On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 02:59:20PM -0600, Rachael Treu wrote:
How, exactly, *did* this pass, anyway?
Any bill with "anti-pornography" as its title is going to be a freight train in the Utah legislature. Nobody is going to get in front of it for fear of being portrayed as "pro-pornography". I knew this sobering fact early on in the life of this bill. In its original form, it would have used IP addresses for blocking and would have introduced criminal penalties on ISPs if anything managed to slip by. Regardless of whether the ISP's filter was being circumvented or not. The bill's sponsor was good in working with me, the only ISP here that knew or was willing to come out against the bill. However, I was well aware that all I could strive for was to reduce the ISP impact of the bill, not make large deletions or changes. There were also a handful of individuals here who had direct experience with commercial software who were appalled at the nature of the bill and also worked against it. Large nationwide ISPs, who were involved in discussions early on, were strangely silent, instead letting the Internet Alliance write a letter for them. I do not believe the Attorney General's office here knows what they are signing up for. You may remember they had a "porn-czar" a few years back whose position was dissolved over lack of funding. Somehow the AG believes that maintaining and arbitrating an Internet blacklist will be easier and cheaper. In the end the bill itself doesn't have a big impact on this ISP's business. We have used Dansguardian for many years now along with URLblacklist.com for our customers that request filtering. The fact that its lists and software are open for editing and inspection is the reason I chose this over other commercial methods. This bill is a waste of time and money. It also does further damage to the Utah tech industry, portraying it as an idiotic backwater. Please do not generalize and think everyone here agrees with the methods promoted by a select few.