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Montana Becomes First State to Enshrine ‘Right to Compute’ Into Law - Montana Newsroom
(montananewsroom.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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The bill text of SB-212 seems pretty reasonable. Basically just says the government needs a good reason to create regulations on computation.
It even explicitly mentions good reasons may include things like fraud, deepfakes, and public nuisances of datacenters.
As a Montanan, I'm cool with it. Guess we'll see how it's used.
I wonder if this would make it illegal to cut off someone's internet if they are accused of piracy. Probably that sort of thing still goes.
It might provide a protection against anti-circumvention laws and such; laws that make it criminal to mess with hardware DRM on your devices.
I don't think it says that a company can't put restrictions on you. It says The government can't restrict how it's used —notably supported by AI groups so they can't regulate that. A company can still prevent you from doing whatever the hell they want if they have the power to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention
My first thought was about potentially protecting encryption, with all the privacy-invading laws that are popping up here in the US and abroad, but after skimming through the bill it seems like they could still use the "but criminals use encryption" line
It wouldn't be so easy. Such restrictions would have to be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest.
It's too bad it leaves the door open for age verification requirements, but the language is overall pretty decent.