The analogy breaks down when you remember that everything you do on a networked computer is effectively public information. In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item", and then forget your name & face the instant they move to the next customer. But to do the same thing online, you are associating your name & face with the "secret item" to literally everyone on the planet for the rest of eternity. The calculus changes.

> Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age.

There's no practical way to check ID on the web. In your "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is just some person that works for an establishment looks at a little plastic card with your photo on it and checks to make sure the birthday is before a certain date, then they hand it back to you. To do something like this online would require something much more intrusive to personal privacy and adds another pointless complicated technological solution when a much more practical solution exists. That solution being parental controls.

Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old?

To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for their children to access. Responsible parents either teach their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it difficult to access, or both.

The controversiality is exactly that in the Real World(TM) it's possible to either anonymously verify a certain age (by trivial visual inspection in most cases) or handle it in a way that does not require the potential storage of information (Handing - or better, showing - a cashier your ID doesn't mean they can take a photo of it and store for however many months)

Meanwhile, back on Teh Interwebz, the only way we have right now of verifying age is by uploading photos, or equivalent information, of the identification document, which could be intercepted, stored, or otherwise pilfered with no further indication.

I think there was someone proposing a cryptography-based way of proving "yes, this visitor has access to a non-minor identity", but that requires some sort of government (or similar) service that could also log incidental information, and would require some sort of digital identity service (for example gov.br here in Brazil): Service generates a random token, user gives token to identity service using their authentication, identity service replies with the token signed with a key whose public part the website knows.

This would be "better", in the sense of you don't have to provide any actual identifying information to arbitrary websites, but very bad because now the government can log all age-check attempts. There is probably some more complicated solution to that, but it goes beyond me. In the meantime, my opinion is that online age checks are dumb, easily bypassed, and possibly dangerous. Until we find a proper solution, just educate yo kids properly.

Friendly reminder that criminals don't have to obey laws, so actually dangerous websites (be it just psychologically, like I don't know, gore, to actual illegal things) won't be so kind as to implement an age check themselves anyways. If you want the minor you're responsible over to not view harmful content, teach them about the internet and have a healthy relationship with them so they trust you in the eventuality they see something disturbing.

Is the Real World only the USA? Cause where I'm from its not illegal for a sub 18 year old to buy a porn mag in a kiosk.

I remember trying to buy some video games when I was a kid, and they wouldn't sell it to me because it was rated as 15+ and I wasn't 15. People would also check ages at movie theatres; I had some trouble getting in to Jurassic Park with my friend but we did manage, and also regretted it as I was scared witless for months, demonstrating that these age limits are perhaps not entirely nonsense.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten what the world was like 25 years ago.

Are you arguing that booze is protected speech?

The liquor license rules that the vendor applied for (and received) requires them to.

1FA issues get trumped by secondary agreements you agreed to.

>Because it's literally illegal for children to view porn

Is this actually even true? So if my underage son finds a porn magazine in my house, it's "illegal" for him to look at it? That doesn't sound right.

>Imagine if a liquor store just decided it was fine to let kids come in and purchase liquor and you said "Why is it the liquor store's responsibility to not sell booze to kids?"

Imagine comparing going to a physical location with no easy digital trace and buying something that is basically 100% socially acceptable to digitally tracking what kind of taboo and private porn someone wants to watch.