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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

“Control” of what? The type of thing is relevant. E.g. Nobody says regulating trains or airlines belongs to states. Similarly, nobody says the internet should be regulated by states.

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Would you say growing wheat to feed your own farm animals should be regulated by the federal government? SCOTUS decided in Wikard v Filburn [1] that a farmer growing wheat for private use was in fact inter-state commerce. This decision has been used to uphold all manner of federal laws that on their face appear to regulate private conduct totally within the confines of a single state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

I think Wickard was wrongly decided.

haven't countless of red American states passed age verification laws in relation to adult entertainment recently? Or is that different because there's only AI but no porn oligarchs in Washington?

It's not different and it should also be done on a federal level, instead of 50 different governments passing random crazy internet laws. When you have to do compliance for hundreds of laws in 50 different states it basically becomes impossible to do it and you end up in this weird position where you're probably breaking a law somewhere and you don't even know about it.

>it basically becomes impossible to do it

Those of us who want to "unnormalize" porn consider that a feature.

Why do you hate freedom?

The founders' conception of "freedom" was different than the modern "anything goes" version. It was closer to the idea that moral and disciplined people could be trusted with freedom. As John Adams said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

And people can't be trusted to uphold the constitution if they watch porn?

I think John Adams would have said "no." Not only because of the prurient aspect, but the lack of self control it implies. But my point was more that “freedom” as it is understood in the american canon is a narrower concept that in post-modern liberalism.

Adams had many disagreements with Franklin over matters of state, culture, and once famously over whether the window should be left open at night, but I can find no evidence of Adams saying that Franklin’s well-known whoring disqualified him from the practice of statecraft, let alone citizenship. He had plenty of praise for Franklin, in fact.

Here are some collected anecdotes, including Adams delighting in an explicit caricature he saw passed around at a dinner in France that portrayed Franklin with a female personification of America.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20090161?seq=9

Also therein:

> Thus, while certainly not a roué, Adams-though he may have envied Franklin's flair for the courtly graces, and may have frowned slightly upon Franklin's way with the ladies-does not really seem to have felt much indignation toward the sage's somewhat uninhibited private life, and neither of these things can be interpreted as being decisive factors in turning Adams against Franklin.

Moral regulation is the domain of the states, so that example is in fact different.

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