Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has signed a bill requiring Internet service providers to block adult Websites, a bill similar to a Pennsylvania law struck down by a federal court.
The bill will create an “official” list of Websites with publicly available material considered “harmful to minors,” and ISPs in Utah must offer customers ways to disable access to the sites or face felony charges.
"Upon request by a consumer,” says the language of the new law, “a service provider may not transmit material from a content provider site listed on the adult content registry.
It isn’t just limited to ISPs, however. The new Utah law also targets content providers, defined in the law’s language as companies which “create, collect, acquire, or organize electronic data” for profit, and prone to third-degree felony charges in Utah if the state attorney general considers them to be hosting material “harmful to minors” without rating the material accordingly.
Huntsman had been urged by technology companies not to sign the bill because it was written so vaguely that the full impact—including whether non-adult sites which yet contained controversial material—had yet to be clear.
"I am having a hard time seeing how this law will survive a constitutional challenge,” said Marquette University Law School professor Eric Goldman about the new Utah law, “given the track record of state anti-Internet porn laws--which are routinely struck down as violating the First Amendment and the dormant Commerce Clause."
NetCoalition, a lobby group including Google, Yahoo, and CNET, had urged the Utah state Senate to reconsider the bill because it could affect search engines, e-mail providers, and Web hosting companies, potentially requiring those to rate Websites “properly,” according to a letter they sent the Senate.
