The US is also planning a law that would make it illegal to use VPNs to skirt laws like this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/04/could-tiktok-ban...
don't think that's what RESTRICT act does tho
I don't like the RESTRICT Act but you're overstating your case.
Mind you, RESTRICT is a bad bill, and those provisions are vague, and the EFF is right to be screaming about it. But it doesn't do what you think it does.
[1] Hilariously and depressingly unconstitutional. Good grief.
How is it unconstitutional? I don't know the ins and outs.
The difference between showing ID to a clerk and this sort of thing is recordkeeping. A clerk is only checking the DOB on the ID, not keeping a record of your identity[1]. Online age checks keep records.
If there were some way of doing an age check without having your identity attached to it or having to expose yourself to some commercial third party, I wouldn't have an issue. That's a tough nut, though.
[1] I'm aware that certain businesses do keep a scan of your ID, but they're the exception and not the rule.
As a foreigner, it's kind of strange that violent movies (and political propaganda disguised as violent movies) are protected speech and pornography is not.
In America, parents worry that sexual media might effect their children, but worry less about violent media.
I'm of the opinion that both are half right and both are half wrong. Both violent and sexual media effect the people who consume it. We are what we eat. There is no kind of media that doesn't effect consumers of that media in some way. Also, it bears mentioning that a lot of pornography is both sexual and violent...
(In case it isn't clear, those two trends I list above are gross generalizations. When I was a child in America, my mother would not allow me to play with tin soldiers or GI Joes, nerf guns, or watch cartoons more violent than Arthur. Not a typical American childhood, but nevertheless still an American childhood. Generalizations always have exceptions but I think they can be useful nevertheless.)
If you want to argue that pornography should not be an exception, or that violence should be, then fair enough, but given they're such different types of content it's nonsensical to try and put them on an axis and claim one is further along it than the other.
Unless you live in a state where they scan your ID for such transactions, those in-person purchases can be effectively anonymous.
Out of curiosity, what state do you live in where gas stations sell pornography?
As an aside, in many cases, porn served by websites isn't meant to be bought. It is effectively advertising.
In Utah, it's clear that there would be less-restrictive ways to achieve the supposed goals of the law. For instance, jail parents whose minor children view pornography. That would not be a content-based restriction on speech.
Since there is no way for a website to know the age of its visitors, the Utah law is a de facto ban on certain speech.
Does this seem at all practical to you? To me, this seems akin to dropping ID requirements at liquor stores and bars, and instead enacting a law to jail the parents of minors who drink liquor.
Which is all to say, no. None of this is workable because none of this is about protecting children from life-altering harm.
This law is intended to create a liabikity trap to attack companies a religious state deems immoral.
I don't believe everyone considers pornography to be speech, let alone practices it as speech.
And it turns out that restrictions on speech are unconstitutional independently of whether you want to exercise that particular speech. If a law is passed prohibiting discussion of mohair rugs, it infringes on my free speech even if I have no intention of discussing mohair rugs.
1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=101895573599950...
I mean, when I was a teenager I already knew how to program and my mother was completely tech illiterate. So how the hell was she supposed to control what a chronically horny teenage boy was getting up to on the internet?
We should also remember that teenagers are supposed to disobey their parents. It's not really the norm to have much control over your teenage children. That's just a natural stage of development from a dependent child to an independent adult who makes their own decisions. Sometimes teenagers just have to learn the hard way.
I feel like porn is mostly harmful in combination with loneliness. I had a pretty bad addiction to it as a teenager but it kind of fixed itself when I started dating at 18 and realised the disconnect between porn and the real deal. If that never happened, I'd probably be a woman-hating incel by now.
Purchasing liquor isn't a first amendment right. The standards are indeed different.
This is such a blindspot for ‘24/7 engineer mindset’ people. And, in a professional context, things like this serve as a great litmus test for if someone is capable and geared to look at things at a bigger-picture level instead of just ‘computer problems’.
…not to equate looking at porn with getting burglarised. This is obviously BS.
