Utah Governor Signs Net-Porn Bill 941
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 as a religious dictatorship (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
The actual bill (Score:1, Interesting)
It's a brave new world.
What am I missing (Score:3, Interesting)
Race to the Bottom (Score:2, Interesting)
The Federal Election Commission, of all things, is currently thinking about prohibiting websites from endorsing candidates or political parties. Any website that wants to say "The RebuboCrat candidate is a scumbag" will have to host outside of the U.S. Maybe that's what happens to pr0n sites too. Then, because of The Children, the FBICIA will be authorized to track all web usage all the time. Paranoid? Maybe, but if you look at how things have transpired over the last 15 or 20 years, every bad thing you could have predicted to happen has come true. Why should it change now?
Re:Utah makes TX and FL look good some times (Score:3, Interesting)
--
Want a free iPod? [freeipods.com]
Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof [wired.com]
The problem with this... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [proxomitron.info] 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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Dude... (Score:1, Interesting)
Do other religions have their own states? I'm assuming that Catholics own Taxachusetts, but do Presbyterians have their own state? Or maybe Bhuddists? I don't know, I'm ignorant of these things.
Re:Utah makes TX and FL look good some times (Score:5, Interesting)
<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 [netscape.com] 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:Utah as a religious dictatorship (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:too much (Score:2, Interesting)
RTFA: "This blacklist will be drawn up by the state's Attorney General."
I don't support porn sites and their cause
And you're on Slashdot? Riiiiight...
Probabition
Interesting word. Too bad it doesn't mean anything. Sorry.
sensored tv
It's called modesty. There's a general agreement between most Americans who haven't been brainwashed by the ACLU that daytime TV shouldn't contain content that would earn a PG-13 or R rating. Besides that, private cable companies can filter what they like and it's up to the consumer to decide what provider they use.
politically correct language
Agreed! While I don't care for Bill Maher's politics, his show was aptly titled and often entertaining. Oh, and my hard drives are now intentionally and unnecessarily labeled MASTER and SLAVE.
controling that kids can and cannot watch
Here I have to disagree however. By "kids" I assume you mean minors under the age of 18 still living with their parents. It is completely the prerogative of the parents what their children watch. Minors have few rights (as should be) and it's up to their guardians to prevent them from participating in activities that they don't agree with. Call it what you like, but it's how it should be.
What happened to learn from your mistakes?
It's called thinking ahead and anticipating events. Odds are most children will be confronted with alcohol and drugs in high school (or earlier!). Parents and responsible members of society anticipate this and try to teach them the dangers of these substances before they "learn from [their] mistakes". Same for violence, guns, whatever. It's tough to learn if you're dead; tough to prevent a teenage pregnancy if you're already pregnant; and tough to return to reality if you're already a hippie.
Hell kids can't even hit each other anymore or they get send to therapy for aggresive behaviour.
While I think an increased awareness for children's activities is good (preventing bullying and real violence) I agree that there is a lot more crap going on like you suggest. The same thing goes for parents who would spank their kids. This is a valid form of punishment that has worked for an awful long time. Spankings and getting my mouth washed out with hand soap (that pink stuff is sick!) made a lot larger impact on me than "time out" and "a stern talking to".
I say enough is enough!
Yep. I'm done.
Re:Utah the dry state (Score:2, Interesting)
A guy walks into a bar..
OR
He can get a friend to "sponsor" him. However, the speakeasy rules have tightened in the last few years, so some places won't even let you do this, and require a membership from everyone. In the olden days, you could pretty much walk up to anyone near the front door and get a sponsor. It's a little more difficult now*.
*Utah trivia! One member is only allowed to sponsor up to five people. However, some clubs will let nearly everybody in with the same sponsor. How? They have the DJ sponsor you. There's a loophole in the laws that allows DJs to sponsor an unlimited amount of people. Now, impress your friends!
Re:Cool Job Opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately what it did was desensitize me to porn
Re:Utah as a religious dictatorship (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Utah as a religious dictatorship (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Update from Utah (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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:WRONG! (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe there's a limit on how many you can own, but I'd be pretty surprised to learn that more than zero people had ever been prosecuted.
That's not to say it's a good law: I say if any given law hasn't been used in the last five calendar years, strike it from the books. Hypercriminalization==bad.
Re:Utah as a religious dictatorship (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
After the latest amendments, it's not so bad (Score:3, Interesting)
(i) providing network-level filtering to prevent receipt of material harmful to minors; or
(ii) providing at the time of a consumer's request under Subsection (1), software for contemporaneous installation on the consumer's computer that blocks, in an easy-to-enable and commercially reasonable manner, receipt of material harmful to minors.
(b) (i) Except as provided in Subsection (3)(b)(ii), a service provider may not charge a consumer for blocking material or providing software under this section, except that a service provider may increase the cost to all subscribers to the service provider's services to recover the cost of complying with this section.
