Filed to: photos of people rubbing their genitals together will cost you $20 in south carolina

A new bill in South Carolina would make it illegal for anyone in the state to sell a computer, tablet, or smartphone without a porn filter. But the bill’s sponsors aren’t entirely unreasonable men. You can petition to buy a computer without a porn filter—but it’ll cost you $20.


The anti-porn bill, called the Human Trafficking Prevention Act, was pre-filed before the Christmas break and will be considered when the South Carolina legislature returns to session next month. Why is it called the Human Trafficking Prevention Act? Because those $20 fees would go toward funding anti-trafficking efforts.

The bill is co-sponsored by Representative Bill Chumley, who told the local news site GoUpstate, “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.”


But the sponsors of the bill have been less than eager to speak with Gizmodo about how the filter would actually work. What kind of porn filter do they imagine would need to be installed? Would it be installed at the point of sale or at the factory? And most importantly, how is this not an infringement on some pretty basic First Amendment rights?

I reached Rep. Chumley over the phone to get more details about the plan, but I was told that I had interrupted his meeting and that he wouldn’t be able to speak with me for the rest of the day. He referred me to Rep. Mike Burns, the other sponsor of the bill. A message left for Rep. Burns was not returned.

Burns and Chumley have plenty of other bills they’re getting ready for the new year, including a bill that would require drug tests for recipients of welfare, and a bill that would ban the enforcement of any “foreign law” on residents of the state of South Carolina. No, the latter doesn’t specifically say anything about sharia law, but yes, that’s common wording for bill introduced by people who think that sharia law is actually a thing in the United States.

Blocking porn, mandatory drug tests, and banning sharia law—good to see the people of the fine state of South Carolina are getting their money’s worth.


[Go Upstate via Associated Press]