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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

#91

Post by ceejayoz »

vel0city wrote: post #45
brianbest101 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What counts as obscene has been defined for a while. And I don't think Wikipedia would count as obscene by the Miller test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test . Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, . Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory fun…

What counts as obscene has notably not been defined.

"Contemporary community standards" and "lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" are so vague as to be useless. Whose community? Which standards? How many people have to be offended by something? How many people have to find value in it for it to be serious?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity

> In 1957, two associates of acclaimed poet Allen Ginsberg were arrested and jailed for selling his book "Howl and Other Poems" to undercover police officers at a beatnik bookstore in San Francisco. Eventually the California Supreme Court declared the literature to be of "redeeming social value" and therefore not classifiable as "obscene". Because the poem "Howl" contains pornographic slang and overt references to drugs and homosexuality, the poem was (and is) frequently censored and confiscated; however, it remains a landmark case.

The Simpsons was considered concerningly off-color in the 1990s; I remember quite a bit of pearl clutching about it, to the point of them getting into a bit of a feud with George and Barbara Bush. Now it's positive family values TV of "serious artistic value".

Most of what's on Pornhub is considered pornography but not obscenity currently, but that could change on a dime.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#92

Post by Larrikin »

yupyupyups wrote: post #59
cchance wrote: 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.

So the Texas porn law also removes hormones and curiosity? Every kid who has ever used a search engine has typed in the word fuck to see what comes back. But instead of clicking on the first link of peoplefucking.com and stopping they'll just click on peoplefucking.fr. Then there will be demands that all websites now must be approved by the government to protect the children

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#93

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

TriangleEdge wrote: post #14
aa_is_op wrote: post #2

This will just drive people to non-compliant foreign sites. They just killed their own adult industry, who is gonna take their business and taxes elsewhere

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…

> I assume if they don't comply, their DNS host will be blocked in Texas.

I'm guessing you mean blocking their entire NS host. It would be a massive overreach and would block every site they're authoritative for.

It's one more thing on the rapidly growing Unconstitutional=Okay stack. Cherry-picked courts are routinely fine with that. But it wouldn't stop lawsuits from registrars, site owners and other parties harmed thru collateral damage.

Just blocking PH's current IP would take down over 40 sites.

ref: https://bgp.he.net/ip/66.254.114.41#_dnsrecords

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#95

Post by [deleted] »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #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?

[deleted]

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#96

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

surgical_fire wrote: post #90
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... )

I don't particularly enjoy it, nor does the wife. But if erotic choking is consensual amongst two adults, what exactly is the issue? Are we to start policing how people enjoy fucking?

You're replying to someone who conflates this type of practice with abuse. They are not educated, not curious, and you are not going to have a productive conversation with them.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#97

Post by haiku2077 »

yupyupyups wrote: post #59
cchance wrote: 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.

Kids were using VPNs and proxies when I was in school in the 2000s to access Myspace, flash games and comics. There are free ones that are spyware + hijack your PC for use in a botnet.

These were "normie" kids, not future hackers.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#98

Post by isodev »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #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?

I think having to codify "obscenity" so deep into the law to even make it become an exception to free speech is an indicator of a bigger problem. I know the US is generally a lot more conservative about this, but it really feels like more extreme forms of religion/politics are relying on the popular vote to shortcut solutions.

No child was ever damaged from getting a glimpse of a very normal adult human interaction. When young people are old enough to be curious about this (e.g. they're looking to access spicy content), the correct approach IMO would be an open dialogue from their parents and extensive education/access to age-adapted materials in school. There is nothing dirty, shameful or obscene about sex, it's a natural process. It's also not scary, and it can be practiced safely and responsibly.

Re: US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

#99

Post by GameOfKnowing »

Hey— performer & small site owner here. Most of the hypothetical cases in the media (and these comments) relate to Pornhub, OF, etc— companies that definitely can afford to implement age verification even if it hurts their bottom line. This totally misses the vast majority of porn sites that are very small, operate on licensed technology that may not even be maintained, and would have their ~low-5-digit annual income nuked by the cost of compliance. In these cases, geo-blocking states one by one as they implement these laws becomes the only option. Yeah VPNs exist, but HN users faaaaar over-estimate the technical knowledge & ability of the average American used to having the net served to them on a silver platter.
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