Alabama state Rep. Jack Williams wants to make it a crime to sell an electronic device with access to pornography.

Williams introduced House Bill 428 earlier this month “to prohibit the sale of a device providing Internet access unless the device contains an active filter that blocks Internet access to obscene material.”

Any violation of the law would be considered a Class A misdemeanor and carry up to a one year jail sentence. The proposed legislation hikes the violation to a Class C felony if a device is sold to a minor, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison, ABC 33 reports.

The bill would set up a system that would require retailers to charge a $20 fee to turn off the filter for adults who make the request in writing, and to forward those fees to the state.

“A seller may charge its own reasonable filter deactivation fee in addition to the fee charged (by the state),” according to the bill.

HB 428 requires that 60 percent of the fees go to the Alabama Crime Victims Compensation Fund, and another 20 percent deposited into a special account to “develop, expand, or strengthen programs for victims of human trafficking and child exploitation.” The rest would go to the state’s General Fund.

The legislation tasks manufacturers with regularly policing obscene material and blocking access, setting up call centers and websites to solicit reports of obscene material, and to unblock material that’s improperly filtered out as obscene.

The censorship must include anything that “facilitates or promotes prostitution, assignation, human trafficking, or sexual cyber harassment.”

It also includes anything that “the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,” as well as anything that “depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions.”

Similar legislation was introduced in South Carolina, North Dakota and other states in recent months.

According to a December report in Vocativ:

It’s a mission led by Chris Sevier, a Tennessee man and Christian music producer who previously sued Apple for his alleged porn “addiction” and fought marriage equality by filing a stunt lawsuit asking for the right to marry his laptop. He’s an attorney who was disbarred in his state for “mental infirmity or illness” — and, despite the outrageousness of Sevier’s back story, let alone the nature of the legislation itself, the push to block porn across the country appears to be gaining some traction.

A bill of this kind has been pre-filed in South Carolina — but Sevier says that North Dakota and Indiana will soon pre-file a version of the bill ahead of the next legislative session. He claims that, in total, sponsors from 27 states have agreed to introduce a version of the bill, which Sevier drafted. The text varies somewhat state by state, but the overall aim is largely the same: to force manufacturers of “products that distribute the internet” to sell their devices with technology that broadly blocks pornography as well as websites that facilitate the sale of sex. Consumers can opt out of the block if they are over the age of 18 and pay a $20 fee to the state. …

Sevier’s text relies on state obscenity laws regarding the display of adult or “girlie” magazines. Commonly, states require brick-and-mortar vendors to place “obscene” material behind blinders. Sevier argues that the manufacturers of digital devices should be held to the same standards.

“The reason why this bill is constitutionally sound, this isn’t like a prohibition. It just makes it by default, it’s blocked,” Sevier told Vocativ. “There are a lot of adults who don’t want access to that stuff.”

HB 428, which currently has 23 co-sponsors, was referred to the House Commerce and Small Business Committee.

“Civil liberties advocates say the bill could infringe on free speech,” ABC 33 reports, and “even Rep. Williams seemed willing to back away from some of the bill’s provisions.”