Utah Governor Signs New Porn Filter Law That's Just Pointless, Performative Nonsense

from the round-and-round-you-go dept

For decades now Utah legislators have repeatedly engaged in theater in their doomed bid to filter pornography from the internet. And repeatedly those lawmakers run face first into the technical impossibility of such a feat (it's trivial for anybody who wants porn to bypass filters), the problematic collateral damage that inevitably occurs when you try to censor such content (filters almost always wind up with legit content being banned), and a pesky little thing known as the First Amendment. But annoying things like technical specifics or the Constitution aren't going to thwart people who just know better.

For months now Utah has been contemplating yet another porn filtering law, this time HB 72. HB 72 pretends that it's going to purge the internet of its naughty bits by mandating active adult content filters on all smartphones and tablets sold in Utah. Phone makers would enable filters by default (purportedly because enabling such restrictions by choice is just to darn difficult), and require that mobile consumers in Utah enter a pass code before disabling the filters. If these filters aren't enabled by default, the bill would hold device manufacturers liable, up to $10 per individual violation.

On Tuesday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed the bill into law, claiming its passage would send an “important message” about preventing children from accessing explicit online content:

"Rep. Susan Pulsipher, the bill’s sponsor, said she was “grateful” the governor signed the legislation, which she hopes will help parents keep their children from unintended exposure to pornography. She asserts that the measure passes constitutional muster because adults can deactivate the filters, but experts said it still raises several legal concerns."

The AP story takes the "view from nowhere" or "both sides" US journalism approach to the story, failing to note that it's effectively impossible to actually filter porn from the internet. Usually because the filters (be they adult controls on a device or DNS blocklists) can usually be disabled by a toddler with a modicum of technical aptitude. Or that filters almost always cause unintended collateral damage to legitimate websites.

The AP also kind of buries the fact that the bill is more about performative posturing than productive solutions. The law literally won't take effect unless five other states pass equal laws, something that's not going to happen in part because most states realize what a pointless, Sisyphean effort this is:

"Moreover, the rule includes a huge loophole: it doesn’t take effect until five other states pass equivalent laws. If none pass before 2031, the law will automatically sunset. And so far, Utah is the only place that’s even got one on the table. “We don’t know of any other states who are working on any plans right now,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation media relations director Rebecca Jeschke."

There's also, again, that whole First Amendment thing. There is apparently something in the water at the Utah legislature that makes state leaders incapable of learning from experience when it comes to technical specifics or protected speech:

Obviously, this will go about as well as all the previous efforts of this type, including the multi-state effort by the guy who tried to marry his computer to mandate porn filters in numerous states under the false guise of combatting "human trafficking." And it will fail because these are not serious people or serious bills; they're just folks engaged in performative nonsense for a select audience of the perpetually aggrieved. Folks who simply refuse to realize that the solution to this problem is better parenting and personal responsibility, not shitty, unworkable bills or, in this case, legislation that does nothing at all.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, constitution, moral panic, porn filters, spencer cox, utah

Utah Legislature Wraps Up Session By Passing Two Unconstitutional Internet Bills

from the nice-work,-everyone dept

Last week we wrote about the many, many, many constitutional problems with a bill proposed in Utah to try to tell internet companies how they can moderate content. As we noted, the bill clearly violates the 1st Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and is also pre-empted by Section 230.

So, of course, it passed.

The Salt Lake Tribune report has a stunning set of paragraphs that demonstrate that supporters of the bill not only ignored many, many experts telling them the constitutional problems with the bill, but they then pretended no one notified them of those concerns (this is blatantly false):

“What we are talking about here are large, private forums that are free to moderate themselves and to put up what they want to put up and censor and kick off those people they choose to,” added House Minority Leader Brian King, D-Salt Lake City. “If we pass this bill, the Utah taxpayers are going to pay large amounts of money to defend the constitutionality of this bill against a lot of large entities that have many resources.”

Brammer shot back that he was not made aware of any constitutional issues with the legislation. However, a legal analysis from the Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel shared with The Salt Lake Tribune raises several potential constitutional and legal problems.

Legislative attorneys advised that HB228 may violate the First Amendment by compelling speech through requiring these companies to provide information about their moderation practices, although that may not be an impermissible burden given their vast resources.

The memo also warns the bill could violate the Constitution by placing an “undue burden on interstate commerce.”

Finally, the legislation might be unenforceable because of provisions in the federal Communications Decency Act.

