Utah- The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah is “seriously considering” a lawsuit against the state’s new Internet porn law, while the law’s sponsor is working to spread the legislation to other states.

Rep. John Dougall, R-Highland, said Friday he has a meeting scheduled with state Attorney General Mark Shurtleff this week to talk about how to get other states on the anti-Internet porn bandwagon.

But the ACLU of Utah wants to stop the law in its tracks. It wrote a letter to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. asking him to veto it, and now that he’s signed it, is “seriously considering a lawsuit,” said Executive Director Dani Eyer.

Under the law, the state Attorney General’s Office must establish and maintain a database, called the adult content registry, of Internet sites containing material harmful to minors. It requires Internet service providers to prevent access to Internet materials harmful to minors and sites on the adult content registry, if requested by consumers, with filters to be checked at least annually by the state Division of Consumer Protection. The division will also be required to make public service announcements. And Web content providers in Utah will have to rate the data on their sites.

Dougall said he thinks the law will withstand any court challenge.

“If I hadn’t thought it would, I wouldn’t have run it,” he said.

In the letter to Huntsman dated March 8, the ACLU of Utah wrote the law is not the least restrictive means and the mandatory rating scheme violates the First Amendment and “is riddled with constitutional infirmities.”

The lawsuit is still being prepared, but Eyer said it would be based on freedom of expression and commerce clause grounds.

In the letter to Huntsman, the ACLU cited a recent ACLU federal court victory in Pennsylvania in which a similar law was struck down as unconstitutional, and a victory in New Mexico in which the group won a preliminary injunction against a similar law.

The Pennsylvania law was completely different, Dougall said. It required all Internet service providers to block child pornography, and in doing so blocked other sites as well.

“We’re different because one, we’re saying it’s up to the consumer to say whether or not they want to filter,” he said. “It’s not the government forcing them to filter. It’s up to them.”

Dougall said other states have been wrangling with online problems for 10 years and have laws of varying degrees. He looked at the other laws, and the mistakes other states had made, and came up with his bill.

“I’m a legislator. I run legislation — of course I think it’s fine,” he said.

The state Legislature thought it was fine, too. It passed the law by more than two-thirds, so most of it went into effect when Huntsman signed it March 21.

The section dealing with a requirement for Internet service providers to filter content material harmful to minors upon the request of consumers won’t go into effect until Jan. 1, 2006.

Most major Internet service providers provide some form of filtering program to their customers, and there are other software programs consumers can buy. The law says companies can provide in-network filters or software to block material harmful to minors.

“The bill requires a lot of things, and this (the filter requirement) is only one piece,” Dougall said.

ArosNet and Family Safe Web have a free pornography filtering device, recently made available to their customers. The filter has three levels — blocking basic pornographic sites at the lowest level to blocking sites that allow people to illegally share software at the highest level, said Michael Winsett, ArosNet general manager.

The company started planning the filter in response to the law, but it would have developed the filter even if the law had failed in the Legislature, he said.

Other companies, including America Online and Utah-based XMission, already have the right filters in place, Dougall said.

AOL offers varying levels of parental controls, and XMission has a program that filters sex, drugs, profanity and violence.

Comcast has parental controls allowing for low, medium and high filters. Customers can create filter exemptions.

“Some will have to adjust,” Dougall said.

Small Internet service providers — with fewer than 7,500 subscribers — would be able to charge customers for the blocking software, but the cost couldn’t exceed the providers’ cost for the software.

Two other sections of the law won’t take effect until May 1, 2006. One is the section requiring Internet service providers to block content listed on the state’s not-yet-created adult content registry. The other section requires any Web content provider in Utah, or any content provider generating or hosting content in the state, to restrict access to material harmful to minors. The state Division of Consumer Protection will make rules to establish rating methods those Web content providers will use.

Dougall said rating Web sites shouldn’t be difficult for content providers.

The most difficult part of the new law will be educating people about it, he said. Not everyone reads a newspaper or watches TV, so the public service campaign associated with the new law will have to reach those people.