Jump to content

September 1st: Texans, Fire Up Your VPNs, or Present Your Government-Issued ID to View Porn Online


atomheartbevo

Recommended Posts

7 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I have not followed this at all. Do I need to get a VPN tomorrow?

You just need to prepare a device with a camera to start age estimation, and have your driver's license and mortgage and Corvette lease papers ready to hold up to the camera for some dude in Delhi to scrutinize. Hopefully he doesn't take screenshots for his own personal use.

Or get a VPN.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

noCR, but I love that tomorrow when this deal goes into effect to save the children from porn.......the chief law enforcement officer of our state's mistress is going to be privately questioned and coached up, while he's supposed to be chasing sexual perverts in violation of this new law.  And one of things she's going to be told not to discuss it the time she had both Nate and Ken inside her in a DP tryst.  On the day the rest of us can't look at porn.  Enjoy your lunches with that image, we're in a simulation fuckers.  

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

28 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I have not followed this at all. Do I need to get a VPN tomorrow?

Depends. Are you planning to internet fuck a porn chic and do you live in Texas. If the answer is yes, the maybe. I'm not sure all porn sites around the world are going to install IP filters to be legal with a Texas law.

Actually this begs the question. Is the State of Texas expecting all global internet sites to enforce the law and filter by originating IPs or are they expecting your ISP enforce the law and monitor your traffic for when you visit a "porn" site? 

Edited by crash_davis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Depends. Are you planning to internet fuck a porn chic and do you live in Texas. If the answer is yes, the maybe. I'm not sure all porn sites around the world are going to install IP filters to be legal with a Texas law.

Actually this begs the question. Is the State of Texas expecting all global internet sites to enforce the law and filter by originating IPs or are they expecting your ISP enforce the law and monitor your traffic for when you visit a "porn" site? 

I'm almost certain it is illegal for ISPs to do that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I'm almost certain it is illegal for ISPs to do that. 

but the children......

I knew the answer but wanted to posit that question for any dipshit who even thinks that this is going to deter anyone from viewing porn on the internet. Any dipshit who thinks this is a good ideal is probably going to cognitive dissonance the shit out of his mah freedoms if the State is going to dictate that the ISPs enforce this law.

This law will NOT do a fucking thing to prevent someone from the state of Texas from viewing porn on the internet. Some shady porn company in Belgium is going to filter by IPs and put an age check before you can visit their website from Texas?

Edited by crash_davis
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I'm almost certain it is illegal for ISPs to do that. 

Well, I'm almost certain its illegal for the president of the united states to repeatedly try to throw out the results of a presidential election and stage a coup, but here we are. Legality with respect to actions isn't really high on the list of GQP concerns. 

  • Hook 'Em 3
  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
  • Rage+1 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

43 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Just started a thread in IPIHB for getting around this shit since some of you seem to have questions or info that you may not want to share on DT. For example, links to sites that still work.

 

 

 

 

im horny GIF

Edited by chainsaw
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

Depends. Are you planning to internet fuck a porn chic and do you live in Texas. If the answer is yes, the maybe. I'm not sure all porn sites around the world are going to install IP filters to be legal with a Texas law.

Actually this begs the question. Is the State of Texas expecting all global internet sites to enforce the law and filter by originating IPs or are they expecting your ISP enforce the law and monitor your traffic for when you visit a "porn" site? 

State of Texas said they wanted to pursue legal/civil/whatever action against all porn sites that don't comply, and that by making their products available in Texas, they are doing business in Texas or some shit so that's the justification/jurisdiction.  They want to fine the shit out of companies that don't comply.

Given that overseas companies could tell them to go get fucked, some of the people backing this bill talked about blocking those sites somehow.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, HRSchenker said:

Federal judge just struck this law down! Wow! 

Cartoon Thumbs Up GIF by SpongeBob SquarePants

And I love that they told parents "hey, just install blocking/filtering software, don't try to make things difficult for everybody else"

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/08/31/texas-law-mandating-age-verification-for-sexually-themed-sites-violates-first-amendment/

Quote

Some excerpts from today's long decision in Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Colmenero, decided by Judge David Alan Ezra (W.D. Tex.):

This case concerns a law passed by the State of Texas that restricts access to pornographic websites by requiring digital age verification methods … about the alleged harms caused by pornography….

