Pornhub blocks Montana and North Carolina as their age verification laws take effect | The website says the states' ID requirement would put users' privacy at risk
Montana and North Carolina are the latest to join the list of states with age verification laws for adult platforms.
Pornhub blocks Montana and North Carolina as their age verification laws take effect | The website says the states' ID requirement would put users' privacy at risk::Montana and North Carolina are the latest to join the list of states with age verification laws for adult platforms.
I'm in a neighboring state and it's about 50/50 that my ISP gives me an IP address that geolocates to NC. So right now I'm blocked from the site. I don't go there often but it's lame.
It also works the other way. A lot of people in state are going to have IP addresses that appear out of state.
All in all, using IP to establish a physical address is VERY imperfect. Especially if you’re targeting people over cellular networks or networks in larger commercial properties.
I look forward to watching people try to sue porn sites that are actively trying to block access to a state.
This is going to be a shit show. It’s a law passed by people who don’t understand the underlying tech.
How exactly would they have cause to sue? “I wasn’t able to wank, so I was harmed.”
Unless these are paying customers? But in that case, the ToS likely explicitly says PH has the right to pull access for any reason, or a specific list of reasons.
A company like PH has lawyers, guaranteed. They wouldn’t be making these moves if they weren’t absolutely certain they were covered legally. It’s not like it’s a mom and pop porn shop.
Nothing quite like big government Republicans passing ineffective laws, while trying to claim they are the small government party. This only affects the big sites, the American sites, and the legally aligned sites. But hey, if they want more adults and children exposed to the shadier sides of the internet, so be it.
I'm not trying to defend this law, but I feel like there is a way to do this without invading privacy. Like selling a cryptographic key at stores for a few bucks at a store, which checks your id. IDK? I assume the goal is not actually to keep kids from watching porn but rather to have a chilling effect on it
ACLU v Ashcroft and ACLU v Reno are really interesting to read, if you haven't already.
Part of the conclusion of the court at that time was (at least regarding the CDA):
In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve
In ACLU vs. Ashcroft, the court ruled that less restrictive measures like Internet filters should be used, rather than the law in question (COPA).
I kind of think an argument exists that a system like what you mentioned with cryptographic keys could be a "less restrictive measures" given today's technology. But I think we should still be careful, and keep in mind that nearly all pornography (with the exception of obscenity -- a very narrowly defined category) is speech that enjoys strong protections under the First Amendment. So any decisions around restricting this free speech, regardless of our good intentions in protecting our children, can have unintended negative consequences around first amendment speech in general.
I assume the goal is not actually to keep kids from watching porn but rather to have a chilling effect on it
Probably a safe assumption. It's difficult to tend towards other conclusions when the state of Utah has declared pornography a public health crisis, for example. Children are often just a means to an end in laws and public conversation. But don't forget that most of these kinds of "protect the children" laws are often rooted in some sort of good intentions, so I can't completely ascribe malice to the actions of these lawmakers. Evil is often wrapped in good intentions.
By the way, part of the Free Speech Coalition's arguments in Utah was around the impossibility of actually implementing age verification as no system actually exists in Utah to enforce that. Utah's law essentially ducks the first amendment by outsourcing enforcement to private action rather than government action. Scary stuff.