It's one thing to ignore me -- I'm just a loud mouth blogger. But to flat out ignore the points raised by legislative attorneys, making it clear that you're going to waste a ton of taxpayer money? That's just obnoxious. Rep. Brady Brammer should be ashamed.

And that wasn't the only unconstitutional tech-related bill the Utah legislature passed as it wrapped up its session. It also passed a porn filter bill that would mandate a porn filter on any phone, computer, tablet or other electronic device.

Just like the many, many, many other attempts at such bills, this one is also blatantly unconstitutional. In the key case that made all of the Communications Decency Act (minus Section 230) unconstitutional, Reno v. ACLU, the Supreme Court (with a 9-0 vote) made it quite clear that governments cannot mandate the blocking of pornographic material online. In that case, the Supreme Court went through many reasons why governments don't get to mandate filters for indecent content.

Utah's legislators haven't even attempted to address any of those concerns. Incredibly, the Salt Lake Tribune quotes even those who voted for the bill as saying that the bill has serious problems and will require follow up legislation to fix.

“As much as the intentions of this bill are good, logistically it just won’t work,” Anderegg, R-Lehi, said. “And I think if we pass this bill, it sends a good message. ... But we absolutely will be back here at some point in the future, maybe even in a special session to fix this.”

Anderegg ultimately voted in support of the bill, saying that while he has “a lot of trepidation” about the bill, he doesn’t “want to be the guy” who opposes an attempt to shield children from graphic content.

Incredible. Admitting you voted for a bill that you know won't work.. and saying you have to to protect the children, is quite an admission. The bill not only won't work, it's unconstitutional. And that's not the kind of thing you fix in a "special session." You just don't pass unconstitutional bills.

And if the goal is not to have children looking at porn, why not... let parents do their jobs and if they want to install a filter, let them do so. Remember "personal responsibility"?

Filed Under: content moderation, filters, free speech, internet, porn, porn filters, social media, utah

UK May Have Finally Ditched Its Absurd Porn Filter Plan

from the censor-the-naughty-bits dept

As we've noted for years, internet filters don't work, routinely censor legitimate content by mistake, and implementing them is a massive waste of money, time, resources, and precious calories. In the UK, that's been a lesson that has been painfully difficult to learn.

The UK has long implemented porn filters in a bid to restrict anybody under the age of 18 from accessing such content. New age verification controls were also mandated as part of the Digital Economy Act of 2017. But as we've previously noted, the UK government has seen several fits and starts with its proposal as it desperately tries to convince the public and business sectors that the ham-fisted effort was going to actually work.

Back in April, the UK government announced that after numerous delays the program would effectively be taking effect July 15. Under the proposal, websites that failed to comply with the country's age verification program face fines up to £250,000, risk being taken offline, or may lose access to payment services. Randy folks who wanted to view some porn were to be redirected to a special subsite where they'd be prompted for an email address and a password, before verifying your age using a driving license or a passport. They'd then, theoretically, happily be passed off to compliant porn websites.

Of course anybody who has watched anybody with a whit of technical prowess bypass these costly blockades using VPNs or proxies knew this wasn't going to work. Getting global websites to comply with UK law was largely preposterous, and the creation of a database of porn habits created fairly obvious privacy and security issues.

After years of grumbling, the UK government appears to have now scrapped the proposal "indefinitely." UK outlets are suggesting that bureaucratic dysfunction -- not any epiphany as to the stupidity of the program -- was to blame:

"The UK’s age-verification system for online pornography will be delayed for around six months because the government failed to inform the EU of its proposals, the culture secretary has said.

The already delayed policy, which will require all adult internet users wanting to watch legal pornography to prove they are over 18 by providing some form of identification, was due to come into force on 15 July.

However, the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, told the House of Commons, that would not happen, because of a failure to comply with European law in how statutory instruments are passed."

Some have argued that the claim of bureaucratic dysfunction is a polite way to kill the program, without making it obvious that the UK government is killing the program. Regardless, the quest to filter out the internet's naughty bits will now be kicked down the road for the next Prime Minister to worry about.

Hopefully said Prime Minister realizes that 1) collecting everybody's porn interests poses a terrible potential privacy risk, 2) internet filters routinely wind up censoring legitimate resources, and 3) the filters can be easily bypassed by any halfwit utilizing a proxy or VPN. The solution on the porn front has long been better parenting and parental controls and not putting government in charge of policing porn consumption, but it's a lesson some government leaders simply refuse to learn. In other words, you can probably expect this dumb idea to resurface down the road with a fresh coat of paint.

