Pornhub blocks access in Mississippi and Virginia over age verification laws | Hacker News Reader

Pornhub blocks access in Mississippi and Virginia over age verification laws

theverge.com

14 pointsnetule16 comments

The staged rollout of the Great Firewall of America continues apace.

Except only for people and states that wanted/voted it to existence?

> Except only for people and states that wanted/voted it to existence?

"[O]nly for people" is horseshit; in addition to the fact that the vast majority of people did not vote on these laws -- to the best of my knowledge, none of them were passed by popular referendum -- these laws still bind all of the people who did not vote for the representatives who passed them. A country or state in which a 51% majority imposes draconian surveillance is nothing to be proud of.

That's how representative democracy works. The legislators were elected in and can be replaced by people who will repeal undesirable laws.

So government censorship and surveillance are perfectly ok in your opinion, just as long as 51% of elected representatives are supportive? Cool, thanks. No further discussion necessary.

Yeah, so long as it is not my state and I have plenty of states to move to without that problem. I can tolerate others wishes so long as it doesn't infringe on the minority's rights. The government has always had the right to censor content deemed harmful.

> I can tolerate others wishes so long as it doesn't infringe on the minority's rights.

Well, you're fine with infringing on the minority's rights in this case, since it obviously infringes on them. Unless of course you think the government should take on the role of censoring what the minority sees.

> The government has always had the right to censor content deemed harmful.

First: does it? [0]

Second: this is nothing more than the usual "just think of the children!" excuse for banning legal speech, a standard tool of censors.

[0]: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-bars-...

Wants and rights are different things. There is a reason TV companies get fined when someone says a "bad" word.

Obscenity has always been censored too:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_obscenity_law

By definition, the minority in terms of voting will see policies they dislike enacted but consuming any content you want has never been a right. For example porn of minors is one of the worst crimes a person can committ anywhere, even just posession.

> Second: this is nothing more than the usual "just think of the children!" excuse for banning legal speech, a standard tool of censors.

Maybe but I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the law. I am simply accepting that not only is it legitimate but states doing things the rest of the states abhor like this is a good thing and only benefits the union of states. A timely discussion given the date of our discussion. America has always been a union of states that disagree on many things like this and it is because I like and celebrate america that I accept and tolerate legitimate excercise of legislative authority by states.

I think what you want is to support passing of federal laws that prevent states from censoring porn, and if that law passes I will accept it's legitimacy.

> There is a reason TV companies get fined when someone says a "bad" word.

This is actually really complicated and possibly (likely?) unconstitutional.

They basically can do limited censorship because of FCC v. Pacifica [1]

But that failed when applied to the internet. [2]

And it even fails sometimes when applied to TV. [3]

A different court in the future may very well overturn FCC v. Pacifica without anyone passing a new Federal law.

And States already are almost certainly prevented from outright censoring porn because:

a) legal porn has already been ruled *not* to be federally obscene via Miller test. [4]

They have to use the 'actionable indecency' bit from Pacifica to censor (ie. these ID laws) otherwise first amendment protected material. [6]

b) the first amendment is incorporated and thus applies to the States [5]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=FCC_v._Pacifica_F...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_v._Fox_Television_Stations...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actionable_indecency

You did not disagree with anything I said. You can sell porn in any state but you can't display porn on a public display outside your store. Similar to how in most states you can't expose yourself to the public.

Free speech can be restricted when harm can be caused.

If these recent laws are unconstitutional then are you saying no one wants to challenge them? Not even the aclu?

The Louisiana law is being challenged [1]

I don't get why we can't instead have regulation requiring porn websites to implement adult content rating meta tags, which most porn sites already do (look at the site source sometime). [2][3]

Then let parents use content blockers and/or built-in parental controls.

If we need even more regulation after that then require platforms to provide parental controls to block tagged content (which I assume they generally already do anyway?)

It's not like the sites that don't implement rating meta tags are going to follow these more strict ID verification laws.

In my opinion, I feel like these laws are not really about protecting children (which most everyone supports), as I don't see that they will meaningfully do so.

That makes me think they're instead about conservative political points at the expense of annoying adults.

[1] https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/groups-file-free...

[2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...

[3] https://davidwalsh.name/rta-label

It works until you can't replace legislators because of gerrymandering or other legal barriers.

For example, if you look at registered voters in Louisiana 38.9% are democrats, 33.7% are republicans, and 27.3% are independent (and only ~64% of the independent are white). [1]

Yet it's a solid red state where democrats only really have a chance at electing governors.

And then you have situations like making it illegal for the people you don't want to vote. 10.6% of voting age Mississippians can't legally vote. 16% of Black voting age Mississippians [2]

[1] https://electionstatistics.sos.la.gov/Data/Registration_Stat...

[2] https://mississippitoday.org/2020/10/19/study-11-of-all-miss...

Then let's talk about fixing those issues instead of making a fuss about valid legislature. Or violent revolution.

One of the most upvoted comments there:

"It's like living in China without being in China."

Politically, I wonder whether this will create a backlash against Youngkin in Virginia. It's hard to know, because most people don't talk about porn, not with their friends, neighbors, family or spouses.

Start a Porn Party. Have Stan’s dad from South Park after his big porno session S12E6 be the mascot.

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