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posted by on Wednesday April 26 2017, @12:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-marriage-is-formed-between-one-man-and-one-electronic-computing-device dept.

More than a dozen state legislatures are considering a bill called the "Human Trafficking Prevention Act," which has nothing to do with human trafficking and all to do with one man's crusade against pornography at the expense of free speech.

At its heart, the model bill would require device manufacturers to pre-install "obscenity" filters on devices like cell phones, tablets, and computers. Consumers would be forced to pony up $20 per device in order to surf the Internet without state censorship. The legislation is not only technologically unworkable, it violates the First Amendment and significantly burdens consumers and businesses.

Perhaps more shocking is the bill's provenance. The driving force behind the legislation is a man named Mark Sevier, who has been using the alias "Chris Severe" to contact legislators. According to the Daily Beast, Sevier is a disbarred attorney who has sued major tech companies, blaming them for his pornography addiction, and sued states for the right to marry his laptop. Reporters Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny uncovered a lengthy legal history for Sevier, including an open arrest warrant and stalking convictions, as well as evidence that Sevier misrepresented his own experience working with anti-trafficking non-profits.

The bill has been introduced in some form [in] Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming (list here). We recommend that any legislator who has to consider this bill read the Daily Beast's investigation.

[...] It’s unfortunate that the Human Trafficking Prevention Act has gained traction in so many states, but we're pleased to see that some, such as Wyoming and North Dakota, have already rejected it. Legislators should do the right thing: uphold the Constitution, protect consumers, and not use the problem of human trafficking as an excuse to promote this individual’s agenda against pornography.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/states-introduce-dubious-legislation-ransom-internet


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:31PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 26 2017, @02:31PM (#500048) Journal

    What about ancient stone paintings and carvings that depict sexual acts? Would those qualify as pornography?

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  • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Wednesday April 26 2017, @06:05PM (#500230) Homepage

    Well we all know that the Venus of Willendorf [soylentnews.org] was clearly used as a way for primitive hunters to correctly identify what not to hunt. Those Greek/Roman [wikipedia.org] pottery examples were nothing more that sex-ed as well. So clearly those would be allowed.

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    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:23PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 26 2017, @07:23PM (#500292)

      to correctly identify what not to hunt

      "Venus of Walmart" the famous thousands of years old statuette of tubgirl in her native habitat... like people of walmart but for ancients. I don't believe the cultural relativism tripe fed to us at the time that in some cultures a bucket of blubber was considered the feminine ideal and a modern college cheerleader would be ignored as ugly. You can't indoctrinate teenage boys with a tall tall that ridiculous. Maybe some of the larger gravitational fields in class believed it; none of the boys.