Filed Under: censorship, filters, porn filters, uk

Hawaii The Latest To Push Bullshit Porn Filter Law Pushed By Sketchy Backers

from the round-and-round-we-go dept

For several years a man by the name of Chris Sevier has been waging a fairly facts-optional war on porn. Sevier first became famous for trying to marry his computer to protest same sex marriage a few years ago. He also tried to sue Apple after blaming the Cupertino 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 nearly two dozen states under the disingenuous guise of combating 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.

Hawaii this week was the latest to take Sevier's unworkable draft legislation and turn it into unworkable real legislation. According to CNN, several incarnations of the bill have been proposed in the Hawaii legislature, after a similar measure failed to pass last year:

"It doesn't make sense for children to have to access to X-rated material on their cell phones," said Hawaiian State Sen. Mike Gabbard, who sponsored the Senate bill. He also introduced a similar bill during last year's legislative session. "By making it harder for people to access these porn sites, we can make prostitution hubs harder to access which will reduce sex trafficking," Gabbard said in an email to CNN."

Except the proposed legislation has nothing to do with human trafficking, something other states (like Rhode Island) discovered after they realized that the folks pushing these bills may not be, well, ethical. CNN doesn't even mention Sevier's checkered past, and also floats over the fact that these filters don't work, something anybody who actually understands technology already knows. Porn filters routinely not only wind up censoring legitimate content, but, when they work at all, they're usually easily bypassed by any nitwit with even a fraction of technical knowledge. That's oddly omitted from most of these stories.

Journalists writing about these porn filters often lose the forest for the trees in their coverage. The story isn't really about porn filters, though pointing out that porn filters don't work is certainly important. These stories are about how somebody with a terrible track record and zero meaningful expertise in either technology or law has been able to convince countless states to push ridiculous, unworkable, speech-stifling legislation in a country facing an ocean of more pressing problems.

Filed Under: chris sevier, hawaii, mike gabbard, porn filters

The 'Men Of Notre Dame' Demand A Porn Filter That Won't Work To Keep Them From Watching Porn

from the pron dept

A brief review of the many, many stories we've posted on porn filters should leave you with two undeniable conclusions: porn filters are generally terrible at actually keeping dedicated pornography viewers from watching porn and porn filters are generally fantastic at turning the attempt to block porn into an orgy of collateral damage, typically to do with educational sites. This hasn't stopped many organizations and governments from trying to save all the children and the dignity of all the women by putting these filters in place, of course, but it needs to be repeatedly noted that these attempts are routinely futile.

Rare, however, is the group that demands the porn filter to stop themselves from seeing sex acts. Rarer still is the group that does so in as insulting and sanctimonious a way possible. To see that kind of rare gemstone of silly, you apparently have to travel to Notre Dame, where "the men of Notre Dame" have demanded a porn filter from the school.

Read the whole post, if you can stomach it, but the writer kicks the whole thing off with back to back paragraphs that make it clear it's themselves they want to handcuff here.

As the men of Notre Dame, we request that the University implement a filter to make pornography inaccessible on the Notre Dame Wi-Fi networks. This filter would send the unequivocal message that pornography is an affront to human rights and catastrophic to individuals and relationships. We are calling for this action in order to stand up for the dignity of all people, especially women.

Pornography does not come up often in casual conversation, but its effects are everywhere — even on the campus we call home. A survey conducted in 2013 showed that 63 percent of male Notre Dame students have viewed pornography on the university Wi-Fi network. National studies have demonstrated 64 percent of college men and 18 percent of college women spend time viewing online porn each week. In a given month, 86 percent of men interact with pornography.

A couple items of note here. In back to back paragraphs, "the men of Notre Dame" request the filter, and then cite statistics that indicate nearly two-thirds of "the men of Notre Dame" view pornography on the school's wireless network. If these men, these glorious, upstanding, do-right men, want so badly to stop porn from being viewed on school property, it seems they need only to, you know, fucking stop viewing it. Otherwise, it seems clear that this isn't "the men of Notre Dame" requesting a porn filter, but some small subset of those men attempting to force their desires on other people. There's a word for that, I think.

