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US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

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Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#32
post #3

So how broad is this? Can a state now require you to verify your age and identity to read a newspaper they don't like?

Let me start off saying I'm not a fan of this law. I don't think these requirements are workable with current technology, and I don't necessarily agree with the goals or that the goals are worth the side effects of the regulations. > Can a state now require you to verify your age and identity to read a newspaper they don't like? Most states have laws in place that regulate the sale and distribution of pornography and…

But what counts as obscene is not well defined. Forget newspapers you could have to age gate Wikipedia

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#33
post #16
post #3

So how broad is this? Can a state now require you to verify your age and identity to read a newspaper they don't like?

Not unless that newspaper is "more than one-third sexual material".

So pornhub needs to see how many terabytes of content they host and use AI to generate 2x more terabytes of cat pictures and add them to a compliance tab on their home page now?

Seems annoying but not impossible to do.

Edit: I am happy to build a cat pic to porn ratio audit company if anyone is interested. I want to participate in the funniest regulatory process this will create

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#34
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unless that newspaper is "more than one-third sexual material".

Wanna bet what the ratio is for e.g. Reddit?

NSFW is hidden by default iirc, so something like this would only apply to enabling NSFW content.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#35

You already have to show ID to see rated-R movies in the US. I don't see how this is any different.

The movie theater doesn't keep a database of who's been watching their movies. [edit] and that doesn't just mean “okay jimbob is a dirty dirty boy.” It’s also a handy way to create a registry of whatever the handlers think is the target perversion du jour. [edit][edit] … and it's not even the government who's keeping that database, it's pornographers. Regardless of your political leanings or trust in the gov't, can y…

By the letter of the Texas law, neither do the commercial entities that have to verify identity:

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HB01181F....

Edit: Key bit there, the commercial entity or third party verification “may not retain any identifying information of the individual”.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your assumption that Texas cares about its porn industries is incorrect. Pornhub is a Canadian company. Afaik it's the #1 porn site, I could be wrong. I assume if they don't comply, their DNS host will be blocked in Texas. Registries of porn sites are readily available. (I use them in my hosts file blocking). So, my guess is that the likely step will be block all of them until they prove they have ID enforcem…

Conservatives claim to hate Chinese-style internet censorship, but in practice they want to build a Great Firewall of Texas.

> Conservatives claim to hate Chinese-style internet censorship

What they hate about Chinese internet censorship isn't the scope and pervasiveness, it’s who specifically controls it and what specific decisions are made.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#38
I'm more interested in the downsides of not having ID verification. We have an entire generation of humans raised with effectively no verification going back 30 years now. So what is the data? Why is a high barrier so important that every adult has to annoyingly climb over it with all sorts of friction?

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#39
post #16
post #3

So how broad is this? Can a state now require you to verify your age and identity to read a newspaper they don't like?

Not unless that newspaper is "more than one-third sexual material".

So a site just needs to generate enough content until its under that threshold?

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movie theater doesn't keep a database of who's been watching their movies. [edit] and that doesn't just mean “okay jimbob is a dirty dirty boy.” It’s also a handy way to create a registry of whatever the handlers think is the target perversion du jour. [edit][edit] … and it's not even the government who's keeping that database, it's pornographers. Regardless of your political leanings or trust in the gov't, can y…

Why don’t they?

Surveillance capitalism wasn't innovated when movie theaters started checking IDs.

But since they've moved most ticket purchases online it's very likely they do maintain such a database now, and monetize an "anonymized" version of the data.

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