If some Rhode Island state lawmakers get their way,link phim sex legally of-age residents of the Ocean State may soon have to pay $20 to access free online porn websites like PornHub and YouPorn.
SEE ALSO: Pornhub continued to host 'deepfake' porn with millions of views, despite promise to banThe bill, proposed by Democratic state senators Frank Ciccone and Hanna Gallo, is meant to shield minors from the wilds of the web by putting the responsibility for online porn on internet service providers (ISPs). It orders them to block sites that publish "sexual content and/or patently offensive material" unless an internet user pays a one-time fee of $20, provides proof they are at least 18 years of age, and makes the request to unblock the content in writing.
The bill does have some more noble pursuits, including blocking child and revenge pornography and blocking sites that "facilitate prostitution" and "human trafficking." Plus, money from the $20 fee would go to a state fund to help fight human trafficking.
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The bill has similar aspects to the "Human Trafficking And Child Exploitation Prevention Act" which has been floated in over a dozen states so far but has met opposition from groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The EFF has opposed that legislation based on its requirement of pre-installed filters on devices with internet access and two points similar to the Rhode Island bill: data collection (requiring information on users who want to unblock sexually explicit content) and a "censorship tax."
Wading so deep into the murky internet censorship waters means its very unlikely the Rhode Island bill will pass, particularly given some tricky language.
As New Yorkmagazine points out, the phrase "patently offensive material" opens the bill up to scrutiny based on the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which tried to do the same thing but was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court as a violation of the First Amendment.
What's more eyebrow-raising is that, while the Rhode Island bill will likely fail, it gives us a taste of what couldhappen for online porn now that we're about to move into a post-net neutrality world thanks to the FCC and its chairman, Ajit Pai.
SEE ALSO: Great job everybody, we just killed free online pornWhen the FCC voted 3-2 to repeal net neutrality laws in December 2017 (and with those laws scheduled to be peeled away starting in late April 2018), they gave the ISPs power to prioritize which sites get higher bandwidth and which don't.
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Given the high demand for streaming online porn -- PornHub viewers used 3,110 petabytesof bandwidth in 2016 -- that's exactly where ISPs know they can make a ton of money. They'll charge users even more money to access those very sites and making free porn a thing of the past and, at the same time, could unfairly suppress kink and fetish sites.
Sure, the motivations between these two examples may be different (state lawmakers wanting to protect under age internet users from porn versus ISPs wanting that cold, hard cash), but the outcome would ultimately be the same: au revoir, free porn.