If you live in South Carolina, love pornography, and are planning on getting a new computer soon, you may want to make the purchase sooner rather than later. According to a report from GoUpstate.com, State Rep. Bill Chumley (R-Spartanburg) has proposed, as part of the Human Trafficking Prevention Act, that all internet-connected devices sold in the state come with a filter that restricts them from viewing pornographic content. However, the manufacturer could opt out by paying a fee of $20 per device, as could the customer after proving that he or she is of legal age.
“If an end user buys an apparatus, a computer, and they want access to that, they would have to pay to have that filter removed,” Chumley told GoUpstate. “If we could have manufacturers install filters that would be shipped to South Carolina, then anything that children have access on for pornography would be blocked,” Chumley said. “We felt like that would be another way to fight human trafficking.” If Chumley explained how that would “fight human trafficking,” then it wasn’t quoted in the article.
Under the proposed law, filter would have to include the option of allowing users to report porn sites not caught by the filter. Like with the human trafficking connection, though, if Chumley explained how the filter would work, that wasn’t quoted in the article. Filters are heavily flawed, and even devices designed to only allow access to pre-approved websites can still be a proverbial gateway to porn, like a children’s tablet from V-Tech that was recently in the news. Tech blog Gizmodo reached out for details, but did not get a reply from Chumley or the bill’s co-sponsor, Rep. Mike Burns (R-Greenville).
Chumley seems confident, though. “It’s where almost everybody has access to a computer now. It’s porn on demand. We have to start somewhere,” Chumley said. “We’re bringing attention to it. We’re not being political. It’s an issue I’m pretty passionate about.”
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