Secondly, this demand to censor the network comes also with the proclamation that they are not just making it on behalf of the "men of Notre Dame" but the "women of Notre Dame." It's quite a bold statement to declare that the women of the student body are apparently so enfeebled that they need these dudes to speak for them, but, as with the call for censorship itself, what's a little condescending paternalism among academic peers?

From there, the post cites all kinds of half-baked statistics that might be true but probably aren't, along with the kinds of scare tactics typically reserved for congressional hearings on the topic of pornography. But it's when "the men of Notre Dame" attempt to law-splain the validity of their request that apparently they turned lazy.

As the Supreme Court stated in Paris Adult Theatre v. Slayton, “A sensitive, key relationship of human existence, central to family life, community welfare and the development of human personality, can be debased and distorted by crass commercial exploitation of sex.”

That is in fact true. That's what the Supreme Court stated in its 1973 ruling on a court case that allowed lower courts to indeed prohibit pornography from being displayed in a public movie theater, even if that theater was restricted to only consenting adults. Also in that narrow 5-4 ruling was the court drawing a distinct line from a previous case, Stanley v. Georgia, which had to do with restricting home viewing of pornography. In that case, SCOTUS struck down a conviction of a man with porn in his home on First Amendment grounds. It seems clear that Stanley is much more analogous than Paris in this case, given that we're talking about a school campus on which students make their home while classes are in session.

So, to summarize: a group purporting to speak for all of the men of Notre Dame, but which clearly doesn't speak for even a majority of them, requests a porn filter that won't work but will cause collateral damage, while citing a court case that doesn't really help their argument and insisting that they speak for women.

Sheesh, maybe the 'men of Notre Dame' should just stick to watching porn....

Filed Under: censorship, porn, porn filters
Companies: notre dame

Georgia Lawmakers Look To Go Down Porn-Censoring Unconstitutional Rabbit Hole

from the pron dept

While America is often portrayed as a hive of liberal debauchery, with a media environment heavy on skin and short on substance, unmentioned is a prudish strain that runs just as deep and as afoul of the mainstream. This hidden brand of puritanism rears its head in many ways, one of which is the unfortunate call to have technology companies block access to perfectly legal content in the name of protecting the gentle minds of the citizenry. Utah has attempted this in the form of calls to have phones come stock with filters to block pornography, full stop. And, while Utah is by no means alone in America in this endeavor, this sort of unconstitutional grab at the minds of the people is most often attempted in the more conservative, and religious, states. This, of course, despite all of the collateral damage to educational and otherwise useful material that comes along with this sort of thing.

Yet the march against skin marches on. In Georgia, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would mandate filters on mobile devices that allow internet access.

State representative Paulette Rakestraw has filed House Bill 509 which would require retailers to put a “digital blocking capability” on some devices to make “obscene material” inaccessible. Retailers, in this code section, would mean anyone who SELLS or LEASES a device that allows content to be accessed on the Internet. The “blocking capability” is required to make porn, child porn, revenge porn, websites about prostitution, and websites about sex trafficking all inaccessible. Retailers would be required to have a telephone line where consumers could call to report complaints and it prohibits retailers from giving consumers intel on how to deactivate the blocking program themselves.

There's a lot to say about why this sort of thing is dumb, so let's just rapid fire them off. First, the inclusion of porn generally, as opposed to the requirement to block the more illicit content discussed above, renders this unconstitutional, as I mentioned above. That pesky First Amendment tends to stand in the way of government attempts to prohibit otherwise perfectly legal content and speech, of which pornography is generally included. The rather cynical way this general block on pornography is wrapped in the cloak of attempts to block the familiar enemies, like child porn and trafficking sites, adds to how slimy this all is. And this final sentence of the paragraph is where I would typically mention how easily circumvented these types of filters tend to be, except one of the proposed law's other provisions appears to try to tackle that in a way that requires further discussion.

Here is the real humdinger: If you are 18 years of age or older, request in writing that you would like to deactivate the program, acknowledge in writing that you understand the dangers (yes, that is really the word they use) of deactivating the program, and pay a $20 fee, you can have the program removed from your device.

You read that correctly. If, as a reasonable, responsible, American adult, you wish to look at obscene material in the privacy of your own home, you have to tell the grandmother at the Wal-Mart check out line that you would like her to delete the program so you can enjoy the device to the fullest extent.

