Live data from Hacker News

US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

wired.com

61–70 of 229 posts

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone in this chain of corruption probably owns a VPN company or another entity benefitting (short term) from this ban.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Adhering to that adage eventually becomes something masochistic and Sisyphean.

Apply it to your personal relationships, but you will be steamrolled over and over again if you naively assume good faith in politics, business, etc even after you've been flattened to a pancake.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What counts as sexual material?

Pretty much all courts in the US would use the Miller test to determine if material is obscene or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

Republicans have slowly been moving toward anything LGBTQ being reclassified as "obscene" "pretty much" as defense for what courts consider shifts from day to day, as more right wing get put into positions of powers specifically RELIGIOUS right wing people, the courts have been more than willing to keep redefining what things were previously meant to mean.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#63
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all courts in the US would use the Miller test to determine if material is obscene or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

I am not a lawyer and am not behind a PC atm, but didn't Rowan v. USPS determine that the receiver of mail has sole discretion about if the material they received is pornographic or not? A more limited context of course.

Not really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowan_v._United_States_Post_Of...

> The addressee of postal mail has unreviewable discretion to decide whether to receive further material from a particular sender, and a vendor does not have a constitutional right to send unwanted material to an unreceptive addressee.

It's not necessarily that the receiver has the sole right to determine if the material is pornographic or whatever, its that the receiver of mail has the right to decide to no longer receive material and that the sender doesn't have a right to force its delivery through the mail.

The form to prevent someone from sending you mail you don't want is a PS Form 1500. This form starts off saying:

> If you are receiving unwanted sexually oriented advertisements coming through the mail to your home or business

But, you can still just file it against say a roofer sending you unwanted advertising or whatever. The USPS isn't allowed to challenge your personal determination that you're receiving unwated sexually oriented advertisements. Maybe you personally find roofers sexy and are trying to avoid being around roofers and having their services offered at your home. USPS isn't allowed to judge.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#64
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I think all 3 of these things are valid concerns.

You do, but lawmakers generally don't.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#65
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its bullshit a kid can buy a vpn without an ID for 3$ and skip any restriction, and even without that 90% of international porn sites, so the law fixes nothing but opens a slippery slope, whats next a law saying US needs a "Great Firewall" to protect the children from international deviancy. And it also just opens the possibility for centralized ID verification services being breached and tieing identities to their m…

Kids don't go through the hoops to buy and install a VPN just to access porn. If they were not exposed to it in the first place, which is very easy without a VPN, then they wont have the interest to get one.

As someone who went through hoops to disable filtering back in the 90s when that was the solution, yes they do. VPNs are free and can be installed on a device in about 5 minutes.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#66
post #28
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The archive link shared by heythere22 (which seems to be a different story) discusses this. The published plan from the heritage foundation includes a few more steps: (1) redefine obscenity to include pornography, effectively banning it via interstate commerce laws (2) extend this to anything that could “be harmful to minors”, which will certainly include information about groups they don’t like, starting with LGBTQ+…

This is already laid out in Project 2025.

> Transgender people will see their existence denied and their rights stripped away under Project 2025. The authors equate ‘transgender ideology’ to pornography, calling for it to be outlawed. While the far-right policy agenda cannot directly ban transgenderism, it aims to do so indirectly by labeling it as pornography, and then outlawing pornography itself – effectively erasing transgender identity from the U.S.

https://doctorsoftheworld.org/blog/project-2025-lgbtq-rights...

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just the beginning. Edit: really confused as to why this simple statement is flagged

"...and if we let gay people get married soon people will be marrying their dogs!" I do think there are legitimate reasons to not like the bill, but what you said is classic slippery slope

One difference is that there are absolutely no people involved with the current political power structure who are openly saying their end goal is to marry dogs.

"“Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

--Project 2025

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#68

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?

Dramatically lower teen pregnancy rates is one metric from the last 30 years.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#69

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

* It's online * It crosses state boundaries * It's not law to show ID to get into R rated movies

Should state online privacy laws not apply to internet companies operating out of state?

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#70

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?

One consequence that concerns me greatly is that men in the generation you're describing routinely choke their sexual partners. I remember a decade or two ago, when I thought it was ridiculous that porn might teach people to be abusive - I regret to admit that I was catastrophically wrong. (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/sep/02...)
Post reply on HN