Pornhub Pulls Out of Nebraska
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https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/withdr...
I could take my ID to the library / police station, have it verified, and then get given a USB stick with 16GB’s worth of signed government tokens from a big bucket of unmarked hardware. I guess a bad site could still narrow down who I am to my nearest library / police station though.
Proof-of-age tokens that aren’t tied to my ID have the downside that they are transferable. Kind of like a case of beer is transferable from an adult to a child.
Is there a better way of keeping are-you-old-enough separate from who-are-you?
You could combine that with only one side of the ID showing the QR code and a some proof of age and keeping my actual name to the other side, hidden from the camera.
Have me say a random number, see if it matches the QR code for “en_US, male, tenor, southern French accent” to prove it’s me, here, and alive?
The site gives me a magic number and also sends it to their bank. I give the magic number to my bank and the two banks agree I am old enough without telling their respective customers (or each other) who is asking and who is responding?
Why is that good enough for every porn site in the world except Pornhub? I have still never seen a website ask for an actual ID except remote test proctoring stuff that popped up for IT certification exams after Covid closed the testing centers.
I think it's very funny by the way :) Love the idea
And why would they, because if you get this warning you didn't get to see porn, so it doesn't work. There is no point to keep on trying anyway.
Their parent company, MindGeek, also owns at least 5+ studios themselves including popular ones like Brazzers so it works as promotion/marketing as well.
I would have thought it's pretty easy. Have a government site that verifies your ID and just produces some kind of cryptographic token that porn sites can verify but reveals nothing other than the fact that you are over 18.
I mean realistically that's pointless because VPNs... but it's better than what they are currently demanding at least.
The government isn't going to provide an age identification program, because they really don't want to enable people to watch porn. This isn't about protecting the kiddies; it's about keeping porn out entirely.
And PornHub knows perfectly well that nothing they do will satisfy a state prosecutor looking to harass them. Even if they collected photo IDs, police will set up a sting with fake IDs.
So they give the government what it wants. They leave. As you said, anybody with a VPN gets their porn just fine, but the government cares more about the perception of morality than actual morality.
Yeah, just upload your driver's licence to every sketchy site you browse to. What could go wrong?
I'm much more in favor of Leisure Suit Larry's approach:: give the user a quiz on things adults should know. Censor according to how well the user scores on the test.
Also, is there some magic knowledge you somehow learn the day you turn 18?
The problem is from a legal standpoint, 17 and 364 days, is not allowed. But "turned 18 an hour ago" is.
Also: we live in the age of chatgpt. Knowledge proves nothing anymore.
It really is that simple.
It really is that simple.
Adults go to a drug store / grocery store / whoever participates and is licensed to do this. The store clerk checks your ID. If you're an adult, they will give you a public key. The public key comes in an envelope that has been sealed at a government facility. No one can see it until you open the envelope. You can obtain as many of these as you want (you have to pay the cost of the printing / stationary / program admin costs at the time of purchase).
To go on pornhub, you need to type in the public key. Porn hub encodes a message with the key and sends to the government database to get a yes / no.
Governments can prosecute any store that gives out keys to minors (like with alcohol).
Governments can prosecute porn sites that do not adhere to this protocol.
This is good because it provides a lot of points where bad actors may fall afoul of the law, and these bad actors were probably the same types going to commit otehr crimes anyway.
But the truth is, this will never happen, because sites like PornHub are not interested in keeping minors off. They want to get young kids (boys mostly, although I hear girls are getting more amenable) addicted to their porn.
In my city of Portland, if you want a youth transit card you have to show proof you're a kid. Or if you want a senior one, proof you're over 65.
Still, the government doesn't actually know who you are. It's just a number. The number is similarly hidden until you open the package. I don't think anyone could track it.
Once the capability to do so is acailable, it will be used. No exceptions.
The county might randomize testing to catch stores issuing cards to minors. If such a store is caught, all cards issued by that store (which are tracked) are invalidated and you have to go to a reputable store. Stores would be required to reimburse you if you have a receipt, thus discouraging this behavior.
This is similar to cigarette sales in Oregon. There's no tracking, but you have to prove you're over 18. If a store is caught selling to minors, they are banned from selling cigarettes and fined heavily.
Porn should not be any easier to acquire than cigarettes, et al. Some things are for adults. I'm confused why this is remotely controversial. Should children be allowed in strip clubs?
{doesn't answer "Gordon Lightfoot"}
"Sorry, here's a Youtube link you should watch..."
- One for adults over 18
- One for minors under 18
All indications are that we will be heading in that direction.
You can't do it without turning your site into a panoptical dystopia where even more of your personal data ends up with the NSA, third party data brokers, or hackers on the darknet. None of that's worth people's silly moralism to me.
