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Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law
(www.vice.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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The concept is not terrible, the implementation is. Passing this law with no secure way of proving identity is where it’s clearly just a Christo-fascist power move.
I think a law verifying your age over the internet inherently breaks the idea of a free internet, of which we are already seeing degradation of by Google and DRM/web integrity anyways.
I don't see how it doesn't violate free speech. Imagine needing the government's permission to talk to someone?
Edit: forgot a word
I agree. Even internet security protocols are at risk, and the dinosaurs responsible for writing laws don’t understand basic encryption let alone the idea that it is 100% a needed concept in a free, fair, and just society.
There are already age limitations that are constitutional. You can’t run for office, buy alcohol, drive a car etc.
That's not speech. You can age limit things, but not on speech. Beyond that, the limitations on speech have to meet certain conditions where it's in the publics best interest and doesn't put too much burden on the public.
Restricting access to explicit material is the same as restricting alcohol or tobacco.
Tobacco is not speech.
Edit: plus one is an economic regulation .The other is not. Like, you can smoke tobacco at really any age. Just can buy it at any age.
Possession is illegal in a majority of states
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-r-0269.htm
You're still ignoring my first point which is the much more important distinction. It's not speech.
It’s not a free speech issue.
The literal lawsuit says otherwise. It's the first claim they wrote.
I have my doubts it’ll succeed on free speech arguments alone.
I have my doubts that people should comment on things they clearly haven't read, but here we are.
That was broken decades ago.
today couldn't have happened if yesterday's degradation didn't occur. it's been slowly breaking for a while now.
And fuck sending your driver's license to random shady porn sites
I think there is a lot more to this that a secure way or protecting children.
It's the base idea that I have to prove who I am online at all. That I cannot lie. Lieing should be a fundamental right. Not identifying yourself should be a fundamental right. Giving a false name should be a fundamental right.
I get that too, but we wouldn’t want people buying alcohol or fire arms anonymously. Imo access to pornography should be like access to R-Rated movies or Parental Advisory music. Guidelines set either by the industries or government, but policed by parents.
You don't want people buying alcohol anonymously? Im totally for it.
You've hit the nail on the head while at the same time missing everything. Parents should be policing their children and what they do on computers. It's not like there is a spectrum between pg porn and x rated porn. The websites themselves are already the R rating.
things like Ecchi and stripteases exist, but its too mild for PornHub. Soo... I'm not really making a point.
The way the US is going, with anti-LGBT laws popping up all over the place, I have less trust for the government collecting that information than the sketchy porn sites themselves.
You’re not wrong.
The only implementation I would support is one where the asking website doesn't know your ID, and the verifying website doesn't know what you're trying to visit. Essentially just asking for a one-time use token that verified your age, and providing that token to the website you're trying to visit.
Edit for a bit more detail: User authenticates to ID website, which provides them a token with age verification (true/false) and a short (10 minute?) TTL. This token is encrypted by the ID website. User then provides this token to the asking website (eg: pornhub). Pornhub then sends the token back to the ID website to decrypt it. All pornhub knows about you is whether or not you're of age, and the verifying website never knows what the token is for.
There would be too much value in tracking that token for such a scheme to stay secure. Governments or shady corporations or illegal black markets or all of the above would be all over keeping tabs on what sites are visited by which tokens and matching them to identities.
The whole point is that the token itself doesn't have any personal info attached to it, only a yes/no and expiry time.
I'll even one up my original suggestion - it uses standard public/private key encryption, where the government issues a simple json token with a yes/no Boolean and a TTL. The public key that can decrypt the tokens is public. Pornhub then decrypts the token and verifies the boolean and expiry date, all without talking to the government at all.
ISPs already have, and do sell that data.
that's amazing, I would love to see this implemented, problem is nobody wants to set it up, they want the data. I think they enjoy the discomfort hoping people will stop. If the system was setup and used despite all the pressure, the short TTL may create the risk of traffic correlation attacks, especially for the smaller, less traffic sites. this is something that can likely be fixed.
The concept is fine, but even the best known implementation is impossible without putting an unacceptable level of trust in one group.
This should be parental controls - make websites declare a rating, then let the owners lock down devices
Nothing is going to be absolute, but we have to prioritize freedom or soon our Internet will look like China's. They've already been talking about banning vpns and kosa would make you tie ID to anywhere you can post - all social media is considered possible adult content by default
I like this idea. Have the W3C create a rating system that sites self-select, and then work with Microsoft, Apple, etc to adhere to those ratings in their parental-control systems. I also approve of Apple's idea of CSAM or explicit image scanning on devices where it blurs it out for minors. All of which can be controlled by parents, not governments.
Both the concept and the implementation were approved almost unanimously, with overwhelming bipartisan support. Not sure why you’re having a hard time with this.
That just means that almost every politician on both "sides" are pushing a Christo-fascist power move.
The Democratic party is only better than the Republicans on this in relative terms. As a non-American looking in, both of them are right-wing parties that bow to religious interests. It's just that one of them is waaaay off to the right wing, out in the reeds of loonieville, whereas the other has kept at least within spitting distance of center most of the time.
Not sure where stating that means there's any difficulty in understanding anything. That's such a naive perspective to take. No one is claiming a Texas state senator that is a Democrat is the same as a Democrat in a deep blue state. It's all relative and only fools or liars would claim otherwise.
No, not “no one is claiming that”, because I am claiming that. Contrary to your apparent belief, large swathes of urban Texas are little different politically from a blue city anywhere else in the country. A state rep for Austin fought prescription drug companies and against putting the 10 Commandments in classrooms. Does that sound Christofascist to you? Because he voted for the bill. Close to 40% of the State legislature are Democrats and the majority of them approved this bill. Acting like a representative for Austin and a representative for rural Texas are both Christofascists because they come from the same state is actively counterproductive to gaining a better understanding of the situation. If you’re tilting at windmills and blaming imaginary enemies you’re going to miss the real forces that are driving these decisions.
Even if they aren’t Christian, there is a stream rolling effect on “protect the kids” bills where going against it is going to get you thrown out of office. That’s the kind of political climate we are in unfortunately.
Most democrats are Christian too. I’m not excluding them from blame here.
It’s not Christi-fascist, both parties - if not the entirety of the US government want a Chinese type internet. Don’t fool yourself into thinking they don’t.
The Patriotic act was never revoked was it? I mean that thing was written in advanced of 9/11 just keep that in mind. There are probably stacks of legislation that is prepared and just waiting to be pushed through on a moments notice.
One side is actively banning books...
This "both sides" bullshit needs to fucking stop.
It doesn't need to stop, it needs to change. Before assuming it's doomerism or attempts to dissuade people from voting, learn the perspective. The example above was the Patriot Act, a bill written before 9/11 even occurred, passed (and continually passed extensions until 2019) with overwhelming support, and is a fundamental attack on privacy. Things like the Patriot Act don't come from just one side.
It is literally impossible for support to be nearing %70 without support from Blue voters.
What needs to stop is this pretense that this crap is only being supported by Conservatives / Republicans.
They don't. Christofascist do. Remember, the internet was literally invented in America.
PATRIOT ACT did expire.
Ah yes, I stand corrected. It was replaced with the FREEDOM ACT - yet another Orwellian sounding spy program that was modified slightly to ease American fears of bulk domestic spying.
Like that really *stopped. *