Lawmakers seek ways to block Net porn

Little has been successful.

But a legislative committee studying the issue this spring and summer heard Wednesday about some real-world alternatives that Utah lawmakers can adopt.

Local Internet providers, like locally based XMission, have raised concerns about state legislators trying to control a medium that answers to Congress and is protected by constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and interstate commerce.

But those advocating controls told lawmakers there are ways to restrict access to child pornography — already illegal in the United States — and keep minors from accessing adult-only-legal sexually explicit Web sites.

Among the proposals were penalizing those who leave their wireless networks open and rewarding Internet providers that self-police access to pornography.

The discussion in the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Study Committee was often technical, with committee members having to be brought up to speed on various terms and applications.

"My brain is on the edge of frying, trying to understand" the technology involved, said committee co-chairman Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City.

Ralph Yarro, a parent volunteering his time to stem what he calls a crisis of inappropriate material flowing over an unregulated Internet, understands the confusion lawmakers face, saying there is a huge "generation gap" between what teens and pre-teens can do on the Internet and what their parents understand.

Cheryl Preston, a law professor at Brigham Young University who has been studying various legal methods to keeping Internet porn out of the reach of minors, said when she discusses the problem she often hears the argument: "What are these kids' mothers doing" and why are they not watching what their children are doing on the computer?

But many parents aren't tech savvy, she said. "The mothers are just glad to see their kids doing their homework on the home computer."

Beyond that, however, is that many teens know how to get around filters in the home computer — or know where they can get open-access wireless Internet "where they can watch porn all day long," said Yarro, who heads a group called CP80, which advocates congressional action to set up family-friendly Internet groupings that would filter out porn Internet addresses.

Pete Ashdown is the founder and owner of XMission, a local Internet service provider.

Ashdown, who was the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate a year ago, said XMission has been providing Internet filters to his clients for more than 10 years — long before the Utah Legislature got involved in Internet control.

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