A bill in the Texas Legislature that would require Internet service providers to offer access to censorware has set off a tempest in the state's ISP trade group.
Sponsored by Republican Representative Frank Corte, HB1300 sailed through the House without debate on Wednesday. If passed by the Senate, the legislation will go into effect on 1 September. The bill would levy civil penalties of up to US$10,000 for each violation beginning 1 January 1998.
Formally unopposed by the Texas Internet Service Providers Association, the bill has nonetheless divided the group into two camps: those who believe that such a law is inevitable and should be crafted along the most benign lines possible, and those who argue that the bill is badly written and imposes an unfunded mandate to hand out faulty software.
"On balance, HB1300 isn't all that bad," Gene Crick, the association's president, said in Wednesday's edition of his Texas Telecommunications Journal. "The bill's sponsor worked closely with TISPA to draft a workable plan, incorporating revised wording suggested by the state ISP association."
But Steve Jackson, the association's secretary, said Crick helped Corte float a "foolish and unreasonable bill," an action unpopular within the association and undertaken without a vote.
Besides mandating the use of the widely criticized blocking systems, Jackson said, the bill amounts to nothing but a political charade. He points to exemption of the University of Texas ISP, the state's largest, from the bill's provisions.
"TISPA never voted on the proposal," he said. "A number of TISPA members are very unhappy with it. It's a bad bill and should be opposed in the Senate."
Others peg the Texas anti-porn measure as part of a growing patchwork of legislation that is increasingly difficult to navigate.
"Cyberspace should be covered by the most harmonious, least contradictory regulation possible," says Robert O'Neill, director of the Thomas Jefferson Center For the Protection of Free Expression. "But jurisdictional authority is incredibly convoluted. Most federal communications legislation pre-empts state law. The CDA didn't. States can do whatever they want, and they are."
So far, more than 20 states have jumped on the content-regulation bandwagon with contradictory bills that may or may not apply to anyone whose communications pass through a given state.
Back in Texas, however, Crick remains unapologetic if unenthused about the cyber-blocking bill he helped pen. "HB1300 is lame but tame," he wrote in an email to Wired News.
