Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law

psychothumbs@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 1139 points –
Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law
vice.com
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The sicko in me hopes they spend the next two weeks linking every policymaker in the state to their pornography habits and just dump the whole dataset online. Yeah, it would probably counterproductive and not great for democracy but I wouldnโ€™t it be the sickest burn of all time?

Ironically it would be so much easier to do that if they actually implemented the law they're suing over, which demands they record the ID of everyone who uses the site.

Hmm, the article is a little confusing, but it sounds like they're mostly just complaining about the age verification, not really suing over that specifically. The real sticking point, and the one they actually stand a good chance of winning in court is about the warning they're being required to display that's both libelous and factually false. Texas for better or worse is within their rights to require age verification, even the very odious version of it being proposed that would require collecting state IDs, so it's unlikely that they would actually win if that was their only issue with the law. Fortunately Texas (and others) massively overstepped by trying to slap a health and safety warning a la cigarette packages onto porn sites since they let a bunch of nutty politicians write the text of the message rather than actual medical professionals (probably because they couldn't find any respectable medical professional that would endorse their wacky notions).

Not really. It does kind of tread on the first amendment. Like, imagine I wasn't allowed to say something to you because the government doesn't allow me to. What does that sound like? Like, you can't put barriers on free speech.

This is a 5th grade understanding of the 1st amendment. Good job, now let's work on the adult one.

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Exactly. Malicious compliance, while reminding people exactly why they shouldnโ€™t be so quick to give up their anonymity on the internet.

They'd make themselves exempt without a second thought.

How do you expect them to do this... without verifying who they are?

I'm not a member of the house or Senate so I don't know what they can do. But I'm sure they can have as many open doors as they're like.

They would just use a VPN like everyone else

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I see what you're saying about it not being good for democracy...we shouldn't have politicians making decisions based on their personal use, and trying to avoid scrutiny of that use...but at the same time, we have that anyway. Honestly, at this point, burn it all down. Make the entire apparatus of government so transparent that the shitheels currently in office can't justify staying on. Make it to where the only people who can function in elected positions are political monks.

I strongly support this and would activly do it if I had the means

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