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Chris Sevier, a man who once tried to marry his laptop to make a point against same-sex marriage, has been promoting legislation that would require ISPs to block "sexual content and/or patently offensive material." The block could only be lifted if a user makes a request in writing to the ISP and pays a one-time fee of $20. An "Internet digital blocking" bill will be heard by the Rhode Island Senate on the 27th. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two dozen similar bills have been introduced in 18 state legislatures this year.
Sevier refers to the legislation on his website and elsewhere with names such as the "Understanding the Human Trafficking And Child Exploitation Prevention Act", "Human Trafficking Prevention Act" (HTPA), "Children's Online Filtering Act", or "Elizabeth Smart Law". Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped in 2002 and raped repeatedly during a span of nine months. While she has since become an activist on behalf of legislation related to human trafficking and child sexual abuse, Smart has sent Sevier a cease-and-desist letter related to the use of her name to promote the porn blocking legislation.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, an anti-pornography group, opposes incarnations of the legislation due to their vague language, First Amendment concerns, and Sevier's false claims that the organization supports or has authored the legislation:
The bill (sans resolution language) was developed by Chris Sevier, also known as Chris Severe. We have had a difficult relationship with Mr. Sevier over the last several years, to say the least. We have not found him trustworthy in our past dealings and therefore cannot rely on his assertions that those groups and those legislators that he claims are supporters of HTPA are actually in support. That is because, in the past, Sevier has falsely represented that our organization and NCOSE President Patrick Trueman and NCOSE Executive Director Dawn Hawkins are in support of his work. We have demanded that Sevier stop using our names.
In 2015, the office of a United States Senator alerted us to the fact that Sevier was promoting a version of the HTPA at the U. S. Capitol and was representing to U. S. Senate offices that Patrick Trueman was an author of the bill. This was false. A key legal assistant with that senator's office also said that Sevier was visiting other senate offices claiming that his boss, the senator, was supporting the legislation, which was also false.
Several organizations have contacted us over the past couple years to complain that Sevier was also using their names without authorization and some of those organizations have complained that he was threatening them with legal sanctions when they refused to support him and his work.
And for a little more about Chris Sevier's legal shenanigans, you can check out this TMZ article.
Previously: States Introduce Dubious Anti-Pornography Legislation to Ransom the Internet
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:18PM (3 children)
Seems like this kind of thing is introduced all the time and gets nowhere. As in, perhaps the sponsors know it will go nowhere, but they want to be able to go back home and claim "we tried!"
They are surely not stupid enough to think it would pass Constitutional muster anyway. But that doesn't matter if it is all for show.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:27PM
"I stand for good Christian morals! Its those filthy miscreants from party $X that made this fail."
I would agree that its ignorable impossible to pass stuff from a state that doesn't matter; except that sometimes these bills end up getting passed.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:55PM
The atmosphere - you might say the smell - from the capital changes periodically. That is, the national, as well as the state capital. Just because you couldn't get a bill passed in any year from 1900 through 2017, doesn't mean you can't get it passed in 2018. All that might be required is, one old diehard has croaked, and some young fool sees this as the time to make a name for himself. Offer to allow him to put his name on the bill, and it's passed.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday March 28 2018, @09:21PM
I say let it pass. I've always been interested in seeing how many milliseconds it would take to reverse something as stupid as this once it hits the public sphere. I get that it's for the "We tried..." aspect - but it wouldn't it be grand if just for once, one of these bullshit "We tried..." bills got through and the people introducing it would have to live (at least temporarily) with the consequences of their special stupid.