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A recent bill in Ohio aims to regulate certain companies that provide online resources to the state’s public schools and libraries. Republican lawmakers spearheading the bill say “inappropriate” content was leaked.
Ohio House Bill 583 will focus on two vendors used for online databases in most schools and public libraries, called InfOhio and Ohio Web Library (OWL), establishing “security policy and technology protection requirements” for those companies that receive some of their funding from state and federal grants.
As part of the measure, state co-sponsor State Rep. Kevin Ritter, R-Marietta, said companies would have a three-strikes policy under which they would be notified of violations resulting from advertising that may appear next to online resources and given the opportunity to “sanitize” the resources by removing offensive material.
After the third strike, Ritter said the state would have to consider finding other vendors to supply the materials.
“Without question, our schools and libraries select educational resources carefully, striving to provide reliable, age-appropriate content within limited budgets and demanding time demands,” Ritter said during a recent hearing before the House Finance Committee.
But he said he and state co-organizer Rep. Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, were told that because of the “inappropriate content” occurring on the resources, state employees “needed to go back and clean it up.”
The bill would only allow resource providers that prohibit users from “sending, receiving, viewing, or downloading material or performances that are obscene, harmful to minors, depicts sexual exploitation of children, or encourages or promotes the use of illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, or other illegal activities.”
The project requirements also include the requirement for companies to filter or block access to “obscene” materials.
Newman gave the committee an example of material that one parent said her child was exposed to while using one of the resources.
He said a parent in his neighborhood told a story of his son calling their house and asking, “Mommy, why is that boy pretending to be a girl and wearing girls’ clothes?”
“Because he knows mom and dad don’t approve of it, he knows it’s inappropriate,” Newman said.
Ohio Laws define something as “harmful to minors” if it “appeals to the prurient interests of minors in sex” and “clearly offends the standards prevailing throughout the adult community regarding what is appropriate for minors.”
Material is considered “harmful to minors” if it “does not have serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Newman and Ritter said they met InformationOhio executives before introducing the bill and were told the company was “working overtime trying to keep this stuff out of the classroom,” but the response is reactive, not proactive, so HB 583 will aid companies start off on the right foot.
Some members of the House Finance Committee questioned how “obscene” material would be reported and how obscenity standards set out in state law would be applied to interpret the material.
“I would be shocked if anyone on this committee had a problem if we explicitly denied (eliminating) illegal drugs, tobacco, pornography and so on,” said state Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Westlake.
“But when it comes to obscenity and what the definition of obscenity is, we’ve had a lot of debate on the House floor.”
Sweeney mentioned another bill that had appeared in the General Assembly that sought to require public libraries to do so move all potentially “obscene” booksmainly those related to LGBTQ+ issues, an area to which children did not have effortless access.
The measure was included in the state’s latest budget but was vetoed by Gov. Mike DeWine, who said the language was “impractical.”
State Rep. Jamie Callender, R-Concord, raised concerns about the bill’s unintended consequences, particularly legal research that could hamper censorship rules.
“I want to make sure that as a committee… we don’t inadvertently do something that could prevent someone whose parent has been diagnosed with lung cancer from researching the impact of smoking, or a young woman who has discovered a lump from researching breast cancer, its symptoms, signs or pictures,” Callender said.
He said “overkill” in well-intentioned legislation can sometimes be “problematic.”
Supporters of the bill argued that the bill does not address the obscenity standard because it does not change anything in the language of Ohio law, but that the idea is to hold companies that run resource programs accountable for complying with those standards.
Ritter also noted that while the vendors affected by the bill serve a huge number of public schools, no school is required to utilize these companies if it finds other options.
“Some of our wealthier school districts … contract with other vendors,” Ritter said. “This bill would not impact those relationships.”
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