Pornhub users in Louisiana now have to submit government ID to access the site

"Oh, we just _have_ to have this system in place that makes you identify, we don't collect your data _right now_ but now that we know who you are anyway and you're no longer anonymous - why not sign up to our subscription service?"

Is making the website more work to use for free users which makes them stay around less and thus convert (later) less bad or is the extra data worth it?

It'll be a tough wank...

B. Criminally investigate noncompliance.

How come so? People literally pay for porn content with their credit cards which is a form of identification too. I don't see a problem with showing your id for accessing quality content.

I'm more concerned with the precedent that this sets. Given the "interstate" nature of online commerce, I would think that this law is not enforceable, but given the current makeup of SCOTUS, it might stand for the next 50-100 years. Once a ruling goes through allowing for this type of regulations, I would expect a patchwork of laws to effectively de-anonymize the entire internet.

Since VPNs can be used to ignore these regulations, the next step is to write laws that regulate VPNs. Thus, the government will have a one-stop-shop for finding all of the "bad" things a person is doing. Since payments for like 99.9% of users will be easily traceable to an individual, this will turn VPNs into a honeypot of sorts. Sure, hardened criminals can find ways around this, but I don't think small-town police are too concerned with going after criminals that are out of their league, this is more about projecting power over the locals.

No, you sound like you took 1 + 1 and arrived at 2.

That is precisely what will happen. It will also undoubtedly increase piracy.

I don't buy that anyone is this stupid. They must have a (bad)poll telling them this is the best action to maintain power.

Anyone who uploads something illegal (childporn, non-fantasy rape videos, or stolen nudes) must be held accountable. And if they can't find who is accountable, then Pornhub should be accountable.

The other thing they will not do, is have a rating system for porn. Extreme porn should not be promoted to the front page. I'm not talking about when the UK considered facesitting to be "extreme". It could be determined by a neutral panel or whatnot. Then uploaders can set a rating, users can suggest a different rating, and users can change their rating filter. That way, teens exploring porn don't go from a casual gonzo, to something really extreme, in just a few clicks. It's better UX too, because I've talked about this with people, and many do watch porn, but they hate stumbling on something they consider gross (sorry to generalize, but women in particular tend to be more sensitive, and somewhat understandably since it's usually gross towards women).

Instead, PornHub repeatedly argue that everyone has their kinks. They do, but it's not a valid excuse for doing nothing.

Or offer to serve "a stream of 'y' answers" for the users who do not want to depend on running a local "yes" utility. Count size uncompressed. Compress with a special "char number_of_repeats" algorithm. I wonder if this is enough to go past the current politician class...

The owner bought a crate of enamel pins (this [1] kind of thing, but for long-forgotten social events) from some estate wholesaler, numbering maybe 15,000 distinct pins. He put it in front of the register and gave them inventory IDs as-needed when (if?) he sold one.

[1] https://i.etsystatic.com/25263485/r/il/04c3f8/3721109924/il_...

Nothing helps fight stupid laws more than when they get in the way of regular people doing completely unrelated things.

We already require age verification when you buy drugs, buy guns, vote, buy a drink, buy porn mags from a store, buy cigars, access alcohol websites, access gambling websites, etc

But if you're a 10 year old trying to watch adults fuck each other, that's totally fine (as long as its on a screen of course, but not a window screen, and certainly not in person - a distinction that apparently makes all the difference).

Nevermind that children can't consent to the harm, just as they can't consent to drink alcohol or smoke cigars, or look at porn in a magazine.

Do you have a reason why internet porn should be the ONLY exception to requiring age verification for adult things?

Why is internet porn unique in this respect?

Our society is FULL of porn. It's everywhere. Kids are exposed to it at an average age of 10.

- The question isn't "should we require age verification for adult things" (because we already do)

- The question isn't "should we require age verification for porn" (because we already do for physical porn)

The question is: why should internet porn be the ONLY exception?

> If pornhub is not physically located in Lousiana but only accessible from there.. why do they even have to comply with this law?

I'm not sure this is how the question of the applicability of a particular state's laws to website is determined.

AFAIK, a website is considered to be operating in a state if it is directed towards users in that state. For example, if a website targets users in California, it would be considered to be operating in California, even if the website's servers are located in a different state.

More generally, websites need to abide by laws of the states in which they operate, i.e. complying with any relevant regulations and laws related to e.g. sale of goods/services, advertising, privacy, and other consumer protections.

Sometimes it's difficult or impossible to fully comply with the laws of every state in which it operates, due to differences between state laws.

So, I'm sure the way this works is more complex than I'm presenting it, but I do know that physical location is not dispositive.

...also owned by MindGeek.

