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Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

bbc.co.uk

21–30 of 37 posts

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#21

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

You make the mistake of assuming they're doing this in good faith.

I'm in Australia and we're going to have the same problem with our under-16 social media ban.

There's privacy-preserving ways to do it, but they definitely won't use them.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#22
States where pornhub is banned due to age verification:

Alabama Arkansas Florida Idaho Indiana Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Montana Nebraska North Carolina Oklahoma South Carolina Texas Utah Virginia Louisiana

Essentially Republicans who advocate for small government went aggressive on ban and propped up the industry for VPNs.

UK, Canada, Australia and NZ are likely to follow suit.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#23

Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere. And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our k…

> And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet?

Most porn is a far cry from “making love”.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#24
post #4

The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway. Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.

­> Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on

I learned to distrust both my intuition and common knowledge but I may be convinced by solid scientific arguments and statistics.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious question to me is why pornography? There is _a lot_ of content on the internet potentially harmful for kids, from political radicalisation through drug apologies to brutal violence. Is viewing pornography worse than seeing the aftermath of a shooting? It seems very clear that if one really wants to protect children, enforcement of protection should go somewhere else - banning kids access to unlimited devi…

The thing is that it's already illegal for minors to see pornography. It's not illegal for minors to access their technology devices or watch disturbing news footage. This is merely an enforcement vehicle for rules that already exist. It is an acknowledgment that the law that has been in place for years doesn't work anymore. Back in the pre-Internet days the adult video store or cinema would make sure you were of pro…

> it's already illegal for minors to see pornography

Really? What law makes it illegal for minors to see pornography?

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#26
post #25
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that it's already illegal for minors to see pornography. It's not illegal for minors to access their technology devices or watch disturbing news footage. This is merely an enforcement vehicle for rules that already exist. It is an acknowledgment that the law that has been in place for years doesn't work anymore. Back in the pre-Internet days the adult video store or cinema would make sure you were of pro…

> it's already illegal for minors to see pornography Really? What law makes it illegal for minors to see pornography?

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/citizens-guid...

> It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet that includes obscenity and is available to any minor less than 17 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 231 –Child Online Protection Act of 1998).

> The standard of what is harmful to minors may differ from the standard applied to adults. Harmful materials for minors include any communication consisting of nudity, sex or excretion that (i) appeals to the prurient interest of minors, (ii) is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable material for minors, (iii) and lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.

The most important part of this quote is that the standard for minors is different than that of adults. Material that is not considered obscenity for adults (e.g., legal pornography) can be and is considered obscenity for minors.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#27

Kids are shown weapons everywhere. They are afraid to watch news and therefore only consume "news" from socical media, which we made an AI shithole and threat to a civilized society. They see how we have in large parts poisoned or destroyed large parts of their planet. They have to get drilled to learn how to get not shot in school shootings or elsewhere. And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our k…

> And yet people think that the urgent problem to care for our kids is them finding out about people making love on the Internet? Most porn is a far cry from “making love”.

Matter of definition. Stuff on most porn sites is at least consensual.

My point is: Seriously and honestly talk to a kid these days. Or read detailed reports on where the suicide rates in young peoples are sourced in.

Even porn where whatever a granny dressed up as a horse is pissing into someone else's mouth. Might be very troubling to a teen trying to understand their sexuality. Surely not a good start as sex ed.

But that's still a far cry from kids seeing people killing each other FOR REAL.

Talk to the kids. Porn is nowhere near the Top 10 of what's causing their anxieties and depressions.

This is grown-ups taking their standard route: Let's not change anything of relevance, but instead let's put a useless ban on something that won't go away by a ban, anyway.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#28
post #4

The UK government was warned almost 10 years ago this is bad idea, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. They've decided to push it through anyway. Children accessing porn is bad, I think that can be almost universally agreed on, but the solution is not the government nannying everyone.

It's not about children. They've done their dash with using 'terrorism' as an excuse to erode civil liberties, and so now they've switched to 'saving the children'.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#29

Hot take: I'm in favour of this. There's actually been significant progress in developing privacy-preserving attestation technologies in the last few years, that could enable anonymous age verification for adult websites. There's an IETF protocol called Privacy Pass (see RFCs 9576-9578) that can attest facts about clients (e.g. their age) in an anonymising manner. You reveal your age by showing your ID to an age veri…

It may be possible, but I think you've approaching this with the very naive assumption that the authorities actually have any interest in allowing you to preserve your privacy.

Re: Age verification mandatory for porn sites in the UK starting July

#30
post #26
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's already illegal for minors to see pornography Really? What law makes it illegal for minors to see pornography?

https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-ceos/citizens-guid... > It is illegal for an individual to knowingly use interactive computer services to display obscenity in a manner that makes it available to a minor less than 18 years of age (See 47 U.S.C. § 223(d) –Communications Decency Act of 1996, as amended by the PROTECT Act of 2003). It is also illegal to knowingly make a commercial communication via the Internet…

As someone from the UK, which is where this article is on about, it is not illegal in this country for minors to see pornography in and of itself.

Selling it to, etc. obviously are.

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