It’s easy to get nervous when legislators try to regulate use of the internet.
As we’ve seen with the congressional hearings of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, lawmakers often reveal themselves as too technologically ignorant to understand the impact their laws will have.
So when you hear that a new bill seeks to block certain content from people’s devices, you’d be forgiven for wincing. But the more we hear about this particular proposal, the stranger it gets.
Arizona politician Gail Griffin recently introduced a bill to the state’s House of Representatives that would have tech distributors install software that blocks porn from their devices.
As the Arizona Mirror reported , this software would be mandatory for any internet-capable devices sold in Arizona if the bill passes.
Any distributor who doesn’t comply would be fund guilty of a class 1 misdemeanor , which could result in up to six months of imprisonment.
Any citizens who want to remove this software would need to pay a $20 fee to the State of Arizona.
The Arizona Mirror also reported that they would also need to prove they are at least 18-years-old to the state and acknowledge that removing this blocker would expose them to “obscene material.”
Furthermore, this fee could be subject to change by the Arizona Commerce Authority and tech distributors would be allowed to charge additional fees to remove the blocker if desired.
If this bill becomes law, it would also create the John McCain Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Fund, which is where all the money would go.
The fund would then be used to award grants for upholding “community standards of decency” and “developing, expanding or strengthening programs for victims of sex abuse.”
Some of the programs that the fund would support seem appropriate to the name, such as those for mental health services, temporary housing, school assistance, and law enforcement assistance.
However, the bill also states that the grants could be earmarked for something with a more dubious connection to the issue.
Namely, the bill states the fund could be used to build a border wall between Arizona and Mexico and to fund existing border security initiatives.
At the moment, it’s also unclear whether John McCain’s family supports the bill in any way or gave permission for its use of his name.
In fact, it seems unlikely that they have because Newsweek reported that a similar bill tabled throughout the country last year used kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart’s name in a similar fashion.
Smart did not authorize this and her lawyer sent the bill’s proponent, Chris Sevier, a cease-and-desist letter.
Although Sevier’s name is not mentioned in the Arizona bill, its purpose and $20 fee mirrors the ones he tried to push through state legislatures before.
As Newsweek reported , Sevier made previous headlines by suing Apple because their devices are able to show pornography and trying to marry a computer in protest of same-sex marriage.
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Both of these efforts ended up getting dismissed in court.
As you might have imagined, his attempts at getting legislation through have attracted their share of critics.
According to Motherboard , lawyers from the ACLU have called one of his bills “an unconstitutional cash grab for an internet filter” and “an attempt to infringe on people’s rights.”
The current bill was also called “pretty clearly unconstitutional” by Mike Stabile from the Free Speech Coalition, which lobbies on behalf of the adult entertainment industry.
Indeed, Sevier’s previous bills clearly didn’t have much legal footing, as none of them have passed up to this point.
As Motherboard reported , Sevier tried to get similar bills through in Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Utah, Rhode Island and South Carolina without success.
Critics expect the same fate for this Arizona effort, but this situation stilsl begs the question of how Sevier managed to gain enough influence with legislators to introduce any of them in the first place.
h/t: The Arizona Mirror