H.B. 1181 is set to take effect on September 1, 2023. H.B. 1181 contains two requirements, both of which are challenged in this litigation. First, the law requires websites to use "reasonable age verification methods … to verify that an individual attempting to access the material is 18 years of age or older." Second, the law requires adult content websites to post a warning about the purported harmful effects of pornography and a national helpline for people with mental health disorders.

The law defines "sexual material harmful to minors" as including any material that "(A) the average person applying contemporary community standards would find, taking the material as a whole is and designed to appeal or pander to the prurient interest" to minors, (B) is patently offensive to minors, and (C) "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."

The law regulates a "commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material on an Internet website, including a social media platform, more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors." H.B. 1181 requires these companies to "comply with a commercial age verification system that verifies age using: (A) government-issued identification; or (B) a commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of an individual." "Transactional data" refers to a "sequence of information that documents an exchange … used for the purpose of satisfying a request or event. The term includes records from mortgage, education, and employment entities." H.B. 1181 does not allow the companies or third-party verifiers to "retain any identifying information of the individual."

Quote

The court concluded that the age verification requirement was unconstitutional for various reasons, including that Ashcroft v. ACLU (II) (2004) and follow-on circuit court decisions struck down a similar federal law (COPA, the Child Online Protection Act). An excerpt that I thought was particularly closely connected to those precedents (though the court also made other arguments as well):

To endure strict scrutiny, a statute must employ the least restrictive means of protecting minors. The government bears the burden to show that less restrictive means would not be as effective…. [T]he Court … finds that the age verification enforcement mechanism is overly restrictive….

Quote

As the district court found [in the COPA case], and the Supreme Court affirmed, "Blocking and filtering software is an alternative that is less restrictive than COPA, and, in addition, likely more effective as a means of restricting children's access to materials harmful to them." The Court elaborated that filtering software is less restrictive because "adults without children may gain access to speech they have a right to see without having to identify themselves or provide their credit card information. Even adults with children may obtain access to the same speech on the same terms simply by turning off the filter on their home computers."

Quote

Defendant argues that Ashcroft v. ACLU's analysis no longer applies because it was based on the evidentiary record made by the district court in 1999, which is not applicable to the instant case and of limited relevance to modern internet usage. As Defendant argues, H.B. 1181 uses more secure information, requires companies to delete their data, and is designed for convenience and privacy protection. The Court does not dispute that online interactions have changed since the Supreme Court's decisions in 1997 and 2004. But as determined by the facts on the record and presented at the hearing, age verification laws remain overly restrictive. Despite changes to the internet in the last two decades, the Court comes to the same conclusion regarding the efficacy and intrusiveness of age verification as the ACLU courts did in the early 2000s.

Quote

First, the restriction is constitutionally problematic because it deters adults' access to legal sexually explicit material, far beyond the interest of protecting minors. The Third Circuit's holding regarding COPA applies equally to H.B. 1181:

"[The law] will likely deter many adults from accessing restricted content because they are unwilling to provide identification information in order to gain access to content, especially where the information they wish to access is sensitive or controversial. People may fear to transmit their personal information, and may also fear that their personal, identifying information will be collected and stored in the records of various Web sites or providers of adult identification numbers."

Quote

Indeed, as the Third Circuit noted, the "Supreme Court has disapproved of content-based restrictions that require recipients to identify themselves affirmatively before being granted access to disfavored speech " The same is true here—adults must affirmatively identify themselves before accessing controversial material, chilling them from accessing that speech. Whatever changes have been made to the internet since 2004, these privacy concerns have not gone away, and indeed have amplified.

