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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

#111

Post by robertlagrant »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #65
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

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…

Is this much different to a shop needing ID to sell a pornographic magazine, to avoid selling it to a minor?

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

#112

Post by rbanffy »

robertlagrant wrote: post #96
ajross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. RESTRICT empowers the federal government to enforce website bans, and provides for enforcement against efforts to evade those bans. This is a[1] Utah state law, and a voluntary ban set up by Pornhub itself to comply. Just not relevant. Mind you, RESTRICT is a bad bill, and those provisions are vague, and the EFF is right to be screaming about it. But it doesn't do what you think it does. [1] Hilarious…

> Hilariously and depressingly unconstitutional. Good grief. How is it unconstitutional? I don't know the ins and outs.

IANAL, but it looks like a law that's designed to suppress specific forms of art and artistical manifestations, which could be argued are free speech.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

robertlagrant wrote: post #96
ajross wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't. RESTRICT empowers the federal government to enforce website bans, and provides for enforcement against efforts to evade those bans. This is a[1] Utah state law, and a voluntary ban set up by Pornhub itself to comply. Just not relevant. Mind you, RESTRICT is a bad bill, and those provisions are vague, and the EFF is right to be screaming about it. But it doesn't do what you think it does. [1] Hilarious…

> Hilariously and depressingly unconstitutional. Good grief. How is it unconstitutional? I don't know the ins and outs.

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by thehm »

mschuster91 wrote: post #94
thehm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Prepaid phone cards are a thing.

Where I live, they can only legally be sold to people ≥ 18 years old. Maybe that should be more commonplace?

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

#115

Post by [deleted] »

ben_w wrote: post #59
wesleywt wrote: post #39

[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…

[deleted]

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

#116

Post by rbanffy »

throwaway60607 wrote: post #102
Thiez wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A block doesn't need to be completely effective as to prevent violations - all it needs is to provide enough data to authorities so they can make sure you don't do it too often.

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

#117

Post by HideousKojima »

ben_w wrote: post #59
wesleywt wrote: post #39

[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…

The Dems = blue/Reps = red thing wasn't actually a consistent thing until the 2000 election, when news agencies seemed to all start using it that way for electoral maps.

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

#118

Post by kroltan »

rtpg wrote: post #50
tokai wrote: 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?

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…

The controversiality is exactly that in the Real World(TM) it's possible to either anonymously verify a certain age (by trivial visual inspection in most cases) or handle it in a way that does not require the potential storage of information (Handing - or better, showing - a cashier your ID doesn't mean they can take a photo of it and store for however many months)

Meanwhile, back on Teh Interwebz, the only way we have right now of verifying age is by uploading photos, or equivalent information, of the identification document, which could be intercepted, stored, or otherwise pilfered with no further indication.

I think there was someone proposing a cryptography-based way of proving "yes, this visitor has access to a non-minor identity", but that requires some sort of government (or similar) service that could also log incidental information, and would require some sort of digital identity service (for example gov.br here in Brazil): Service generates a random token, user gives token to identity service using their authentication, identity service replies with the token signed with a key whose public part the website knows.

This would be "better", in the sense of you don't have to provide any actual identifying information to arbitrary websites, but very bad because now the government can log all age-check attempts. There is probably some more complicated solution to that, but it goes beyond me. In the meantime, my opinion is that online age checks are dumb, easily bypassed, and possibly dangerous. Until we find a proper solution, just educate yo kids properly.

Friendly reminder that criminals don't have to obey laws, so actually dangerous websites (be it just psychologically, like I don't know, gore, to actual illegal things) won't be so kind as to implement an age check themselves anyways. If you want the minor you're responsible over to not view harmful content, teach them about the internet and have a healthy relationship with them so they trust you in the eventuality they see something disturbing.

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

#119

Post by wongarsu »

aflag wrote: post #29
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #20

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…

I'm curious. What's in between nothing and checking id?

You can estimate age from images of the user's face (taken via webcam/front-facing camera). It wouldn't work well right at the threshold: you can't reliably differentiate 17 year olds from 18 year olds, but you can reliably keep the 10 year olds out. Or at least make a reasonable effort to do so, clever teenagers will find workarounds involving pictures or Halloween masks.

This method doesn't seem to be allowed by the law in question though.

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

#120

Post by GavinMcG »

brookst wrote: post #110
hgsgm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you arguing that booze is protected speech?

I think the comment is pretending to argue using the same logic as its parent comment uses, but about something the parent commenter would find normal and palatable, as a way of drawing an analogy.
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