SALT LAKE CITY—A new, proposed law in Utah that could ultimately slap porn sites with thousands or even millions of dollars in fines overwhelmingly passed the state’s House of Representatives on Tuesday, by a 60-12 vote. The bill takes a novel approach to blocking porn online, by requiring sites to slap a “health warning” that stays on screen for a full 15 seconds at the start of every video.
Sites that fail to include the warnings will be hit with a $2,500 fine—for each violation. In other words, a video viewed by 1,000 Utah internet users that fails to include the warning label would bring a $2.5 million fine to the "offending" site.
The bill now heads to the Utah state Senate where it is also expected to sail through. It would then be up to Republican Governor Gary Herbert to sign the bill into law.
“It won't stop every problem related to obscenity, it will not stop all obscenity, but it will move the ball further down the field,” the bill’s sponsor, state rep Brady Brammer told the Associated Press.
But the state’s House Democratic Minority Leader Brian King warned that the bill risks infringing on First Amendment rights.
“We are moving into uncharted territories,” King said.
Utah Daily Chronicle columnist Lynda Maxfield added that Brammer’s bill shows that he is “far more concerned with fining violators than with helping minors” who may view porn online and need guidance in understanding what they have seen.
Maxwell also noted that the warning label requirement “ignores an adult’s right to view legal pornography.”
Under the bill, however, it would be up to individuals to bring legal challenges in order to have material declared “obscene,” and therefore requiring the warning label. According to Brammer, the state itself would not get into the business of policing online porn.
Free Speech Coalition spokesperson Mike Stabile told the AP that the supposed “harms” of pornography that would be spelled out in the “health warning” label have no scientific basis, and that the bill “opens up the floodgates for lawsuits over all sorts of content.”
Photo By Carlos Suarez / Wikimedia Commons
