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from the going-to-need-lots-of-volunteers-to-build-the-block-list dept.
Rhode Island is the latest US state to discuss mandatory censorship of web content, at first targeting pornography:
Rhode Island Democratic state Senators Frank Ciccone (@senatorciccone) and Hanna Gallo (@hannagallo27) have proposed grandstanding, unworkable legislation, "Relating to Public Utilities and Carriers—Internet Digital Blocking" which would mandate the state's ISPs to identify all the pornography on the [I]nternet, and then block it for all Rhode Islanders, unless those Rhode Islanders specifically requested their porn to be unblocked and paid $20 for the privilege.
These proposals fly in the face of the observation that automated pornography filters don't work and that even the manual ones are neither practical, reliable, nor scalable.
Source : Rhode Island proposes blocking all online porn and charging $20 to unblock it. Boing Boing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @05:33PM
Expecting that the government respect basic liberties is not an "absolutist standard"; it's the desire of any non-authoritarian. You must have very low standards indeed.
Correct.
Those specific ones, anyway. Now, the US government engages in unconstitutional (not declared by Congress) and unjust (not in self-defense or even sensible defense of allies) wars overseas, conducts unconstitutional democracy-crippling mass surveillance on the populace in several different ways, ruthlessly attacks whistleblowers and journalists who challenge it, violates the first amendment in various ways, unconstitutionally steals people's money on a routine basis and calls it "asset forfeiture", creates draconian copyright laws, hires thugs to violate the rights of anyone who tries to get on a plane, imprisons people who put certain substances into their bodies, etc. Many of those were also problems in the past, and they're not any better now.