This puts the government in Georgia in the uncomfortable position of not only attempting to enact an unconstitutional law, but it also requires them to be grifters off of those that would enjoy the same material it seeks to block. Making $20 from adults who want to circumvent the filter required by the law means the state of Georgia stands to profit financially from its citizens' masturbation habits. And, while that's plainly just gross, it's the attempt to keep the public from knowing how to circumvent the filter themselves that makes this all look like a self-pleasure-tax than anything resembling an attempt to block illicit material. After all, how needed is a filter to block obscene material if the government is willing to allow it not to be blocked for the cost of a pizza?

Where the censorship of legitimate and legal speech is pretty plainly unconstitutional, specifically taxing a form of speech is painfully so.

Porn is free speech. This is a tax on free speech. A tax on people who wish to exercise and enjoy free speech. Here’s another thing: By taxing porn, the government is condoning the industry, “allowing” it to exist, if you will. If the risks are SO high for sex trafficking and child pornography, then all porn should be illegal.

The fact that there is no advocacy for eradication of porn just reiterates the point: This isn’t about protecting anyone or helping anyone. It’s about taxing a vulnerable industry that is considered immoral. There is less resistance. After all, who is going to speak out in favor of porn?

Well, I will, for starters. And I will do so unashamedly. Pornography itself has all kinds of useful and healthy applications, all of which have been documented scientifically. This isn't to say there are no downsides, or potential downsides, but there is a healthy application for pornography and the activities that tend to go with it. On top of that, giving government the power to block that which is deemed to be "obscene" or "pornographic" is rife with problems that far outweigh any potential benefits in censoring it. The public is not served living at the pleasure of a government that can decide what is good for it. And taxing it, not out of existence, but into legitimacy, is as crass and cynical a thing a local government can do.

Which is likely all besides the point. This, again, is unconstitutional, which should be the end of the discussion.

Filed Under: censorship, first amendment, georgia, paulette rakestraw, porn, porn filters

Israeli Lawmakers Pushing Mandatory, Default ISP Porn Filtering Because That Always Works So Well

from the perverts:-please-sign-here dept

It looks like Israel wants to take a UK-esque approach to internet porn. The Israeli government is considering mandating site blocking at the ISP level, rather than allowing end users to make their own decisions, as Quartz's Anaya Bhattacharya reports:

On Oct. 30, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation unanimously green-lit a bill that would force internet companies to censor pornography by default. The committee approved the measure in a bid to clamp down on rampant underage access to adult content online, the Times of Israel reported.

"Rampant underage access." That's a hell of a phrase. I wonder if the Israeli government has any stats to back up this assertion. The underlying reporting at the Times of Israel is less than illuminating. The same goes for the reporting at Haaretz, although this one does have a rather useless analogy delivered by a legislator.

“The damaging influence of watching, and addiction to, pornographic and severe violence has been proven in many studies, with great harm to children. Today, it is easier for a child to consume harsh content on the internet than to buy an ice cream at the local kiosk,” said Moalem-Refaeli. “We must prevent such access by making the default of the internet provider to filter such content, unless the customer has asked to be exposed to it,” she added.

So, because internet porn is easier to access than ice cream, ISPs may be forced to stop allowing ice cream to flow uninterrupted through its lines unless customers of age specifically ask to be "exposed to" ice cream. If customers want porn to burst from every digital orifice connected to their ISP, they would need to opt-in via phone call, letter, or through the ISP's website.

Other people, who would just like to have their access to websites less effed up will also have to do the same, considering website filtering/blocking is far from perfect and tends to net a bunch of false positives. Critics of the bill only have to point to all the other times this has happened to provide examples of why this is a bad idea.

In addition, a list of opt-in users would be created because there's no way an opt-in "service" doesn't. I can't imagine why the government might be interested in the contents of such a list, but the fact that it's there means it could be obtained without too much paperwork if "needed." Then there are other outside forces, like malicious hackers, who might find it entertaining to plaster lists of "porn, please!" users all over the internet.

Less damaging to internet users' privacy would be a more voluntary system that allows users to request porn filtering and site blocking, rather than make this the default. But all of these issues are ignored when legislators engage in "for the children" legislation. Simple niceties like an open internet and user privacy are no match for impassioned pleas for all the ice cream-eating 8-year-olds of [insert nation here].

