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posted by janrinok on Thursday February 16 2023, @07:03PM   Printer-friendly

Opponents say laws preventing underage porn access are vague, pose privacy risks:

After decades of America fretting over minors potentially being overexposed to pornography online, several states are suddenly moving fast in 2023 to attempt to keep kids off porn sites by passing laws requiring age verification.

Last month, Louisiana became the first state to require an ID from residents to access pornography online. Since then, seven states have rushed to follow in Louisiana's footsteps. According to a tracker from Free Speech Coalition, Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced similar laws, and laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia are seemingly closest to passing. If passed, some of these laws could be enforced promptly, while some bills in states like Florida and Mississippi specify that they wouldn't take effect until July.

But not every state agrees that rushing to require age verification is the best solution. Today, a South Dakota committee voted to defer voting on its age verification bill until the last day of the legislative session. The bill's sponsor, Republican Jessica Castleberry, seemingly failed to persuade the committee of the urgency of passing the law, saying at the hearing that "this is not your daddy's Playboy. Extreme, degrading, and violent pornography is only one click away from our children." She told Ars that the bill was not passed because some state lawmakers were too "easily swayed by powerful lobbyists."

"It's a travesty that unfettered access to pornography by minors online will continue in South Dakota because of lobbyists protecting the interests of their clients, versus legislators who should be protecting our children," Castleberry told Ars. "The time to pass this bill was in the mid-1990s."

Lobbyists opposing the bill at the hearing represented telecommunications and newspaper associations. Although the South Dakota bill, like the Louisiana law, exempted news organizations, one lobbyist, Justin Smith, an attorney for the South Dakota Newspaper Association, argued that the law was too vague in how it defined harmful content and how it defined which commercial entities could be subjected to liabilities.

"We just have to be careful before we put things like this into law with all of these open-ended questions that put our South Dakota businesses at risk," Smith said at the hearing. "We would ask you to defeat the bill in its current form."

These laws work by requiring age verification of all users, imposing damages on commercial entities found to be neglecting required age verification and distributing content to minors online that has been deemed to be inappropriate. The laws target online destinations where more than a third of the content is considered harmful to minors. Opponents in South Dakota anticipated that states that pass these laws, as Louisiana has, will struggle to "regulate the entire Internet." In Arkansas, violating content includes "actual, simulated, or animated displays" of body parts like nipples or genitals, touching or fondling of such body parts, as well as sexual acts like "intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions," or other sex acts deemed to have no "literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to minors."

When Louisiana's law took effect last month, Ars verified how major porn sites like Pornhub quickly complied. It seems likely that if new laws are passed in additional states, popular sites will be prepared to implement additional controls to block regional access to minors.


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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2023, @10:47PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2023, @10:47PM (#1292079)

    Not to mention the gatekeepers who are telling libraries what books they can and can't carry and telling teachers what parts of history they are and aren't allowed to talk about.

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  • (Score: 3, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 17 2023, @03:13AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 17 2023, @03:13AM (#1292107) Journal

    Not to mention the gatekeepers who are telling libraries what books they can and can't carry

    Especially school libraries which allow access to elementary school children.

    telling teachers what parts of history they are and aren't allowed to talk about.

    Teachers work for the parents, after all. School districts pay teachers to teach. I would say the employers have the right to decide what the teachers will be teaching. And, of course, it would help if everyone were teaching verifiable facts in history, as opposed to - uhhh - what's it called? "Lived experience"? As if some asshole living today actually experienced the silly shit he says happened 300 years ago.

    But, maybe you're right. Feelziez before factz, right?

    --
    “I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2023, @12:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 17 2023, @12:58PM (#1292156)

      Especially school libraries which allow access to elementary school children.

      Yes. Indeed. When I grew up I was actually allowed to read Hop on Pop or Charlotte's Web, but I suppose our parents grew up in times where fascists were viewed as enemies of the American way of life and not librarians. Or maybe they didn't think we were all a bunch of pussies who would be scarred by Where the Wild Things Are. Or maybe it's not any of that and it's just that kids (or at least white kids) in the South aren't as tough as kids elsewhere and need special attention?

      But, maybe you're right. Feelziez before factz, right?

      No, if that were true, they'd actually be allowed to talk about black people and slavery without making the snowflake MAGAs feel bad and call their special "my feelings have been hurt" [npr.org] governor hotlines. These bills [abc7news.com] are literally to keeps white kids from "feeling discomfort." It is amazing. A big red hat these days seems to be a great ad for "only tell me what I want to hear because I am a huge snowflake." It is rather sickening that these people who proudly wrap themselves in a flag and show off their "patriotism" are literally shitting on the fundamental values and ideals of America because they might get their feelings hurt. I think they are the ones who are in desperate need to learn American history before shitting any further on the foundation of this country.

      I would say the employers have the right to decide what the teachers will be teaching.

      You going to go all the way to the end of that "think of the children" limb and have it cover colleges too [rollingstone.com]? Talk about "thought police" and "cancel culture."

      But this is all water under the bridge. There are much more important things to address. I heard there might be a transgender kid somewhere, so we better mobilize a whole legislative body and put the weight of the government upon that one person [fox13now.com]. Nothing says freedom from oppression like that.