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The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

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Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#141

Post by harvey9 »

piker wrote: post #104
Quarrel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new Many countries, including the US, claim jurisdiction if you are providing services to their citizens. Some claim jurisdiction if someone in that country sees your web page (ie you've now "published" it there). You've been blissfully unaware, perhaps, but this has been a thing for a long time. You have probably seen sites having se…

Classic case of Wolfenstein 3d being banned in Germany in the 90s rings a bell.

Germany has laws about displaying nazi emblems. The same game design reskinned would be fine.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#142

Post by harvey9 »

pyman wrote: post #127
pr337h4m wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely zero risk as long as you stay out of the UK. Even if you do travel to the UK, there is no practical risk for the foreseeable future.

High school kids cannot buy weapons in the UK? They can't even watch porn? Jesus Christ, stay away from that country!!

Actually some idiot politician tried to blame Amazon for knife crime in the UK. Never mind that most kids can find kitchen knives (the type used in a recent crime when the politician made the statement) in the kitchen where they live.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#143

Post by const_cast »

pyman wrote: post #139
const_cast wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Porn addiction is as harmful as gambling, tobacco and alcohol addiction. I've heard this before, but I've never, not even once, gotten an evidence-based approach to if this is true. I've only ever gotten morality-based arguments, which, IMO, aren't arguments at all and aren't worth mine, or anyone else's, time. We cannot just act like pornography being harmful is a foregone conclusion. No, we need to prove it. We s…

Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction. What I mean by porn addiction: In 2025, the average person watches around 6 hours per week of pornography. That's from recent industry and survey data. In 2005, the average was roughly 1.7 hours. So porn is…

> Looks like you've never spoken to parents whose kids are spending all their money on porn, or to those whose sons or daughters are working online as sex workers to meet the growing demand driven by porn addiction.

You're right - I haven't, because these people barely exist in the US. I've never seen them, I've never seen anyone who's seen them.

Also, sex work and pornography can't lazily be compared like that. No "demand" for sex work makes people become sex workers. People become sex workers because they enjoy it, or because they're fine with the outcome in exchange for the money.

The actual "harm" done by being a sex worker varies based on each person's moral beliefs. Some people don't care about that kind of stuff, so they're fine doing it. And, especially if you do solo work, there's very little real risk. There's only social risk, which again, is a different thing aligned with morality.

In terms of actual, real, tangible harm - what is the harm of sitting in front of a webcam and stroking it? Nothing. The answer is nothing. This is moral plight bullshit. I understand you don't like it and you think it's the downfall of the nuclear family or some other equally stupid bullshit - but the reality is nobody actually cares what you think. We care about outcomes.

And, right now, I'm not seeing the outcomes which align with this being compared to fucking tabacco. And I used to smoke.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#144

Post by harvey9 »

gruez wrote: post #86
mr90210 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mullvad is quite ahead as they sell activation codes on scratch cards.

Banning in-store sales of VPN activation codes seems well within the ability of the British state to do, especially when they already banned bank/credit card payments.

Not on an age basis since we have decades of precedent for retail staff to judge age and not keep a copy of ID. It will have to be on a more blatantly 'we want to be more like the Chinese communist party' basis.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#145

Post by SoftTalker »

codedokode wrote: post #130
SoftTalker wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a kid, finding porn before the internet was significantly more difficult. If you were old enough to pass for 18 yeah a newstand might sell you a magazine. Most would not if you were clearly younger. And you needed to pay for it. Most kids (especially young kids) don't have any money. And then you had one magazine. Still photos. And it didn't show anything but naked bodies. No real sex, the hardcore stuff was only…

At my school one guy had adult VHS cassettes (probably his parents') and a VHS player and he invited other guys to watch porn. By the way I wasn't invited. Maybe it was good because later the teachers found out about this.

Yes, the arrival of home video players was a glimpse into what was to come with the internet. Easier availability.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#146

Post by piker »

harvey9 wrote: post #141
piker wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic case of Wolfenstein 3d being banned in Germany in the 90s rings a bell.