[1] - https://www.shodan.io/search?query=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-R...

Being gay isn’t a kink. ;)

https://www.rtalabel.org/

1. Their aspect on what’s wrong with unlimited access to sanctioned imagery.

2. Their aspect on how to comply or at least avoid a lawsuit.

Once someone has answered #1, you can ballpark whether they find some sanctioned images more hazardous than others. Which means you can ask around #2: consider a small polity passing an ID law for access to social media. How will the mechanisms in the law work?

Or I don't know, let parents parent without involving government in regulating indulgences.

The state can't be a substitute for good parenting.

There are a billion other porn sites, and even I would argue watching all the thirst traps on TikTok or Instagram are way more "harmful" than straight out porn.

So this will do absolutely nothing except allow sites like Pornhub to literally know the exact person viewing what videos now. Yeah, that's just wonderful.

Should we also ban sports cars, alcohol and trashy romance novels?

edit: looking at your blog.. everything makes sense now, coming from the most backwards environment imaginable.

[Citation needed]

Dataset needed.

"Protect the children" is the perfect cover for so many terribly invasive laws. I personally won't sacrifice my privacy to "protect children", and neither should you, because these children will eventually grow up to be adults who would presumably enjoy a right to privacy.

> The fact of the matter is porn is accessible to children within seconds and for the last 30 years we have done virtually nothing to try to prevent it. We know that porn is harmful, especially to children, and we have done NOTHING to try to prevent it.

The government isn't a parent and shouldn't act like one. Parents and schools can take advantage of any one of the many services which provide content filtering for kids. Once they're old enough the get around those blockers and access things anyway, there isn't anything you or the government will be able to do to stop them from accessing content. See: torrenting movies and TV, sharing plans for 3d printed weapons, child porn still being a massive problem despite being very illegal pretty much globally.

Citation needed. For every study claiming harm there are a multitude that refute the findings, nearly universally with better controls and a larger dataset.

In one case your age is verified and that's it.

In the other your information is entered into a database that _might_ contain compromising information that may be used to blackmail you (e.g. you might be gay and not wish to disclose that fact to the world).

The first worries me very litte - the second worries me a lot.

In America violence and weapons are pushed onto "the children" daily. American military make video games to teach warfare tactics to "the children" and desensitize them to gruesome acts of killing. "The children" can bring bullet proof backpacks to school, and learn how to use weapons at a young age.

But god forbid they learn about or see a sex act, which by the way quite literally is what ensures the continuation of the human species. That would be awful.

Lol yes a standard used to violate and restrict rights. It's literally a meme: "Think of the Children!"

Thanks for the vomit fest.

There's a huge difference between flashing your ID to a bored store worker for two seconds, and giving all your personal data to a huge company to store indefinitely, and that data might once be used against you... wanna run for president? Some pornhub worker can now look at the databse and see that you watched donkey midget porn once, (or in some areas, "even worse", gay or lesbian porn) and can blackmail you with that data.

Firstly people will just go to the sites which have under 1/3 and therefore are not in-scope.

Secondly sites will game the threshold, if they think it'll be to their financial advantage.

Thirdly underage kids will (I would imagine) work out how to bypass these filters pretty quickly, using VPNs et al.

Fourthly, people attempting to bypass these filters might fall prey to malware dressed up as VPN/bypass software.

A lot of assumptions and unquestioned biases in that little statement.

But I think the bigger point here is the debate about how much and which parenting roles we want government to take on.

I’d argue that religion is far more harmful, especially to children. Teaching magical thinking, false promises of afterlife, and hatred for outgroups can warp peoples’s whole lives.

> That’s a standard we’ve had in America for generations

That isn’t a particularly strong argument, given the other standards we’ve had for generations, like treatment of women and minorities, the inequalities of the justice and financial systems, the corruption and nepotism in our politics. The insane idea that 5 year olds play highly violent video games daily but will somehow be ruined by seeing boobs (or even fucking) is just. . . Wow.

Please provide peer-reviewed studies from non-biased research firms / organizations detailing the harm porn is causing.

When the database leaks — and it will - we know what it will look like: the AshleyMadison leaks. People died.

There are plenty of technical mechanisms that are available to parents and schools (etc) to block access to this material. None of them need involve the state.

In the end, we must treat this like any other substance that children aren’t ready for. Whether we are talking about taking cannabis, alcohol, pornography, or Tide pods, the most effective protection is parents and educators who care and teach children about potentially harmful behaviors.

The solution is not impractical, ineffective privacy violations; it's education and media literacy.

I assure you that the groups advocating for laws like this are a) motivated by religion; and b) have a long-term plan for extending restrictions like this. "Won't somebody please think of the children" is always just a cover.