What, like....all porn? There are plenty of amateur couples who upload incredibly tender, loving and respectful videos of their love life to PH. Why are you bundling everything together with the exploitative stuff?
"Stepmother and son share a bed in a hotel"
"Fake taxi Bengali nurse takes a big cock in her tight Asian pussy"
"Petite blonde whore opening her ass for me to demolish"
You want children watching this?
You think this law will change who watches this?
The local cow that you knew (and will eat half of), and the couples having a good time on video are not the majority by a long shot. It's a fig leaf that, at times, is grounded in reality, but often isn't what people are consuming.
They're bundled together because that's the majority of consumption. I'm not going to shame people for it; hell, I had a hamburger yesterday. That's simply what the majority pay for - the product that's created in an environment lots of people aren't comfortable talking about, and generally don't want to see.
And no the actors really aren't all stepbrothers/sisters :)
There's no reason why these sites shouldn't shoulder their share of the responsibility to prevent children from accessing this content.
It's really quite telling that Pornhub is removing itself from all markets where it's mandated to do this. Like all dealers of addictive and abusive substances, they want to hook their users in while young and impressionable.
No-one's forcing you to watch porn. It's not a necessary consumption.
And if you consider the abuse that is rife within the pornography industry, then really it is better to not increase demand for this material by consuming it.
The abuse within Hollywood is legendary at this point, hope you never go to cinema to see any films, better not to increase demand for this stuff /s
I'm sorry, Playboy is way tamer than Pornhub. There's no reason PH should have less strict access requirements. There's no 'right' to access porn anonymously. For goodness' sake, most states monitor your alcohol consumption by tying purchases to your ID!
Wait, is that a thing in the US? Really?
>> For goodness' sake, most states monitor your alcohol consumption by tying purchases to your ID!
Again, that's a thing in the states? Wow, land of the free indeed.
Of course then you also have states like Louisiana with drive-through Daquiri stores.
There is a right to access porn anonymously if both parties consent. You need to prove that the government has an overriding need to insert itself in the middle.
(If you make that equivalence, you're off the reservation. Or have never done drugs. What's next, video games cause school shootings, Mrs. Gore?)
I’m curious what the result would have been if you needed to provide your ID to Playboy themselves and not merely the drug store.
"Pretty much anything", you say?
I've never had to provide proof of age, let alone identity to purchase things over the Internet. A credit card and related address were all that was required. (What weirdo jurisdiction do you live in where you have to provide ID to order from `newegg.com` or your local instance of a big chain grocery store?)
Hell, this was the case like fifteen, twenty years ago when I had subscriptions for several of the larger porn sites. "Give me your credit card number and assert that you're of legal age in your jurisdiction." were the sole pair of requirements.
> Online banking... online trading
This is a result of "anti-money-laundering" (aka "KYC") banking regulations and has nothing to do with being online transactions, rather than in-person. Long ago, it used to be that you could show up with a sufficiently large wad of cash and get a checking account opened, no question.
> ...online gambling...
Given the enormous set of online transactions I can do without providing proof of ID or age (like, suchas getting alcohol and tobacco delivered to my door) this is clearly the exceptional case, and the one that relevant politicos are using to act as a basis for the ongoing campaign of Erasing Sin from The Internet (and massively empowering authoritarians in the process). (The fact that the overlap between the politicos agitating for these regulations, and the politicos who are massively authoritarian is very, very large usually goes unremarked in the press.)
Really not a good thing to be doing with porn
I'm guessing you're some sort of pornography addict, if it means that much to you that you whip out this level of hyperbole.
No reason why this can't be similarly enforced for porn sites that skirt the age verification rules.
I hope that you never find yourself on the receiving end of this process. You might think that you have nothing to hide, as many have throughout history before finding out that they were quite wrong.
If you don't stand up for others' rights you might find yourself alone when you're trying to stand up for your rights.
Oh boy. Good luck with the law if you accept and serve UGC and happen to store (let alone serve) any from a child who's under the age of 13.
It's not just anti-sin laws that are insane.
Because every society in the world agrees it is unacceptable and works with foreign police to shut down the operators. The same would not be true for normal porn sites that are ignoring a foreign age law. Russian police wont do shit to shut down adult porn sites.
So now youre talking about ISP level ip blocking, but that will just lead to widespread VPN and tor usage. Are we going to ban VPNs and tor too?
Do you have anything other than accusations to contribute to the conversation?
> It's really quite telling that Pornhub is removing itself from all markets where it's mandated to do this.
I imagine that if it became a federal mandate, Pornhub would add some sort of gate that they felt met the legal requirements.