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Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

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Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 These days they are often digital, meaning claims about privacy might (or might not) be outdated.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 restric…

In my proposal private companies would issue the "age check cards" for sale, not the state.

And I don't know how things work in other places, but I've never had my ID scanned when buying alcohol. These days clerks don't even ask me for ID because I obviously appear to be legal age.

In my proposal the token would be a scratch off card with a unique code. It can't be associated with the transaction.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would largely depend on the implementation details I think. Both those of the ID check itself as well as the precise nature of the tokens. Consider a somewhat extreme example. A preprinted paper ticket with nothing more than a serial number on it. The clerk only visually inspects the ID document then enters the serial number into a web portal and hands it to you. When you go to "redeem" it the service relays the…

How would I know the Clerk wasn't instructed to record the name from my ID? Also this runs into the same problems as voter ID laws, not everyone has an ID that they can show at a liquor store.

Is photographic memory a common job requirement for clerks?

Also usually once you turn a certain age they stop asking you for ID. Again, I'm not aware of how things work in place where they customarily scan and store your ID for alcohol purchases. I would lobby my legislators and fight this odious practice tooth and nail. The store is almost certainly selling that information.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to make clear, you completely ignored that I answered your questions and instead argued against someone else's tangent about meth (which although the government is unconstitutionally regulating as applied , isn't an explicit constitutional right which was what we were discussing) because they desperately needed to side rail the fact I was right by going on a red herring hunt (indeed, one where I was taken…

Ignore meth. Do it again with wire fraud. You’re missing the forest for the trees. It’s ok to be wrong. Daww, edit: The seed for this thread was: > It is difficult to square the notional unconstitutionality of this with the fact that the exercise of other Constitutional rights have long been conditional on age. This just looks like another example. > What is the consistent principle of law? I am having difficulty fin…

You're confusing different accounts for one another. Jurisprudence is relevant because that's ultimately what determines what is and isn't constitutional in practice. The reality is that at least some of the rights which don't have age exceptions explicitly attached to them are nonetheless restricted by law, said restrictions having been deemed constitutional by SCOTUS. The 2nd amendment for example.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#184
post #173
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law is a strange and possibly the only aspect in human societies where people are by default assumed to know, understand and follow it to the letter when everybody acknowledges that law is open to interpretation. You cannot in most cases claim ignorance as it can be abused by criminals. But there is whole industry of education, profession, journals, blogs, podcasts and videos trying to teach, interpret and explain th…

Occam's Razor - this complexity arises from the human nature to try and build consistent abstractions over complex situations. It's exactly what we do in software too. To an outsider it's going to look nonsensical. I want to share a thought experiment with you - atop an ancient Roman legal case I recall from Gregory Aldrete - The Barbershop Murder. Suppose a man sends his slave to a barbershop to get a shave. The bar…

> The legal question is posed: Who is liable under Roman law?

My question is why does anybody have to be liable at all? Most normal people would consider this just to be a freak accident.

Sure, there's learning points that can be taken from it to prevent similar incidents - e.g. erecting a fetch around the field (why didn't you suggest that the field owner be liable) as it can be reasonably foreseen the situation of a ball escaping and being a nuisance to someone else (maybe it just startles someone on the road, maybe it causes a car crash, whatever), or legislating bars or plastic film on the barber's window, etc.

But here nobody seemed to act in any way negligently, nor was there any law or guidance that they failed to follow. It was just the result of lots of normal things happening that normally have no negative consequences and it's so unlikely to happen again that there's nothing useful to be gained by trying to put the blame on someone. It was just an accident.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why block when you can report to Spamhaus?

I prefer to only report genuinely malicious behavior. As long as there's no active attempt at block evasion I figure reporting it is just increasing noise and generally making things worse for everyone. It's the active block evasion crowd that make any and every network communication protocol a pain in the ass to use at scale. It wasn't simpletons using a single static IP address that triggered such widespread adopti…

How is that not genuinely malicious behavior?

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#186

Judge 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,…

This protection is not provided by judges or the Bill of Rights. It’s provided by the attitude and behaviours of all Americans. If enough Americans start treating 1A as conditional, the court decisions will slowly start reflecting that. The system won’t protect the people from themselves.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as government intrusion into our privacy, it's addressed by the 4th Amendment's guarantee that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects and that our rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. The Pennsylvania High Court recently ruled that the Pennsylvania local police don't need a warrant to access your search history. https://news.yco…

You don't understand that news item. The police didn't search a specific person's account, they asked Google (who gave it to them voluntarily) anyone who searched the victim's address in the past week. Nothing unconstitutional about that.

But in the absence of a warrant it _ought_ to be.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#188
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you can't stop eight year olds from grabbing a James Patterson or Stephen King novel from the shelf. Their parents should, and some librarians might throw a moral exception to their choice, but if they wanna read It, they're gonna read It. Enforcing anything other than that is a huge 1A violation IMO.

"you can't stop eight year old from ..." Phrasing this as "you" versus "a second party to the child" involves me, where I originally did not present a statement that would give the impression that I'd be involved. Keep me - "you" - out of it. I'm simply making fun of this analogy.

Let's not go down the semantic argument route and pretend like the impersonal you is not a thing in the English language.

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange and destructive. I believe comprehensible law is a human right that is critically underacknowledged. Like, up there with the right to speech and a fair trial. If you cannot understand the law as it applies to you, you cannot possibly be free under that law, because your actions will always be constrained by your uncertainty.

maybe we’re inching towards rule by law vs rule of law by making things so abstruse that you need a multiyear education to understand what is allowed, when and where.

As the complexity of the world increases this may naturally happen

Re: Texas app store age verification law blocked by federal judge

#190
post #109

Earlier 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".

Most modern social media is the latter, but for trash and propaganda, rather than sex. So why doesn't the court apply the same rule that it's okay to check IDs on entry?

Probably because there are reasonable principles to draw on about withholding access to explicit sexual content from children, but there are no similar principles about trash or propaganda. Trash and propaganda are both pretty clearly within the remit of permitted free speech.
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