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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

Does Utah actually have that much market power? Could manufacturers just stop selling to Utah?

Says five other states must adopt similar laws before it would actually become enforceable law. Still one fantasizes about manufactures simply deciding to not sell cell phones to the entire state.

That's an implicit poison pill. Is any other state doing this? Is there a list of states they hope will join?

I mean... yes? Just pre-installing/enabling some parental control filter on phones is way cheaper than even losing out on a few millions worth of sales.

It's pretty trivial to do since those filters already exist.

It will probably end with retailers having to do that at the time of sale, but still, it's perfectly possible.

Doing that when building these devices at scale and handling support queries for it is probably not cheap. Most phone manufacturers don't allow retailers to tamper with the software on the phones/tablets (that opens up a can of worms in terms of security), so they'd have to do it very early, maybe even at the factory — which means earmarking which devices are bound to Utah. Responsible manufacturers (e.g. Apple) would also have to audit the filter code, or build it themselves.

It gets even worse for Utah, though. The bill demands that any device activated in Utah comply with the law — not merely sold in Utah. So manufacturers would need to turn on location tracking and make it impossible to disable, for all users in the world, just to detect the corner case that they happen to be in Utah, so that they can silently turn on a Utah-specific porn filter.

I doubt the bill will pass, but if it does, I doubt many manufacturers would comply.

Every single phone manufacturer sans apple allows this. Ever heard of Verizon bloat ware? And yes, they will comply, 1) it’s the law, and 2) they won’t leave money on the table.

Device manufacturers don't have to follow random Utah laws: they can simply not sell phones in Utah and not have corporate operations there. Utah has 3 million people, it's not exactly a major population center. There are many cities in the world with more people than Utah.

And I'm pretty sure "Verizon bloatware" is not installed at point of sale. What would stop a random employee from installing keyloggers? This stuff is centrally managed.

They'd very likely be losing money by complying with such a law. They wouldn't be leaving money on the table, they'd be taking it off the table.

Sure, they don’t have to. They will however.

> I doubt the bill will pass, but if it does, I doubt many manufacturers would comply.

They'd probably comply. Most could strike a deal with an existing company to provide software for this. Hell, more than likely a company who makes such software is probably a campaign contributor to many of the supporters of this bill.

AFAIK, the law doesn't define how effective the filter must be. So any good-faith attempt is probably more than enough. Even if the software is just a skin of Chrome with a add-on installed that blocks a list of websites.

I won't lie though, I would find it hilarious if foxnews.com was put into this obscenity filter.

Alternatively, could they close stores/facilities in Utah, and still sell to Utahans online? Commerce clause seems like it'd protect that.

I don’t think commerce clause protects that, otherwise CA’s laws wouldn’t have so much sway in the market.

Eh, it's a tossup. Commerce clause protections for interstate trade only go so far, some attempts by states to regulate what can be sold or how have passed court tests, others have not. It hinges on whether the regulation would be discriminatory or overly burdensome.

To get such a law struck down, phone sellers would have to prove to the court that setting up Utah-specific phones would be excessively difficult.

I don't think it would be struck down with the commerce clause, but it would be close.

It'd be at arms length for the manufacturers. Someone with a web store would be the one selling non-compliant phones to Utah residents.

When Utah shut them down, someone else would start a web store selling non-compliant phones to Utah residents.

This was my first thought. Assuming this bill even becomes law, it seems like this might hurt local retailers.

If this passed, I'd find it amusing if the only phones for sale in Utah were just a couple of the cheapest Android phones with Utah special software loaded.

I would if I were them. Let the voters drive to the next state over to buy their phones, see how they like it.

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