Filed Under: internet, israel, mandatory porn filters, porn, porn filters

Lawmakers From The Great Theocracy Of Utah Looking To Block Porn On Cell Phones

from the pron dept

When we've talked in the past about government attempting to outright block pornography sites, those efforts have typically been aimed at sites hosting child pornography. Blocking child porn is a goal that's impossible to rebel against, though the methods for achieving it are another matter entirely. Too often, these attempts task ISPs and mobile operators with the job of keeping this material out of the public eye, which is equal parts burdensome, difficult to do, and rife with collateral damage. Other nations, on the other hand, have gone to some lengths to outright block pornography in general, such as in Pakistan for religious reasons, or in the UK for save-the-children reasons. If the attempts to block child porn resulted in some collateral damage, the attempts to outright censor porn from the internet resulted in a deluge of such collateral damage. For this reason, and because we have that pesky First Amendment in America, these kinds of efforts attempted by the states have run into the problem of being unconstitutional in the past.

But, as they say, if at first you don't succeed, just try it in an even more conservatively prudish state again. Which brings us to Utah, where state Senator Todd Weiler is leading the effort to purge his state of any access to porn on mobile devices.

Utah Senator Todd Weiler has proposed a bill to rid the state of porn by adding Internet filters and anti-porn software on all cell phones and requiring citizens to opt-in before viewing porn online. It's to save the children, he says. Weiler successfully pushed an anti-porn resolution through the state Senate earlier this year, declaring porn a "public health crisis." He now hopes to take his movement a step further by making it harder for Utah citizens to have access to digital porn.

"A cell phone is basically a vending machine for pornography," Weiler told TechCrunch, using the example of cigarettes sold in vending machines and easily accessed by children decades ago.

This is where we'd usually talk about how this sort of thing is almost certainly unconstitutional, not to mention how easily circumvented the attempt would be. And both of those remain true for this case. But I would like to instead focus on the lazy analogies Weiler chooses to make and let them serve as an example of how easily twisted people's opinions can become if you simply add "saving the children" to the goals of a particular piece of legislation.

Let's start with the quote above, although I promise you there is more from Senator Weiler that we'll discuss. He claims that a cell phone is basically a porno vending machine, like a cigarette vending machine. The only problem with his analogy is how wildly untrue it is. A cigarette vending machine has no other purpose than, you know, vending smokes. A cell phone, on the other hand, has a few other purposes. Like playing video games, for instance. Or serving as a music device. Or making god damned phone calls. A claim that a phone is simply a vending machine for porn shows either a tragic misunderstanding of basic technology or, more likely, is simply a veiled hate-bomb at the internet itself. Regardless, it is not upon government to decide how our property is used lawfully. And it isn't on government to parent children. We have people for that. They're called parents.

But Weiler wasn't done.

The senator says England was successful in blocking porn on the Internet. Prime Minister David Cameron pushed legislation through in 2013 requiring U.K. Internet service providers to give citizen's the option to filter out porn.

The good Senator must have a strange definition for success, because the UK law is easily circumvented, has managed to censor all kinds of educational and informational non-pornography sites and material, and was created by a lovely chap who was later arrested on charges of child pornography himself. If one wishes to draw upon the success of something in order to push his own interests, that something probably shouldn't be a complete dumpster fire.

Local Utah ISPs are already calling the plan unrealistic and comparing it to censorious governments that I am certain Senator Weiler would recoil from. Not that this matters, I guess, since Senator Weiler fantastically admits that he has no idea how this will all work under his law.

Weiler says he doesn't know how it would work but just wants to put the idea out there and that his main concern is kids looking at porn.

"The average age of first exposure to hard-core pornography for boys is eleven years old," he said. "I'm not talking about seeing a naked woman. I'm talking about three men gang-raping a woman and pulling her hair and spitting on her face. I don't think that's the type of sex ed we want our kids to have."

Look, I usually like to back up my rebuttals to these types of things with facts and figures, but I just don't have them in this case. That isn't going to stop me from declaring that the average first exposure to pornography is an eleven year old boy seeing exactly three men gang-raping a woman is a line of bullshit so deep that the Utah Senate certainly must provision knee-high boots to its membership for such a thing to even be suggested. And this should tell you everything you need to know about Senator Weiler's plans: he doesn't know how successful it's been elsewhere, he doesn't know how it works, and he's willing to sell it to the public on the basis of a scary lie.

Oh, and it's unconstitutional, so screw your law altogether.

Filed Under: government, mobile phones, porn, porn filters, porn license, todd weiler, utah