Wednesday, February 6, 2008

CP80’s WiFi anti-porn bill is misguided

I applaud what Utah’s CP80 and similar anti-porn groups are trying to do: keep smut away from the curious eyes of children. But some of their ideas are just ridiculous.

Take this one for example: a new bill introduced last month by Rep. Bradley Daw (R-Orem) that seeks to age-gate all wireless networks in Utah, including the one in your home. Failure to comply would result in penalty for the operator, not the offender or offended. In other words, you are your brother’s explicit keeper, by law even — not by agency.

Ars Technica explains the unruliness: “If you live in Orem and your next-door neighbor’s kid uses your open WAP to look at pictures of naked women, you could find yourself on the hook for a $1,000 fine… Parents should be responsible for monitoring the online activities of their children. Making it more costly to run WiFi networks isn’t going to keep kids away from porn.”

I am sick and tired of these Bush-like policies infecting our legislature. Go away!

DISCLOSURE: Being a parent myself, I will only allow access to approved URLs when my children come of age, this in lieu of trying to restrict obscene sites (which is futile). Wouldn’t be such a bad idea for parents either, as adult males are more addicted to porn than boys are.

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READ MORE: internet, naive, pornography, sleezebags, stupid human tricks

3 Comments

  • Connor says...
    February 6th, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    I agree that this legislation is a bit misguided. However, Part 3, Section 2 states that it does not apply to individual residences:

    This section does not apply to a person who maintains a wireless network within the person’s private residence to provide personal wireless Internet access.

  • Blake says...
    February 6th, 2008 at 6:02 pm

    Sadly, if you use your home network for business, you’re within jurisdiction.

  • Woody says...
    February 8th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Blake… It’s been a while since I have read your blog. You make a very good point. There should not be a law that takes away your agency in your own home. OpenDNS is a great tool to use for your home / home business. You can control what comes in your home through the internet on their DNS servers. You can block adult sites and any URL you see fit. You can also see stats on your browsing history. As side note… most adult men should have their wives control the account. Talk to you later, bro.

    http://www.opendns.com/

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