Germany has laws about displaying nazi emblems. The same game design reskinned would be fine.

Right, but the point was there is precedent for laws affecting American operations when distributing software into a jurisdiction.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#147

Post by ghusto »

louthy wrote: post #63
pr337h4m wrote: post #19

The most disturbing thing about this saga is that websites that have no physical/legal/business presence in the UK are proactively geoblocking UK-origin IPs. Censorious governments have always been a thing since the beginning of the internet. Websites (especially non-corporate ones like 4chan or R34) preemptively surrendering to a foreign government that has no jurisdiction over them is what's new.

You don’t get to sidestep a country’s laws just because you happen to sit outside of the country. If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws. If you’re unwilling to accept this, then you must be extremely careful when you travel internationally or turn off access to that country altogether. This is true for every country on Earth. This is the price of doing business int…

> If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws

Agreed, and I like to point out the same when talking of Apple and Co. not liking EU laws. This however, is very different.

It's more akin to me publishing a book in my own country, then another country's book importers importing that book and me getting in trouble for putting into print ideas that are not allowed there.

Remember, I'm not the one importing the book (the ISP in the case of a website), nor did I ask for it to be done.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#148

Post by ghusto »

louthy wrote: post #140
pseudo0 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the Southport mass stabbing that killed three children and wounded 10? The perpetrator was a second-generation African migrant found with an Al-Qaeda training manual and ricin, who had been repeatedly referred to Prevent. The UK government initially refused to release information about the perpetrator, which caused speculation and confusion about the attack. It's a bit odd to focus on the anti-g…

> The perpetrator was a second-generation African migrant He isn't a migrant. He was born in Wales. He's British. 100%. This is exactly the kind of language that starts the wheel of hatred rolling. Nobody knew anything about him when the riots were fomented by the white supremacist lunatics. They just made it up because it fit their narrative and allowed them to go after brown people. They invented a muslim sounding…

As one of these "brown people" reading through your arguments, I'd like to politely ask; could you not?

You're not helping.

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#149

Post by louthy »

ghusto wrote: post #147
louthy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get to sidestep a country’s laws just because you happen to sit outside of the country. If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws. If you’re unwilling to accept this, then you must be extremely careful when you travel internationally or turn off access to that country altogether. This is true for every country on Earth. This is the price of doing business int…

> If you want to provide services to people within any country then you must obey their laws Agreed, and I like to point out the same when talking of Apple and Co. not liking EU laws. This however, is very different. It's more akin to me publishing a book in my own country, then another country's book importers importing that book and me getting in trouble for putting into print ideas that are not allowed there. Reme…

Whilst I appreciate your point, I'm not sure the analogy works. Your 'book' (website) is being deployed from your warehouse (web server) and you could chose to not deliver to the customer (the client web browser) based on their location, because of local (to the customer) laws that ban the book.

I think it'd be difficult to argue against that unless someone else was a proxy middleman during the delivery of the book (VPN).

Re: The UK’s new age-gating rules are easy to bypass

#150

Post by ghusto »

jayceedenton wrote: post #14

Age limits on buying cigarettes are easily thwarted by finding a corner shop that needs the sale and will sell to kids. Height restrictions on fairground rides are easily thwarted by putting bits of wood in your shoes. None of this matters. The point is that this kind of control will drastically reduce under 18s consuming content that they shouldn't. We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless.

> We don't need the all of society's controls to be flawless

We don't, but we do need them to be at least close to best-effort. This is a nonsense law, implemented in a nonsense way. Clearly nobody cared whether it worked or not, and there's either an anterior motive or it was something the current government (whose idea it was not) couldn't back out of without being labelled "pedo-loving scum!".

Unfortunately, I can't let your examples go without comment either. Age restrictions on the sale of tobacco caused a dive in the numbers of children smoking since those shops absolutely stopped selling to children when the penalties came in. I know, I was one of them and none of my friends could get cigs from shops anymore. As for the height restriction bypass; we're not in Looney Tunes, that's not a thing.

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