The well meaning legislators of Utah have passed a bill of passing interest. In its original form, it would have required that all smartphones and tablets activated within its borders come equipped with porn filters.
Interesting because all these devices come preloaded with
this kind of thing already. To use them, all you need is a finger with
which to activate them. Or a keystroke.
On learning this, the lawmakers decided the next best thing
in their slightly fading techno-ignorance would be to require a warning label
on new or newly activated equipment. As big tobacco found to its delight,
warning labels are like stop signs. Sometimes they work, sometimes not.
Let’s be clear: A lot of people think other people
shouldn’t watch porn.
Let’s also be clear: a lot of people do watch.
A lot of it is free.
In cyberspace terms “free” means you’ve already paid a load
of money for the device and the internet to which you connect it. So it’s
not really free. Sorta-free is more accurate. They’re “free” in the same way
that the YouTube music videos you watch and the recipes you copy and attempt to
use are free.
You have to wonder why a state, any state, has to take a
step founded on the idea that its citizens have neither the knowledge nor the
will to make their own decisions about such things as what appears on their
screens.
Politicians do things like that all the time. They make your
decisions for you. In many cases, that’s ok, given the size and scope of
the country. But it’s surprising in a state where so many politicians and
others pay lip service to the virtue of individualism but don’t want people
making their own choices.
The actual bill would have accomplished nothing. People who
watch porn or cooking shows will continue to watch porn or cooking shows.
If they have internet devices and connections, they already have the tools they
need to impose their will on their own households.
But this move by a legislature has other implications, both
for Utah and for the rest of the country. Among them: what else are they
cooking up in efforts to give us tools we don’t need to do their inferred
bidding?
GRAPESHOT (Further State Lunacy edition):
--Meanwhile, in Tennessee, the legislature wants to make the
Bible the “State Book” to which serious biblical scholars and some clergy
object, saying that would lower it to the level of the State Bird and other
meaningless “official” symbols.
-Cuomo should keep his hands and mouth and floral deliveries
to himself, but, c’mon, folks, all this supposed harassment ain’t a capital
crime.
-How do states with no income tax fund their corruption?
I’m Wes Richards. You know the rest of the outro.
Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
© WR 2021
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