Proposed Utah bill would give special designation to ISPs that block porn

By Jaikumar Vijayan

February 27, 2008 (Computerworld) A bill introduced this month in the Utah House of Representatives would give Internet service providers that block access to pornographic material a special designation and an official seal that they could display on their Web sites and use in their promotional materials.

If approved and signed into law, the bill — officially known as H.B. 407 — would create a Community Conscious Internet Provider (CCIP) designation and order the state attorney general's office to issue a seal to qualifying ISPs.

The bill, which was introduced by a Republican representative named Michael Morley, was given a favorable recommendation by the Utah House's Government Operations Committee on Monday. It also received a second reading on the House floor that day.

To qualify for the CCIP designation, ISPs would have to file an application form with the attorney general's office agreeing to contractually prohibit their customers from publishing pornographic material on the Web. The agreement would also require them to remove any pornography and other content deemed harmful to minors that does get published by their customers, while also preventing other users from accessing those items in the meantime.

To define content that could be considered harmful to minors, the bill points to language in an existing Utah law that describes such material as anything containing nudity or depicting sexual conduct that "when taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest" among minors.

The restrictions would apply to all such content either published on Web sites hosted by an ISP or accessed via its services. In addition, the proposed bill would require companies seeking the CCIP designation to keep track of all IP addresses issued to customers for a minimum of two years after their initial allocation. ISPs would also would have to agree to comply with any court order requiring the removal of material prohibited under the statute and to identify individuals being sought by law enforcement authorities. And they would have to give all customers a full disclosure of the requirements.

The CCIP designations would be awarded for periods of up to one year, after which ISPs would need to apply for a renewal. Under the proposed law, companies that failed to fulfill the agreements could face fines of up to $10,000 for each violation.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a not-for-profit advocacy group in Washington, voiced skepticism about the proposed legislation.

"The bill demeans the concept of community by labeling those ISPs who block content access and spy on their customers as a CCIP," Chester said. "They might as well use the acronym to mean 'Communist-like Control over Information Privacy.'"

Stopping Internet users from publishing or accessing content that can be legally viewed "sets the stage for a government-approved and ideologically correct Internet," he added, going on to raise the specter of ISPs being lured by the government "into becoming junior digital G-men and G-women."

Morley couldn't be reached as of publication time for comment about the proposed legislation.