SALT LAKE CITY, UT – A new bill that would attempt to stop minors from accessing adult websites has been tagged potentially unconstitutional by legislative staff attorneys.Republican John McDougall, R-American Fork, the bill’s sponsor, has said that he will make some changes and submit a substitute bill.
The proposed bill would require content providers to rate the material on their websites according to whether it was potentially harmful for minors to view. The bill would also create an adult content registry, a listing of un-rated sites with adult material, managed by the attorney general.
Internet Service Providers in Utah would block access to those sites, at the customer request. The bill suggests civil penalties for ISPs that fail to take the necessary steps to protect children.
“The adult content registry is likely to block access to significant amounts of constitutionally protected material hosted on proxy servers that also contain material harmful to minors,” the legislative review note said.
It also suggested that “the adult content registry has a high probability of being held unconstitutional.”
In addition to creating the registry for adult websites, the bill would also accord $100,000 for an education and awareness campaign directed at parents, to help prevent children from accessing or receiving pornography.
“There is a technology gap between what parents know and what children know,” McDougall said. “We need to educate parents about what’s going on when their kids are online.”
In the meantime, another bill was passed by the House Judiciary Committee that will give $60,000 to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, in order to hire a staffer to coordinate and manage prevention efforts.
“We need to educate parents, libraries, churches and other groups about the dangers of Internet pornography,” said sponsoring Rep. Tim Cosgrove, D-Murray. That bill now is now headed to the full House.
