Rhode Island Backs Away From Incomprehensibly Stupid Porn Filter Law

from the stop-doing-that dept

For years now, a guy by the name of Chris Sevier has been waging a fairly facts-optional war on porn. Sevier first came to fame for trying to marry his computer to protest same sex marriage back in 2016. He also tried to sue Apple after blaming the Cuppertino giant for his own past porn addiction, and has gotten into trouble for allegedly stalking country star John Rich and a 17-year-old girl. Sevier has since been a cornerstone of an effort to pass truly awful porn filter legislation in more than 15 states under the disengenuous guise of combatting human trafficking.

Dubbed the "Human Trafficking Prevention Act," all of the incarnations of the law would force ISPs to filter pornography and other "patently offensive material." The legislation would then force state residents interested in viewing porn to pony up a one-time $20 "digital access fee" to whitelist the internet's naughty bits for each internet-connected device in the home. The proposal is patently absurd, technically impossible to implement, and yet somehow these bills continue to get further than they ever should across a huge swath of the boob-phobic country.

Rhode Island was the latest state to consider such legislation, their version of the law (pdf) imposing fines up to $500 for each instance of offensive content ISPs failed to filter (costs that would, as always, just be passed on to the end consumer while tech-savvy porn users simply tap-dance around the restrictions). Sevier's garbage legislation saw some success in the state after Sevier randomly affixed kidnapping-victim Elizabeth Smart's name to the proposal to help sell it (her name is referenced on his website), something Smart herself has been none too happy with.

Thanks to Smart's recent disgust at having her name hijacked, the original backer of the law in Rhode Island, State Senator Frank Ciccone, has decided to scrap the proposal after learning about its "dubious" origins:

Sen. Frank Ciccone, D-Providence, said he asked that the bill be killed upon learning that Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped as a teenager and whose name was attached to the bill in legislatures across the country, wanted nothing to do with it.

“In light of recent nationwide reporting about the dubious origins of this bill, I have requested that the legislation be withdrawn from today’s Judiciary Committee hearing,” Ciccone said in a Tuesday news release. “Also, after learning that Elizabeth Smart was in no way involved with this legislation, and the fact that 18 other state legislatures have received the same erroneous information leading to similar bills being sponsored across the country, I am withdrawing this legislation from the 2018 Senate session."

And while that's great and all, it would have taken Ciccone all of five minutes of internet research to discover the dubious origins of these proposals, since this bullshit has been going on for several years now. Again, none of these proposals should be getting anywhere close to being seriously considered, and the guy crafting them shouldn't be writing commercial jingle ideas on cocktail napkins, much less state law.

Filed Under: chris sevier, elizabeth smart, filters, first amendment, frank ciccone, free speech, porn filter, rhode island