But I look on Pornhub, and the idea that that might be my children's first impression of sex makes me sad. Its fine for adults, but not good for forming accurate impressions of how to connect with another human being.

My favorite book so far, by far, has been "The Hush Factor" by Karen Rayne. It has almost nothing about sex itself, its almost all about communicating with emerging adults (it would really be good for anyone who has a teenager). But its key thesis is that you are trying to help your children develop the capacity to have healthy sexual relationships.

I think the people downvoting this comment probably don't have kids this age (if you do, I'd be curious to hear your perspective). But I love my kids, and I care about all the kids that age and hope they will find good, healthy partners to sleep with eventually.

Even as someone who is quite tech savvy, it’s difficult to control access to this kind of material. This specific effort may be heavy handed, but there is a problem here that I believe is real and deserves attention.

I dispute this assertion. I think there's much more evidence that religion is harmful.

Imagine a child unknowingly watching rape on film. It’s bad for an adult, what about a child?

I don’t think most people really understand how vile and harmful porn is. I also think that regardless of the downvotes, it’s good to speak up against this. The intention is not to convince someone that doesn’t have a conscience, but to inform people who’re just unaware.

You mean like school shootings?

> If it's unpopular or LA ceases to be socially conservative, democracy will fix it.

You don't understand the uproar but argue uproar will fix it?

Cause if you don't, then you're going to look quite silly with those arguments.

If you want to protect children, you could perhaps have a trusted third party token broker which would neither reveal to the sites who owns the token, nor the site to the broker what content is accessed.

Because the US is mostly addicted to porn. There was one study that found that 91.5% of men had reported using porn in the past month. It's bleak.

It's bad because it creates an enormous privacy concern for adults who are forced to identify themselves in a traceable way when for consuming legal, but often very socially taboo content. We might say that these sites should never store the information, but the reality is that it's such a honeypot of potential blackmail that no one should trust it not to be stored.

1. This law won't prevent anyone with any amount of motivation from watching porn

2. This law will create an avenue for personal details to be compromised, certainly with association to "porn" in general and possibly to actual content

3. This is coming from Louisiana which would rather legislate an issue than educate children on how to handle these issues properly

How much media in our society is "not for children" but are still easily accessed by children? And how much of that happens because parents aren't paying attention?

Porn is just an easy target, especially in America.

I'm not saying we should do nothing, but I don't think this is effective action.

It's actually impossible to effectively manage this with laws and centralized legislation (I would argue this is performative more than anything else), and the more of this we have, the more of a false sense of security you give parents, and the less responsibility they feel they need to have in guiding and supporting their children and helping them learn the reality of the world around them.

It's a very bad take for you to assume that the opposition is from people who want children to watch porn.

Protecting children is primarily parents' responsibility, not everyone else's. It's okay if it doesn't cost anything (like putting tricky caps on bottles of hazardous things), but when there's a clash (privacy vs protecting children), it's better to land on the side of freedom and personal responsibility.

Hell, you probably shouldn't be giving kids access to the internet anyway. Tik Tok might be just as damaging as Pornhub for them.

Edit: in other words, if you're worried about your child rolling off the bed you should buy a crib. Government shouldn't be mandating that all beds need to be cribs, in case children might sleep in them.

Nobody's saying kids should be watching porn. In a perfect world, this is a good law. We live in reality, though; data breaches happen routinely, and governments can do unethical, harmful, legal things. You should always examine laws in how they can be enforced in the worst way, and what the next logical step might be for legislators with ill intent towards any kind of minority group.

> We could argue over the implementation of it, and worry about the downstream consequences, but then shouldn't the argument be: how to accomplish this without those effects?

No country in the world has the identification infrastructure to implement this in a rights-neutral way, as far as I know. To do it, your ID would have to be a sort-of rolling public/private key pair that others can use to verify information with, such as DOB and driving eligibility. We would then have to track what entities are querying your ID and what info they got so that we can audit who's getting our Id info and make sure they have the appropriate access.

Because it's invasive, ripe for abuse, and contrary to our basic values as a nation.

I'm not sure this follows. For people that really care a lot about both issues, perhaps.

For me, I care much more about privacy and preventing government overreach than making porn harder to access.

As such, I'm not going to be the one trying to figure out how to accomplish this without these effects. I'm going to focus on saying "Don't introduce those effects, regardless of your motivations."

Nope. I think it's perfectly fine to raise issues and tell someone to go off and fix their proposal without my assistance.

It's not like there's some time sensitive pressure that I help collaborate to get some minimal solution in place as fast as possible. Kids have been looking at internet porn for the last 25 years and this law won't meaningfully curb that, regardless of how perfect age verification tech ever gets.