So bundling "NetNanny" with ISP service, for those who want it, is sufficient to comply.
If you're in Utah, expect your ISP bill to go up by something under a dollar per month, based on bulk pricing for NetNanny.
(Does entering "~frontdoor" as the password still turn off NetNanny?)
Re:Wow you're low brow (Score:2, Interesting)
Why should it be a problem to make fun of people's religion ?
If they can't hack it, they can't believe it too much.
Plus, you've got to know that most religions are false simply by the number of them out there, and their incompatibilities. (For me, "most" equals "all").
What's wrong with making fun of people believing silly sounding, probably wrong stuff ?
Re:so basically... (Score:2, Interesting)
a Mormon blacklist
a Catholic blacklist
a Mennonite whitelist
a Chicago PTA ratinglist
a Southern Poverty Law Center blacklist
The government isn't going to be good at this. In fact, no single group would be good at this.
Oh yeah, and the protocol should support automatic periodic updates and the ability to subscribe-to/merge multiple lists.
This is just wrong. Censorship is evil (Score:1, Interesting)
If you want to do this right and really protect children of parents who want the government protecting their children, then do this:
Pass a law that states what defines a site as "Safe for Children" and then issue certificates to any site who claims to meet those requirements. Anyone can get a certificate for their site and concerned parents could get browsers that required the certificate to function.
Anyone using the certificate in violation of the limits of the law would be prosecuted for sending smut to kids, but the entire adult world would not have to be censored.
In other words, don't mark the porn as "not child safe". Mark the child safe crap as "child safe" and punish people who misuse the mark.
If you want your government to control what your kids see, make them police children's content. Don't make them police all content. Censoring all content is just a way to use government to sponsor religion.
How do I rate my web site? (Score:3, Interesting)
So how do I do it? Is there a "meta" tag I need to put in? Do I need to have a special file in each directory, like robots.txt?
A suitable hosts.txt could be the filter software (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Utah makes TX and FL look good some times (Score:4, Interesting)
I just want to know how one goes about applying for the job to compile the list.
Re:Cover for science censorship? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Like the DMCA, a stupid bill. (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem with this bill is that it poorly defines what an ISP is. I am internet security engineer for an ISP that is, more or less, mere conduit. That is, we provide no content services whatsoever, unlike AOL... you get a pipe, and a gateway for authenticated TCP/IP traffic... from there, you're on your own.
The Pennsylvania law presents considerable problems for us because we do not monitor content. One cannot filter content fairly without monitoring it. No content filtering system can be expected to not cause collateral damage, and considerable collateral damage will occur where content filtering is "blind" (preprogrammed) and not facilitated by active, intelligent monitoring. These conclusions are supported by the findings of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board in a 2002 publication, titled, "Youth, Pornography and the Internet." [nap.edu]
If we move past the boundary of being mere conduit, we may establish a number of false expectations that are not aligned with the scope of services we can reasonably provide. We have thousands of users who are customers of a customer of a customer of ours... As a Tier 1 ISP, this is a reality that Utah has, apparently, ignored.
What's the result? For example... Some enduser of an ISP which leases lines from another ISP which leases lines from us... is surfing the internet. Both the DMCA (17 USC 12) and the Utah statute (HB 260) do not clearly delineate between upstream ISPs and enduser ISPs... so where does the responsibility for providing content filtering begin and end?
It should be only a matter of time before this one gets overturned, because it's incredibly difficult to enforce and, more importantly, it ignores one of the most fundamental aspects of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. As a parent, you have the ultimate responsibility to police what your child does and doesn't see/read/hear.
In principle, and upheld largely by case law, the Establishment Clause prohibits government from becoming a censor in place of a parent's lack of involvement or judgment. Utah H.B. 260 violates this standard, by way of the exclusion in the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
Ratings, only if done right, might be a good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Without having read through the bill I have no doubt that it's deeply flawed, but just speaking conceptually I like the idea of requiring ratings on websites if the requirements are reasonable (yeah, that's a big can of worms, I know).
It might ease some of the objections from parents (and I am one) about how easy it is for kids to access porn (and I'm especially concerned about younger kids who aren't emotionally ready to be exposed to that sort of thing).
It could also eliminate the current problem of content filters that are based upon secret blacklists of sites which may or may not contain actual porn - the blocking would be much more accurate.
For this to be done right it would have to be an internationally agreed-upon standard, and ideally a voluntary one, always keeping in mind that the ratings are only an extra bit of information placed somewhere on the web site and that it's completely up to the client (or client site) to do any filtering.
Of course, I'm not holding my breath for anything reasonable to happen.
Re:gee its ok (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'd rather have my kids see Bob Goatse in all his glory than have them stumble across this poisonous filth [chick.com] 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 [cornell.edu] under US law. IMHO The governer of Utah should be arrested, stripped of power, and sent to Federal PMITA prison for 20 years.