New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S. | Hacker News Reader

New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.

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And then of course, all you need to do is declare any speech pornographic. Voila, the 1st - neutered.

No, just some words. They already started.

"Any speech" meaning "any speech you wish to suppress," obvs.

Although "make all speech technically illegal, only prosecute where convenient" has been historically authoritarians' usual next step.

https://archive.is/C6Jss

>This is Lee’s third attempt at trying to pass the same bill: He tried it in 2022 and again in 2024.

seems a bit unlikely to pass.

Elect clowns, expect a circus

And issue with these bills is that for those who make them, the mere existence of LGBT people is pornographic.

I get people who are against porn. I see their arguments, where they are coming from. But at the same time, it seems that for so many of them, my first paragraph applies.

Even if something like this passes, it would be ignored by everyone and also would be impossible to enforce.

We would see companies reshore at the very worst. I and many others would set up new sites specifically to violate the law for funzies.

It would be very easy to enforce against anyone that wanted to be made an example of, which would likely be anyone speaking out against what's happening in America

Evidence: the last 4 months in America

Sure, but if there was a real legal threat, porn would just migrate to tor or sites hosted outside the US. Or you can set up web-of-trust communities for e2e sharing of content and use xmr for payments, etc.

The internet conveniently allows circumvention of laws without much personal exposure.

For nerds; I still have to debug my relatives devices (age 16-80 ... today) by asking them to turn it off and back on. And it typically works.

Our society today is not that of the excited 90s where everyone was excited and learning. They don't try AT ALL, and while you and I may never lose access, as far as they're concerned it would be gone

Many would also rightfully fear legal retaliation, as it's easy to expose yourself when you don't know what you're doing

Literally thousands of bills get introduced each Congress. Most go nowhere… many are intended to go nowhere. Instead they are basically PR exercises.

In addition to the obvious First Amendment concerns, this bill would run up hard against the bro caucus of the Trump coalition. Do we think Elon Musk and Joe Rogan are going to spend their resources on a federal porn ban bill? Are Libertarians likely to support this? Will it get 60 votes in the Senate? Etc.

Joe smokes weed in a state that outlaws it. Elon rants about fraud when he has been the single biggest purveyor of vaporware to the federal government. Thiel is married to a man but promotes the consolidation of power for the advancement of project 2025 because the super rich are immune to any new deprivation of freedoms.

All that guarantees freedom in the new system is adequate measures of compliance and capital. For all others, name the person, and the machine will autonomously identify a thought crime.

The best part about rolling back free speech protections is that the internet is full of evidence for ex post facto indictment. Enemies of the state have been openly parading their dissent. For those who recognize this, speech is already chilling fast.

Look mom! I’m in a hearing for a passive aggressive internet post :D

Hey remember when conservatives were upset about how the "woke mob" hates free speech? Iirc even pg had a blog about that.

Can't wait for the blog post on this.

Believe it or not, people can oppose both kinds of censorship.

Some of us haven't forgotten the days of overzealous Christian mothers getting products banned off store shelves, before it swung to far-left activists doing similar for digital creators/services, to now where the pendulum appears to be swinging back to the right-wing as the proponents of censorship.

New bill should make clickbait and TikTok like dopamine dependent services/games & lootboxes illegal. Make software one time purchases again. I’d let them ban porn in return for the above.

the ends justify the means, eh?

Not really. I’m stating my terms.

> Make software one time purchases again

Even if software is using servers?

From what I understand, this bill would loosen the definition and there are existing laws that ban. And under federal law since 1873, the sale and distribution of obscene materials had been prohibited by federal law. This doesn't apply just to public broadcast (there are additional restrictions on radio and TV), but internet as well.

So if "obscene" material is already prohibited, online pornography is already illegal. Whatever you consider the definition of "obscene", I'm pretty sure you can find major online outlets that produce, sell and monetize this content. So is it just an enforcement thing that the federal government allows all this stuff to exist? This stuff is all a federal crime already, why bother with moving the definition slightly?

Because that's not what obscene means. It's things like CSAM and death threats that are not constitutionally protected speech. The first amendment might as well be toilet paper if it meant "whatever 50% of congress doesn't like at a given moment".

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