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Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

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Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#31
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting browsers to implement it as a matter of legal requirement is another huge issue. My proposal is for the government itself to do blind age verification on their own site and issue an expiring token scoped to the user's IP. The porn site would load JS from the gov site or from its own servers that pops up age verification prompt loaded from the government site, gets the signed token to be verified by the porn s…

Government mandates are never going to get some sites to comply, so why is government threatening the companies who _want_ to comply? If we removed the legal mandate, we could do this with voluntary industry support. MindGeek owns not just PornHub but tons of other sites -- if they said "We'll publish this header; dear Mozilla and Google, please support/ build parental controls that check for this header," then most…

> People shouldn't have to tell the government they're going to read a (dirty) book

Libraries and book stores can and do ask IDs for adult books (less so these days). Same thing.

They should identify themselves to the gov, porn sites should only get prood of a succesful identification without identifying users. The gov can id you but it shouldn't know what sigtes you visit. That way your privacy is protected.

> Government mandates are never going to get some sites to comply

They can force US sites and fine/prosecute. The rest, they can order ISPs to block them for non-compliance.

> If we removed the legal mandate, we could do this with voluntary industry support

The industry has had decades of pleading from child safety advocates. It's like saying tobacco companies should be trusted with tobacco warnings and working with store owners on making sure minors are ID'd before a sale. Many in the porn industry strongly feel any teenager should be able to watch porn and many more believe people can get porn anyways so there is no point. They have faced lawsuits and investigations and many countries have been banning them for a long time over this concern so your reasoning that suddenly they will voluntarily work with browsers makes little sense to me. Perhaps the gov can have some working group under FTC to come up with a tech thar enforces the law and porn sites can work with it and i see no problem including browser makers but at the end of the day just like any id verification system, someone has to be responsible for the verification.

Where my idea deviates is that I believe the gov should be responsible for enforcing it's own laws and public key crypto can effectively split the responsibility of verifying age and making sure only verified users have access.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#32
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental controls are trivial to bypass. I don’t support a government database either, but suggesting digital parental controls is not a valid solution.

Kids aren't allowed to drive. Parents have the keys and vehicles in easy access to the children but by and large it's not a problem. Interesting that despite actual deaths occuring as a result of this norm (when kids do take the cars and crash), we haven't added a law that that only opens the car on a fingerprint scan or some shit, which is effectively what this is equivalent to. If DEATH doesn't justify such draconi…

> Parents have the keys and vehicles in easy access to the children but by and large it's not a problem.

It looks like you refute your own argument here. We don't highly regulate automobile access because it's not an issue. Most kids don't have a desire to steal their parents cars, so why would we regulate that? Many kids do have the desire to access things that may harm their development. So you can see why your analogy is largely nonsensical.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#33
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In non-puritan countries there are still age restrictions for cigarettes and alcohol, but you cannot get a gun easily. Seems like it doesn’t have anything to do with puritanism at all, and the main differentiating factor is just US’s love affair with guns.

Yes advertising restrictions for tobacco companies but there is no need to produce a govt ID when purchasing vapes, booze or cigs. You just walk up and the cashier eyeballs you and if you an obvious minor but then you get a friend that plays sports to buy it - just seem like a silly liability waiver for not getting sued when Timmy DUI's and wipes out somebody.

> Yes advertising restrictions for tobacco companies but there is no need to produce a govt ID when purchasing vapes, booze or cigs.

What country do you have in mind specifically? I live in a non-puritan country (Poland) and we absolutely need to produce the ID.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow this is really interesting suggestion. I'm firmly in the "porn and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race" camp. We require actual age verification for tobacco and alcohol. I don't see a reason not to require the same for porn. That said, I am interested in the most effective ways to keep tobacco, alcohol, and porn out of the hands of minors.

Unless you legislate age restriction on the Bible you can't reasonably argue for porn restriction... Images of consenting adults is a far cry less offensive and damaging than parables and stories explicitly stating girls should be fed to rape crazed mobs in order to protect "special guests", amoung many other horrors....

Many of the women involved are too intoxicated to consent, or so drug addicted they feel they dont have another choice. Furthermore, much of the content on these sites is revenge porn and posted without consent.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#35

I hope that law makers, PH and perhaps the EFF help people see that a government database is not the appropriate means to deal with under-age access to adult or user-generated content. As mentioned previously [1][2] the right way to do this is to legislate that these sites add the RTA header to any domain/url that may have adult or user-generated content and then recognize this header in the most common web clients s…

> the right way to do this is to legislate that these sites add the RTA header to any domain/url that may have adult or user-generated content ... > A header is trivial to add, trivial to verify is active and the legal liability is then shifted to the parent as it is for everything else related to their child. No, you just said the web site is responsible for publishing the header, which means they have legal liabili…

> No, you just said the web site is responsible for publishing the header, which means they have legal liability.

I can see the difference. Website has the liability for not adding the header.

Parents have the liability for not “enforcing” checks on devices a child might use.

It’s a clever proposal but more details will need to be thought through.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#36
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes advertising restrictions for tobacco companies but there is no need to produce a govt ID when purchasing vapes, booze or cigs. You just walk up and the cashier eyeballs you and if you an obvious minor but then you get a friend that plays sports to buy it - just seem like a silly liability waiver for not getting sued when Timmy DUI's and wipes out somebody.

> Yes advertising restrictions for tobacco companies but there is no need to produce a govt ID when purchasing vapes, booze or cigs. What country do you have in mind specifically? I live in a non-puritan country (Poland) and we absolutely need to produce the ID.

You live in the most puritan country in EU. Polish women have to illegally (because your country made it illegal for pregnant women) cross borders to have medically necessary abortions and then they will be persecuted if they return.

Anyways, I never had to produce ID when I bought alcohol and cigarettes while I visited Poland.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you legislate age restriction on the Bible you can't reasonably argue for porn restriction... Images of consenting adults is a far cry less offensive and damaging than parables and stories explicitly stating girls should be fed to rape crazed mobs in order to protect "special guests", amoung many other horrors....

Many of the women involved are too intoxicated to consent, or so drug addicted they feel they dont have another choice. Furthermore, much of the content on these sites is revenge porn and posted without consent.

I think you're confusing websites. Pornhub requires verification of consent and removed all unverified/not professional videos.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#38
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental controls are trivial to bypass. I don’t support a government database either, but suggesting digital parental controls is not a valid solution.

This block is also trivial to bypass. You can't shoot down proposed solutions on the basis that they aren't perfect unless you actually have a perfect alternative.

Perhaps there is no perfect alternative. Perhaps the cost of a perfect alternative is too high. And perhaps, perfect is the enemy of good.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you legislate age restriction on the Bible you can't reasonably argue for porn restriction... Images of consenting adults is a far cry less offensive and damaging than parables and stories explicitly stating girls should be fed to rape crazed mobs in order to protect "special guests", amoung many other horrors....

Many of the women involved are too intoxicated to consent, or so drug addicted they feel they dont have another choice. Furthermore, much of the content on these sites is revenge porn and posted without consent.

I'd argue that this view is a bit misogynistic because it doesn't attribute women with having agency.

Re: Pornhub cuts off more US users in ongoing protest over age-verification laws

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the women involved are too intoxicated to consent, or so drug addicted they feel they dont have another choice. Furthermore, much of the content on these sites is revenge porn and posted without consent.

I think you're confusing websites. Pornhub requires verification of consent and removed all unverified/not professional videos.

How does porn hub verify they aren't drug addicts?
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