Porn Ban: Alabama Bill Would Mandate XXX Filters On All Internet-Connected Devices
Jack Williams, a Republican legislator in the state of Alabama, has proposed a new bill that would block by default all “obscene” content on internet-enabled devices and would require citizens pay a fee to remove the filter.
The proposal, labeled in the Alabama legislature as House Bill 428, would “prohibit the sale of a device that provides Internet access unless the device contains an active filter that blocks access to specified types of obscene material.”
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Under the law, selling a device that did not include the content filter to an adult would be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison and a $6,000 fine. Selling to a minor would be considered a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines of $30,000 per offense.
Details as to how the filter would be applied and who would be in charge of managing the content the is blocked is not defined by the bill and would appear to leave that responsibility up to the product seller. The law does state that it would require vendors to maintain a website or call center where users could report sites to be blocked, and failure to add those sites would result in a $500 fine per report.
For the user end, the block would come installed on all devices sold within the state and would be activated and mandatory by default.
An opt-out is available to those over the age of 18. To have the content block deactivated, citizens would have to file a written request, agree to a warning about the risks of browsing the web without the filter, and pay $20 to the state—plus any additional fee to the vendor who has to disable the filter.
The money raised from the bill would be split three ways, with 60 percent going to the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Fund, 20 percent to law enforcement agencies and 20 percent to the state.
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Jack Williams, the author of the bill, previously proposed a law that would consider porn a “public health hazard” and a “porn tax” that would have attached a 40 percent tax to the sale of any pornographic material.
While Williams has plenty of experience in crafting anti-porn legislation, the filter concept is not unique to Williams or Alabama. Similar proposals, complete with the same mandatory fees for removing the content filter, have appeared in North Dakota and South Carolina.
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