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PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

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Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#101
post #79
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who believe that access to certain services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. In the Real World(TM) this is a fairly uncontroversial idea. The Internet is very wild west on these things and that has lead to interesting out…

Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for their children to access. Responsible parents either teach their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it difficult to access, or both.

We've learned that parents aren't responsible in the USA. This might change with the parents on trial for the teen shooter recently but ultimately up to this point, unless it's physical neglect, the parents delegate to the schools and then get upset when their kids are taught non-racist ideologies. Or they force the school board to ban/burn books like it's nazi germany.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#102
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are countless programmers, from self taught amateurs to professional SWEs, white hats, grey hats and black hats, who would immediately jump at the opportunity to create stronger VPNs, mirror sites, Tor nodes, and other tools to allow the public to bypass these restrictions. Trying to control the Internet in America is a losing proposition, for better or worse.

You're proposing a technical solution to a political problem. It doesn't work, this should be fixed at the source.

How exactly it doesn't work? Not even China has been able to make their Great Firewall resilient to stuff like VPNs.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#103
post #11

In other news, VPN subscription sales explode in Utah! easy sales opportunity

My guess would be: more visitors to from Utah?

You would be surprised how many are owned by the same parent company as Pornhub. Mindgeek own a massive amount of the internet's porn.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#104
post #59

[flagged]

Tangential question: given the Cold War memes of the "red scare" and "better dead than red", how/why did the Republican Party decide to keep that colour scheme? I mean, if even the British Royal Family had to change its name from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor…

That's the trick: they didn't keep it at all. By the time that colour scheme arose, the Cold War was long finished.

The idea of colour-coding the parties at all didn't really become widespread until 1980, and the exact colours in use weren't standard until the aftermath of the 2000 election - ABC had initially used yellow for Republicans, and even as late as 1996 The Washington Post, Time, and NBC were all still using blue for Republicans and red for Democrats, in line with the colour schemes of most other nations.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#105
post #95
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who believe that access to certain services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. In the Real World(TM) this is a fairly uncontroversial idea. The Internet is very wild west on these things and that has lead to interesting out…

> Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. There's no practical way to check ID on the web. In your "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is just some person that works for an establishment looks at a little plastic card with your photo on it and checks t…

Cell phone operators offering age verification is an actual real thing that exists right now in Japan. No ID handover requires. You need to make a user ID (and have a cell phone).

The impossible becomes possible real quickly when businesses decide they need it to move forward.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First admendment?

I’m not aware of any cases holding that distribution of pornography to minors is protected speech, but I’d be happy to be educated if you have one.

Obscene material is not inherently protected speech, but as it's a content-based restriction, the government is still bound by strict scrutiny to narrowly tailor its laws to achieve its legitimate interest in limiting the distribution of pornography. Furthermore, the definition of obscenity (the Miller test) is actually rather narrow, and there are likely to be several sexual fetishes that don't actually qualify as obscene, and therefore protected speech.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#107

This all seems a little disingenuous. First, from their summary, it doesn’t sound like the law actually requires checking a photo ID. They’re treating it like some maximalist regulation that it isn’t—it requires them to do more than nothing though. And also > PornHub said that a better solution is to identify users by their device. Pornhub effectively does absolutely nothing to verify users’ ages right now. Maybe it…

The law is: > 72 (9) "Reasonable age verification methods" means verifying that the person seeking to > 73 access the material is 18 years old or older by using any of the following methods: > 74 (a) use of a digitized information card as defined in this section; > 75 (b) verification through an independent, third-party age verification service that > 76 compares the personal information entered by the individual who…

“Any commercially reasonable method” is honestly about as minimal as I can imagine a law like this being.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#108

[flagged]

The whole "attack woke & trans" thing played well with independents for a bit, but it's gotten tired and now it just looks angry and petty. Add in Nazi-like stuff we're seeing in states like Tennessee, and the anti-education/environment policy proposals, and the Republican party has backed itself into a tough spot that even their egregious gerrymandering might not save them from.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#109
The previous owners of PornHub smartly sold the business earlier this year. The writing is on the wall w/r/t hyper regulating the internet. Not to mention the rapid advances in video AI which will render a lot of pornography and distributors in particular as obsolete.

Re: PornHub blocks users in Utah, cites state’s age verification law

#110
post #84
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they did something I don't get that. Why would it be good? Why should it ever be a webpage's responsibility?

Why should an alcohol vendor be responsible for not selling booze to children?

Are you arguing that booze is protected speech?
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