Porn bill closer to approval

The road to approval for a bill that would improve the ability of parents to restrict access to Internet pornography became much easier Tuesday.

A substituted HB260, which unanimously passed the House Public Utilities and Technology Committee, is no longer burdened by a warning that portions of HB260 had a "high probability" of being found unconstitutional. The primary reason for the amended note, sponsoring Rep. John Dougall, R-American Fork, said, was that the substituted bill makes it very clear that consumers have a choice to use the "tools" provided.

Those tools include a rating system for Web pages that may be "harmful to minors" and an "adult content registry" for those companies offering such material but do not rate their sites.

That registry was the specific portion of the bill that the original constitutional review note cited as potentially unconstitutional, primarily because it could have violated free speech tenets of the state and federal constitutions if it required Internet service providers to block the sites on the registry. The substitute makes it clear that ISPs would only block access if requested by customers.

"Fundamental to what we have is consumer choice," Dougall said. "We are giving them the tools, if they want them, to prevent harmful materials from coming into our homes."

If HB260 is approved, it would require that Utah-based companies begin rating their sites for potentially harmful materials, which is primarily nudity or sexual activities, according to guidelines established by the Utah Consumer Protection Services Division.

At the same time, the Utah Attorney General's Office would start developing a registry of those companies that do not rate their sites as potentially harmful to minors, and by 2007 would allow Internet service providers to offer that list to their customers for filtering.

The bill also appropriates $100,000 for marketing and advertising campaigns to educate parents about the dangers of the Internet and $50,000 to research the effectiveness of various filtering technologies.

Because the law would only apply to Utah-based companies, it would not violate the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which has hampered most other Internet control legislation, he said. Also, consumers choosing to use the registry to block sites would be made aware of the fact that because the registry would only contain domain names, some innocous material may not be accessible.

"Consumers will be informed that they are making the choice to block this material," he said. "They will also be told that some information which is not harmful could be blocked."

Nobody spoke against the bill during the committee hearing, and committee members primarily focused on specific questions about how the law would work technologically. By the end, all of the members seemed convinced that the bill would be useful.

"I did initially have some grave concerns about this bill, but those seem to have been addressed," Rep. Brad Daw, R-Orem, said. "Filtering technology is the best way to deal with this problem."

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