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Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

arstechnica.com

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Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#91

Post by prirun »

It's really sad to me that our politicians (and other people pushing for this kind of regulation) think that viewing naked people online, even having sex, is more damaging to "the children" than seeing people's guts splayed out all over the place on TV and video games, heads chopped off with blood spurting everywhere, getting limbs chopped off, using machine guns to kill people, seeing kids severely bullied at school, and so on.

Of course, I don't really think the politicians give much of a shit about porn. They just want the mechanisms in place to monitor everyone's activities online, and porn is the easiest place to start. Then it will expand to everything else.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#92

Post by jmclnx »

hunter2_ wrote: post #76
phendrenad2 wrote: post #49

Why not allow liquor stores and other establishments that check IDs anyway issue a digital certificate that you are of age? Here's my ID, here's my pornhub account name, here's a service fee, digitally attest to the fact that I proved that I'm of legal age. Seems like the real motive here is deanonymization.

When someone of age consistently buys liquor for minors, they'll eventually get caught in many cases, due to the likely rambunctiousness of inexperienced drinkers. Would the same be true here?

Maybe, but most of these purchases are by someone 21 (US Age) or a bit older to buy for friends. Very unlikely they will get caught. When I was young, everyone knew this was happening and these people were called "rum runners". And nothing was done. I doubt much as changed.

Back to pornhub. There is no way to verify age, have security and anonymity at the same time on the internet. What would be stopping a "rum runner" from sharing his ID with a friend ?

I think this is the main reason pornhub is blocking these states. They know it is really impossible to comply with the laws. They also know their customers want both security and anonymity. Once that trust is breached, customers will leave. For a good example there was that "affair" site a few years ago that had a breach and I think ended up folding.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#93

Post by verdverm »

lucianbr wrote: post #31
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

One thing all the crypto coins show is that a central authority has its uses. What if you want to fix a bug in the protocol or upgrade it? What if due to some mistake you are identified as underage when you are over, or over when you are underage? There's nobody to reach out to. A zero-trust protocol or computer system is all well and good, for some uses at least. A zero-trust society will not work. Or at least it wi…

There are definitely components from the cryptocoin realm that could be repurposed in trust based systems.

zk proofs could be used to solve this problem.

- Govt runs a zk-prove-ident service

- User goes to PH and starts verification process

- PH does proof with Govt, this could be anonymous

Ideally the user's keys are part of their ID, if you lose your ID, you can get a new one. It's still a permissioned system, so no miners/stakers needed, we can make it possible to change/replace keys behind the scenes so the UX for the common people does not amount to "lose your keys, lose your money"

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#94

Post by verdverm »

ranger_danger wrote: post #87
williamcotton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, DMVs could issue IDs with Common Access Card support, a cheap and widely available digital system used by the DoD. Wouldn’t it be nice if we knew we were interacting with a real person and not a chat bot?

the kids will just swipe a parent or older sibling's card

A few might be able and willing to, most will not. It will be easier for them to find alternative sources

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#95

Post by stvltvs »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #89
stvltvs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about you, but I definitely don't want the federal government intervening between me and my porn. So many opportunities for abuse of power!

There could also be a constitutional amendment that the federal government API used to verify identity does not keep any records.

Setting aside the feasibility of an amendment and whether an administration would follow it, even just the ability to say yea or nay to anyone accessing information is chilling.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#96

Post by belorn »

Aurornis wrote: post #55
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

> Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? This comes up every time, but the purpose of the identity check is to ascertain (to the extent possible) that the person logging in is the person whose age you’re verifying. If you completely separate identity from age checking using some cryptographic method, the loophole is that a single identity token with an adult age can now be used by every…

> If you completely separate identity from age checking using some cryptographic method, the loophole is that a single identity token with an adult age can now be used by everyone, everywhere to tell websites that they are above a certain age

There a two counter techniques used to address that problem. Tokens can get time limited down to a number of seconds (10-30?), and a single token is only valid for one session at a given website (assuming the website honor those restriction on their side).

