Net Censorship in Utah 


The nannies that make up the majority of the Utah legislature have gone off the deep end and passed House Bill 260. This requires ISPs in Utah to filter pornographic and "material harmful to minors" upon request of their customers. And just who determines what material that they are to block? Well, the attorney general's office. Yes, now we'll have a group of interns who surf the net looking for porn subsidized by the government. This piece of junk bill is one signature away from law - that of the governor Jon Huntsman. He claims he still needs his staffers to go over the wording before making a decision. He has until March 22nd.

But that's just the beginning. It also requires "Internet content providers that create or host data in Utah to properly rate the data." Does that mean that I have to rate the content of this blog because I write it in Utah? What damn rating system? Everything that's published online now has to have some sort of code appended to it to make sure it's ok for the kiddies? What a bunch of crap. This is a great way to keep tech companies out of Utah. Why the hell would they come here and have to jump through hoops (by rating their content) just to put up a damn web site?

Plus the "Service Provider" is defined pretty loosely. It would include your standard run of the mill ISP as well as the coffee shop down the street that gives away WiFi. This would probably effectively kill any small wireless operators, and may kill even the T-Mobile HotSpots that are all over the place here. They're going to implement this just for the small number of customer's in Utah? Yeah, right. They'll probably just drop service instead of comply with the ridiculous provisions of this plan.

And who is going to be blocked? Would Google be banned? They provide all sorts of cached content and whatnot that wouldn't be suitable for the kids. How about Yahoo? Hell, eBay sports auctions that aren't very kid friendly. Are all these sites going to be blocked? Amazon provides books on topics you probably don't want your kids to read. So is the local library (who *GASP* has their card catalog and excerpts posted online!)

The really, really dumb part of this bill is that there are ISPs in Utah which already censor net content for the families that want that sort of thing. They advertise these services as a feature. They don't cost any more than anything else. There is no reason to pass a LAW that creates a huge bureaucracy just to do something that private companies are already providing to those few who want it.

The real deal here is that this isn't about the kids - it's about groups with an agenda against things they find offensive, and we all end up paying for it. If you leave in Utah, send Governor Huntsman a note about this.

Link to CNET article about the bill. 

 

Posted: Fri - March 4, 2005 at 12:20 AM          

©