I don't have any inside information, but my uninformed guess is that this is by design or at least tolerated to some extent. You don't want a watertight VPN because it stifles commerce.
China PR could pull a Singapore and impose the kind of punishment for using VPN that Singapore does for hard drugs. I have a friend from Texas who lives in China PR and regularly uploads to YouTube. Nothing political, he is talking about living and working as a teacher, so he isn't doing anything controversial but in theory what he is doing is unlawful by China PR laws, right?
Broadly PRC GFW is functionally VPN paywall for foreign content so most PRC nationals default to consuming media/narratives within the wall. TBH, apart from dissidents, researchers etc, in my experience, very few VPN users jump wall for foreign news, like exposure might be incidental due to being shared on timeline, but most PRC nationals jump wall for porn, business and lols. Plenty of foreign news gets filtered to domestic PRC net via diasphora who reverse VPN and post content back into PRC net - lots of foreign/western "propaganda" makes it's way in PRC, it's just rate limited to point where influence is limited, or censored if it ever gets legs.
In terms of regulations: VPN allowed for commerce, enforcement mostly against businesses who don't register/get approval using sanctioned VPNs. Individuals _generally_ free to use - there aren't clear laws yet against individual use, currently regulations target operators. 99% of VPN enforcement is at this level. Few individuals (outside XinJiang/Tibet) and no foreigners as far as I'm aware of have gotten in shit for VPN. For nationals who got in shit, it's what they do with VPN (coordinating with foreign forces etc), not use itself.
If only 0.01% of the population has the technical saviness to bypass the Great Firewall, then they've succeed beyond their wildest optimism. No one cares about the few exceptions. If those people speak out to anyone about how they're able to get around it... then guess what happens? And if they just shut up and keep it to themselves, that's a good outcome too.
You're chuckling "but it's not 100%" when they might have been satisfied with 85%. Joke's on you.
I’ll show you: The next logical step would be to make it a crime of some sort to as a user attempt to evade the law. Maybe it’s even a felony to persuade folks to not to try. But the reality is they made the law just for political points and it never gets enforced it’s just there sitting on the books. Now years go on and you have been using vpn’s to evade the restrictions. Now 10 years later you decide to run for President and. a whole bunch of establishment politicians hate you for whatever reason. Now all of a sudden this phrase is really relevant: Show me a man and I’ll show you a crime.
That is why it needs fixing at the source.
Think of it in terms of adblocking. You and I know all the tricks, but Google's bottom line suggests most people do not, and don't seem to mind. Similarly, the Great Firewall is tolerated because it doesn't block the things that are necessary for living life in China.
It obviously won’t keep information from getting out. But that’s not the purpose of things like anti-porn laws. Dramatically curtailing prevalence and access is sufficient.
It reminds me of this 2021 Verge article quoting a college engineering professor who had to revamp teaching material as many of their students did not understand folder structures and computer file systems. Why would they? For them, everything is on Youtube, Netflix and Spotify.
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...
My daughter today lives in a world where users no longer issue commands to computers. 99% of computer users limit themselves to typing into a search box and clicking links they are fed. I don't even need to set up content blockers, because the idea of telling her computer what to do is foreign to her. Despite my attempts to get her curious about how they work and about hacking, she doesn't even care enough about it to venture outside of the pre-screened bookmarked sites I set up for her. If it's not reachable via her toolbar's Roblox and YouTube buttons, she doesn't even have a remote chance of finding it, and I know because I've seen the access logs.
And with something as popular as porn? Why, that just might end up being one of the largest VPN awareness campaigns. ~
So VPNs aren't a "bypass" or a loophole, they're the desired outcome of these laws.
Of course they won't be able to enforce this most of the time. But if you end up in their sights for any reason, they may then notice you using a VPN and use that information to legally blackmail you.
Usually this goes with making the punishment very harsh: A stolen MP3 on your hard drive? 20-to-life unless you take a plea bargain down to 2 years and turn in 3 friends as well. Same deal now with VPNs.