In addition, token providers may rate limit how many tokens a person may generate, and the application that request tokens may require a bit of work from the user (like typing a pin). Any person who need to do more age verification could be required to contact customer support to unlock such features, which also mean the provider can keep a closer eye on accounts that generate tokens in strange or abnormal patterns. Depending on how the market for identity providers are, different providers may provide different service and different levels of authentication.

In Sweden currently we are in a situation where there are multiple competing identify providers. They have to follow a certain certification, but the exact details of the technology varies a lot. There is a bit of talk to make those an open standard, including defining exactly what information the provider and the recipient should get. There is also the hope that the user application could be made generic, so switching/choosing provider becomes easy.

The problem with the technology in term of privacy is not so much in the protocols or cryptographic methods, but rather a social one. You can not create an fair identification system if all it does is ID control for porn sites, just as one can not create a VPN if all it can access is porn sites.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#97

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

Aurornis wrote: post #55
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? Surely some kind of OpenID style protocol can be invented for this with zero knowledge of personal information ending up with pornhub or which sites were being given age verification?

> Is there a way to prove your age without being identified/logging in? This comes up every time, but the purpose of the identity check is to ascertain (to the extent possible) that the person logging in is the person whose age you’re verifying. If you completely separate identity from age checking using some cryptographic method, the loophole is that a single identity token with an adult age can now be used by every…

Most systems would require you to anonymously prove ownership of a the credential, not have an unchanging bearer token.

So yes, you could steal the private key I guess. But that is no worse than if you have to prove your identity; someone could get your password to your account.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#98

Post by Izkata »

affinepplan wrote: post #38
rescripting wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that would happen is that the breach would be scoured for politicians names. They’d be just as vulnerable to this kind of blow back.

I suspect that scouring would find approximately 535 congressmen and 200 million americans. seriously, how much "blow back" could there possibly be to revealing someone has frequented PH?

The question isn't so much does a person look at porn, it's more what porn do they like. If pornhub is storing the personal information, it could be matched to specific videos, which if it's at all fetish-specific could be blackmail material.

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#99

Post by hluska »

skhunted wrote: post #85
hluska wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be in the minority, but the community does not raise my child. I do. As such, I will talk to them, set our family’s standards after consultation and monitor appropriately. If it turns into a discipline situation, I have no qualms about going there. Or if it turns into a praise situation, I have just as few qualms about going there. Government regulation cannot and will not replace parenting. If government regul…

Communities set some standards of behavior. This has been always been true. While the government doesn’t replace parenting it does enforce standards of conduct. Like requiring parents to feed their kids or preventing businesses from selling porn to your child. If government regulation worked, groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving would not have to exist. MADD is precisely the kind of community action that is succ…

I might be too cynical, but when I see governments roll out initiatives like this, all I see are campaign slogans.

Meanwhile, we’ve got kids living in poverty or in foster houses of horror and those topics don’t get the same attention.

In our family, porn is a gateway topic for us to start talking about issues like revenge porn, sexting and all that other stuff that is right around the corner for us.

So this is a tricky one for me and I guess I don’t understand why porn is so important. Its existence is helpful for me because of the topics it can help bring up, but we talk about everything from periods to child birth so I know that’s likely rare.

I’m maybe trying to impose my attitudes too much on others so I just can’t understand. I apologize if I’ve been obtuse - I am so I don’t really have an excuse. :)

Re: Pornhub prepares to block five more states rather than check IDs

#100

Post by lotsofpulp »

stvltvs wrote: post #95
lotsofpulp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could also be a constitutional amendment that the federal government API used to verify identity does not keep any records.

Setting aside the feasibility of an amendment and whether an administration would follow it, even just the ability to say yea or nay to anyone accessing information is chilling.

The government is not saying yea or nay, they are just providing proof of age or identity (not necessarily both, whatever the vendor website asks for, and the person allows).

Suppose I want to start a business where I don’t want the liability of having to deal with all the laws about minors. Then I can use the government API to only allow people over whatever age.

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