Utah Booksellers and ABFFE Join Challenge to Internet Law

On Thursday, June 9, Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore and The King's English, both of Salt Lake City, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Utah were part of a broad-based group of organizations that filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Utah challenging the constitutionality of a Utah law that seeks to restrict children's access to material on the Internet. The groups argue that the law, which was enacted in March 2005, is overly broad and imposes severe content-based restrictions on the availability, display, and dissemination of constitutionally protected speech on the Internet. In the past, similar Internet "harmful to minors" laws in six other states have been struck down.

"ABFFE is very pleased to join Sam Weller's and The King's English in challenging the new Internet censorship law in Utah," said Chris Finan, president of ABFFE. "With publishers, librarians, and other members of the Media Coalition, we have successfully challenged similar laws in more than a half-dozen states, and we will continue to fight to ensure that the American people enjoy their full First Amendment rights on the Web."

As noted in the challenge filed by the plaintiffs, among other things, the law requires Utah Internet content providers to self-evaluate and label the content of their speech at the risk of criminal punishment; requires the Utah Attorney General to create a public registry of Internet sites worldwide containing "material harmful to minors"; requires ISPs to either block access to websites included in the registry and other constitutionally protected content or to provide filtering software to users; and extends existing criminal restrictions on distribution of "harmful" materials to distribution on the Internet.

Catherine Weller of Sam Weller's told BTW, "There are a number of things [in the law] that concern us. One of them is that the definitions in the law are fairly ill-defined -- what is 'harmful to minors'? It's not exactly spelled out.... The law is asking the state to do what parents should be doing.... It's a no-win situation."

Overall, the Utah law could have a chilling effect on speech, said Betsy Burton of The King's English. "Because this is the Internet, there's no way to avoid getting into trouble with the law unless we quit promoting adult books that might have any kind of sexual content," she said. "We'd have to self-censor what's considered obscenity for children [but legal for adults]." She pointed out that, under the new law, it is likely that the cover of Margaret Atwood's new novel, Oryx and Crake, which features a mirrored image of a nude female, would "get me in trouble," she said. Burton added that the law apparently does not outline any appeals process, either.

Weller pointed out that the law would negatively impact the bookstore's business, too. "Twelve percent of our sales are over the Internet," she explained. "This has a potentially [significant] impact, particularly since businesses out-of-state are not impacted by the law. Amazon wouldn't be held responsible for [what's displayed on its website]."

In their challenge, the groups stated: "Since essentially all speech on the Internet is accessible in Utah, regardless of the geographical location of the person who posted it, the Act threatens Internet users nationwide and even worldwide. Moreover, because blocking a website often results in blocking wholly unrelated websites communicating constitutionally protected speech, the Act threatens an enormous array of websites and their users."

Other plaintiffs in the case are Nathan Florence; W. Andrew McCullough; Computer

Solutions International, Inc.; Mountain Wireless Utah, LLC; the Sexual Health Network, Inc.; Utah Progressive Network Education Fund, Inc.; the Association of American Publishers; the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund; the Freedom to Read Foundation; and the Publishers Marketing Association. --David Grogan