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Utah's Strategy in Defending the Porn-Law
Utah’s new anti-pornography law is different than other laws that states and the Federal government have passed. The most significant difference is that it’s based on tagging and filtering. Instead of requiring that the content provider determine who can and can’t see the material, this law, just asks that content providers rate their material.
The ACLU, which has challenged these kinds of laws every time they come up, always trots out the same list of plaintiffs. See, their problem is that they don’t want to look like their defending sleaze bags pornographers, so they have a librarian, a book store owner, etc. The problem is that that strategy probably won’t work this time.
Yesterday, the AG asked the judge in the case to throw out 11 of the 15 plaintiffs because they had no “standing.” In other words, the law wouldn’t affect them, or at least wouldn’t change what they’re already doing and so they can’t claim that it harms them. The fact is, most of these people are already rating (tagging) their material in the offline world, so why is doing so in the online world any different?
The AG’s smart to pursue this strategy. If he can whittle the plaintiff list down to the real scum, then it will be a lot harder for the ACLU to convince a judge that what they’re doing requires protection. Tagging content has been found to be constitutional in lots of other places (movie theaters, for example) so why not the Internet?
Posted by windley on August 24, 2005 06:59 AM
