OK time to pay attention ( new laws )

[JoesHO]

The following, from a Utah newspaper, sheds light on some of the opinions
> that warrant attention.
> Robert
> -------------
> Tuesday, March 01, 2005 - 12:00 AM
> In Our View: Be careful with pornography bill
>
> The Daily Herald
>
> If the Utah Legislature's goal is to block the rising tide of Internet
> pornography, John Dougall's bill, HB 260, is a forlorn hope. Utah has no
> jurisdiction over the porn mills of Europe, over content generated in
other
> states or over Internet service providers outside Utah's borders.
> Pornography will continue to stream into our communities. You can't solve
a
> global problem with local rules.
>
> Yet some provisions of Dougall's bill -- which passed 71-0 in the state
> House of Representatives and is under consideration in the Senate -- are
> heading strongly in the right direction. The Senate's task will be to
> remove any First Amendment problems it sees and pass a bill that will
stand
> constitutional scrutiny.
>
> Dougall's bill parts company with efforts that have been made in other
> states to control the influx of pornography into private homes. Rather
than
> having the government make decisions about what material is acceptable, HB
> 260 generally puts the power to screen offensive content where it belongs
> -- in the hands of the consumer.
>
> The starting point for HB 260 was the protection of children. It is
> narrowly tailored to shield minors from patently obscene material and from
> other sexually oriented content euphemistically known as "adult."
> Protecting children is a good place to start not only because Utah has
> existing law regarding material "harmful to minors" but because the courts
> have long recognized a compelling state interest in this area.
>
> HB 260 attempts to empower adults to maintain decency in their own homes
in
> the face of exploding Internet technology that is frustratingly difficult
> to manage. Children are exposed to pornography at a disturbing rate. About
> 80 percent of teenagers age 12 to 14 have been exposed to pornography
> repeatedly. By age 16, 90 percent have been exposed. Studies show that
> first exposure to porn usually occurs around age 8. Yet the courts have
> been unfriendly to many attempts to regulate sexual material because they
> too often put the state in charge of regulating speech.
>
> Dougall's bill takes a new tack. He reasons that there's no First
Amendment
> problem with having consumers make their own censorship decisions, and he
> designed HB 260 to help them do it.
>
> First, the bill requires Internet content providers to tag Web pages
> electronically for such things as nudity, sexual situations, etc. --
> anything that would be considered "harmful to minors" under the existing
> Utah statute. The bill does not itself require that sexual content be
> blocked. It only requires content identification so that the consumer, in
> cooperation with his ISP, can block it if he so chooses.
>
> Playboy.com and some other adult sites already use electronic content
> tagging, either by itself or in combination with some other means of
> shielding children, such as age verification. Any Web site with
> verification measures in place would be exempt from the tagging provision
> of HB 260.
>
> Second, HB 260 asks two things of ISPs:
>
> Use software tools to scan online content for material harmful to minors
> (text, for example), and block it -- but only for those consumers who
> request a block.
>
> Block content from sites listed on a state registry of untagged content --
> again, blocking only those consumers who request it based on the list.
>
> By shifting the burden of blocking content to the end consumer, Dougall
> believes he's got a bill that will stand up in court. He may be right,
> though there are some cautions that should not be taken lightly.
>
> Some provisions are vague or constitutionally dubious. For example, the
> registry provision puts the government in the business of deciding whether
> Internet content is good or bad. Millions of Web sites around the world
> could theoretically appear on such a list, and many include protected
> content within the same domains.
>
> But if a site is untagged, it gets a summary trip to the "bad" list based
> on the opinion of Utah's attorney general in cooperation with other state
> agencies. This could be viewed as government enforcing its own opinion,
> which has been frowned on by the courts. Dougall counters that the list is
> only informative, not restrictive. All material continues to flow over the
> Internet unless the consumer requests otherwise.
>
> Even so, the
> registry comes awfully close to the government book lists of the 1960s.
> Bookstores chose not to carry titles listed on the government registry,
and
> the Supreme Court
> finally struck down the lists as an
> improper chilling of speech.
>
> The Internet seems different from books in some ways, though not in all;
> clearly pornography can be thrust into someone's home without being
> invited, for example, and a person ought to be able to do something about
> that. But there are eerie similarities that the Utah Senate, in
considering
> this bill, should carefully examine.
>
> One potential trouble spot for HB 260 is the creation of a double
standard.
> A newspaper would not have to rate its Internet content, Dougall said, but
> another Internet provider would. This may cross a constitutional line.
> Moreover, content providers of material "harmful to minors" must either
tag
> their files or suffer the punishment of being placed on the state's list,
> subject thereafter to wholesale screening out by consumers who ask for
> list-based blocking.
>
> This could be trouble for many publishers. It appears possible under this
> bill that a newspaper's content -- say dead bodies hanging from a bridge
in
> Iraq, the naked Napalm Girl from the Vietnam era, or the particulars of
> Michael Jackson's sex abuse trial -- could be ruled "harmful to minors" by
> a zealous attorney general. In principle, when the government decides who
> is approved and who isn't, it's on shaky legal ground.
>
> The Senate should take a good hard look at HB 260. It's a promising
> approach to a growing problem, not unlike the do-not-call lists that apply
> to telemarketers. It has been endorsed by America Online. And Dougall's
got
> something powerful on his side: the protection of children.
>
> Who would dare vote against this bill?
>
>