Utah passes porn opt-out law
The Utah governor signed House Bill 260 today. It creates an opt-out ability for consumers to not receive content from sites listed in an adult content registry. Basically, if you want your ISP to block porn from being transmitted to your home, the ISP must block it. This allows parents stronger control over the content entering their homes.This doesn't go as far as I proposed, but is about as much as a state can do. The real solution is to create an XXX domain to put all the rubbish and allow for easier control/monitoring by parents.
Free speech groups have come out against this, noting a similar law was struck down in Pennsylvania. More interestingly, a large lobbying group Netcoalition, funded in part by Google, Yahoo! and some of the major ISPs, is against this legislation. Their reason - the very ambigious, "legislative efforts to restrict the flow of content at the service provider level are almost inevitably unconstitutional because of the difficulties of defining a community standard for the Internet and for finding a method of restricting the flow of content that is not overly broad."
Let's look at the real reason why these groups are against this law. Porn MAKES A LOT OF MONEY. Some estimates vary, but it is a billion dollar industry. Online porn has the safety, ease and anonimity that many porn users want. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, make all their money from advertising. Porn sites are great advertisers. A search for virtually anything will get you porn. ISPs make their money from people subscribing to the expensive broadband service or using up a lot of time on the old dial-up. Many porn websites have videos and pictures that eat up a lot of time on dial-up connections and eat up bandwidth allowances on broadband. Going over either of those limits is an additional revenue source for the ISPs.
I'm sure there are plenty of good Mormons out there, but I'm sure there are some sexually tempted ones and these businesses are out to make money. They aren't worried about defining community standards or finding a method to restrict the flow of content. These search engines and ISPs are worried that porn users in Utah might become a closed market and therefore a loss of revenue.
Sometimes I hate the almighty dollar!
posted by Expat Teacher @ 5:10 PM
