good -- and probably helps prevent dementia and all sorts of crazy brain diseases.

- There's a link between porn and sex. This is good. Porn improves sex lives -- including residents from Utah. Everyone benefits from healthy sex lives -- even if you're doing it solo. See above.

- Exposure to porn lowers your surprise threshold. Lower surprise thresholds mean an increased ability to concentrate on the stuff that matters. Porn does not matter on the scale of "stuff that matters." Limiting porn is like limiting gambling: it's all about power and nothing about the "social ills" it purports to assist. Gamblers gamble, pornographers pornograph, and porn viewers view. This stuff is part of what it means to be a human being. Those moralists opposed to gambling could probably learn a thing or two about mathematics, social science, and spiritual balance by taking a look at gambling -- and how to gamble effectively.

And no -- gambling effectively is not an oxymoron. The best gamble is to realize when you have the best of it -- and then make the bet. Ditto for the best porn. It's understanding what you like, searching it out, finding it, and deriving pleasure. There's nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is good. Winning money is good. As Paul Newmann says in the "Color of Money": "Money won is twice as sweet as money earned."

No truer words spoken. If the fucking Utahans -- or Mormons or whatever the fuck they call themselves in Utah -- if they'd zero in simply the idea of "pleasure" -- and look for ways to make the pleasure safe and even more effective -- they'd all enjoy their fucking nutty nitty lives a bit more.

Obiglatory Response

[maz2331 (1104901)]

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!

It's more than filtering: it's IP number tracking

[Dekortage (697532)]

Quoting from the actual bill [utah.gov]:

(2) The attorney general shall award the Community Conscious Internet Provider designation to an Internet service provider that:

• (a) completes an application created by the attorney general; and
• (b) agrees to:
  • (i) prohibit its customers by contract from publishing any prohibited communication;
  • (ii) remove or prevent access to any prohibited communication published by or accessed using the Internet service provider's service within a reasonable time after the Internet service provider learns of the prohibited communication;
  • (iii) comply with any court order concerning the removal of a prohibited communication;
  • (iv) maintain a record for two years following its allocation of an IP address of the IP address, the date and time of the allocation, and the customer to whom the IP address is allocated;
  • (v) cooperate with any law enforcement agency by providing records sufficient to identify a customer if the law enforcement agency requests the information and supplies reasonable proof that a crime has been committed using the Internet service provider's service;
  • (vi) respond to the attorney general, other law enforcement agency, or customer who complains of a prohibited communication published by or accessible using the Internet service provider's service; and
  • (vii) provide information concerning the Internet service provider's compliance with this section promptly upon request by the attorney general.

(3) An Internet service provider that is awarded the Community Conscious Internet Provider designation shall require its customers to enter into an agreement providing that:

• (a) publishing a prohibited communication is prohibited; and
• (b) the Internet service provider will:
  • (i) remove or prevent access to a prohibited communication of which it is aware;
  • (ii) comply with a court order ordering the removal of a prohibited communication;
  • (iii) maintain a record for two years following its allocation of an IP address of the IP address, the date and time of the allocation, and the customer to whom the IP address is allocated;
  • (iv) cooperate with any law enforcement agency by providing records sufficient to identify a customer if the law enforcement agency requests the information and supplies reasonable proof that a crime has been committed using the Internet service provider's service; and
  • (v) respond to the attorney general, other law enforcement agency, or customer who complains of a prohibited communication published by or accessible using the Internet service provider's service.

Emphasis added. This is partially about filtering "objectionable" content (though the ISP can wait until after it's been reported to them), but they also have to track IP numbers for specific customers and store that information for up to two years. This is about law enforcement....

And we can call addresses to approved sites...

[r_jensen11 (598210)]

...G-strings? If there's only one approved website, can we call it the G-spot?

Re:

[NekoIncardine (838965)]

There are many Bible-thumpers who would love the idea of jerking off to "Christian Moral Values" works. You think I'm making this up, of course. You haven't seen how screwed up some hardcore Christians can get.