So, the law seems broken as judges question and interpret a law as unconstitutional. If every judge across the country does this, we can dismantle entire law. Awesome. The power of capitalism and platform monoply is at full display.
Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
131–140 of 263 posts
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#132I wonder why Texas did not start by targeting NSFW / porn apps specifically, like other states. I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass.
Because people were so sick of their shit, and they already got their asses beaten so hard that they turned a fundamentalist city into an atheistic one. Banned in Boston used to be a thing. Boston itself got sick of that puritan bullshit.
They know that re-litigating that is a road to ruin because 'artistic merit' is so well tread a ground in literature.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite that simple. Laws legitimise and stabilise those in power. If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. There are other means to gaining power, of course.
> If enough people stop believing in the law, it really threatens those in power. I think this is why the thing judges hate the most is people admitting when the law gives them an unfair advantage. A rule that unjustly benefits someone is fine as long as they don't break kayfabe. Big Brother loves you, that's why you can't install apps on your phone, it's to protect you from harm. The incidental monopolization, censo…
I agree, but that's the uncharitable interpretation. The charitable one is that intent matters. Those in power being threatened tends to strongly correlate with societal instability and a distinct lack of public safety. I may not always agree with the status quo but I don't want to live in Somalia either.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! Great idea. I'll save others the click: "The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not. Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out. In the same way that kids occasionally obt…
This does nothing to protect anonymity as you are still assigned a unique code that has been tied to your ID at the liquor store.
Historically liquor store checks were purely visual. These days they are often digital, meaning claims about privacy might (or might not) be outdated. The general principle still applies though. The physical infrastructure already exists, the ID checks do not necessarily need to be digitized or recorded, and even if they are the issued tokens don't need to be tied to the check.
Grocery stores already sell age restricted items as well as gift cards that require activation. The state could issue "age check cards" that you could purchase for some nominal fee. That would require approximately zero additional infrastructure in most of the industrialized world. The efficacy would presumably be equivalent to that for alcohol and tobacco.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the difference between standing on a street corner shouting "shit" and taking a shit on a street corner. The court is generally pretty adept at navigating the difference between "a bookstore that has some spicy books" and "a sex shop that has some non-spicy books".
Bookstores that carry porn are porn shops. Apps that carry porn are porn shops, and since the app store has apps that carry porn, the app store is a porn shop.
Now apply that logic to the whole of the internet..
You might arrive at an old saying, about what the internet is for.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#136Judge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights,…
Judges are struggling to find the analogies known to them from the world of 70's. Apps are not like books only. They are like movies, sports, tools, postal mailbox, pet, friend, bank, money, shop, cab and anything you can imagine. When movies require age-restriction, apps can do so too.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#137I wonder why Texas did not start by targeting NSFW / porn apps specifically, like other states. I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass.
The app stores already block porn on their own initiative.
> I also wonder why smut literature (the best selling category of books on Amazon) seems to get a free pass.
It's popular with women and basically invisible to men.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
LinkedIn is maddening. If you make the mistake of signing up, it takes years to escape their spam and bs.
I got years of their spam without signing up. Only after several years did they add a way to opt out an email address without making an account.
If they don't provide an easy opt-out link then why not just block the sender and move on? Unlike the less legal operations I wouldn't expect a legitimate business to rotate domains or otherwise attempt to evade blocks.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, first amendment is not absolute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Only the second one is absolute for some reason.
Far from it, but I'd rather not drag things so severely off topic. I'll just point out that you used to be able to mail order some surprising (at least by modern sensibilities) stuff.
Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge
#140Judge Robert Pitman said that it violates the First Amendment and is "more likely than not - unconstitutional." The Act is akin to a law that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door and, for minors, require parental consent before the child or teen could enter and again when they try to purchase a book. We enjoy 1A protections of speech and assembly. When we consider our rights,…
As a UK subject, with a government that has begun implementing the online safety act, prosecuting people for tweets that clearly weren't inciting violence and getting rid of jury trials for cases with fewer than five years sentences, I look on with envy at your constitutional protections of the individual.