Quote

Privacy is an especially important concern under H.B. 1181, because the government is not required to delete data regarding access, and one of the two permissible mechanisms of age-verification is through government ID. People will be particularly concerned about accessing controversial speech when the state government can log and track that access. By verifying information through government identification, the law will allow the government to peer into the most intimate and personal aspects of people's lives. It runs the risk that the state can monitor when an adult views sexually explicit materials and what kind of websites they visit. In effect, the law risks forcing individuals to divulge specific details of their sexuality to the state government to gain access to certain speech. Such restrictions have a substantial chilling effect.

Quote

The deterrence is particularly acute because access to sexual material can reveal intimate desires and preferences. No more than two decades ago, Texas sought to criminalize two men seeking to have sex in the privacy of a bedroom. To this date, Texas has not repealed its law criminalizing sodomy. Given Texas's ongoing criminalization of homosexual intercourse, it is apparent that people who wish to view homosexual material will be profoundly chilled from doing so if they must first affirmatively identify themselves to the state.

Defendant contests this, arguing that the chilling effect will be limited by age verification's ease and deletion of information. This argument, however, assumes that consumers will (1) know that their data is required to be deleted and (2) trust that companies will actually delete it. Both premises are dubious, and so the speech will be chilled whether or not the deletion occurs. In short, it is the deterrence that creates the injury, not the actual retention. Moreover, while the commercial entities (e.g., Plaintiffs) are required to delete the data, that is not true for the data in transmission. In short, any intermediary between the commercial websites and the third-party verifiers will not be required to delete the identifying data.

Even beyond the capacity for state monitoring, the First Amendment injury is exacerbated by the risk of inadvertent disclosures, leaks, or hacks. Indeed, the State of Louisiana passed a highly similar bill to H.B. 1181 shortly before a vendor for its Office of Motor Vehicles was breached by a cyberattack. In a related challenge to a similar law, Louisiana argues that age-verification users were not identified, but this misses the point. The First Amendment injury does not just occur if the Texas or Louisiana DMV (or a third-party site) is breached. Rather, the injury occurs because individuals know the information is at risk. Private information, including online sexual activity, can be particularly valuable because users may be more willing to pay to keep that information private, compared to other identifying information. Kim Zetter, Hackers Finally Post Stolen Ashley Madison Data, Wired, Aug. 18, 2015, https://www.wired.com/2015/08/happened-hackers-posted-stolen-ashley-madison-data (discussing Ashley Madison data breach and hackers' threat to "release all customer records, including profiles with all the customers' secret sexual fantasies and matching credit card transactions, real names and addresses.").

It is the threat of a leak that causes the First Amendment injury, regardless of whether a leak ends up occurring….

Plaintiffs offer several alternatives that would target minor[s'] access to pornography with fewer burdens on adults' access to protected sexually explicit materials. First, the government could use internet service providers, or ISPs, to block adult content until the adults opt-out of the block. This prevents the repeated submission of identifying information to a third party, and operating at a higher level, would not need to reveal the specific websites visited. If implemented on a device-level, sexual information would be allowed for adults' devices but not for children when connected to home internet.

Telling parents to use the blocking/filtering features of the devices they let their kids use.

Quote

In addition, Plaintiffs propose adult controls on children's devices, many of which already exist and can be readily set up. This "content filtering" is effectively the modern version of "blocking and filtering software" that the Supreme Court proposed as a viable alternative in Ashcroft v. ACLU. Blocking and filtering software is less restrictive because adults may access information without having to identify themselves. And the Court agreed with the finding that "filters are more effective than age-verification requirements." …

Content-filtering also helps address the under-inclusivity issue. At the hearing, Defendant argued that if H.B. 1181 covered more websites, such as search engines, then Plaintiffs would instead argue that it is overbroad. The point is well-taken, but it misses a crucial aspect: the law would be overbroad because age verification is a broad method of enforcement. Under H.B. 1181, age verification works by requiring a user's age at a website's landing page. This forces Texas (and other states) to choose some broad threshold (e.g., one-third) for what percentage of a website must be sexual before requiring age verification. But this is not true for content filtering, which applies to the material on a webpage, not just the site as a whole. So users can browse Reddit, but will be screened from the sexual material within the site by the content filter. Similarly, a user can search Google, but not encounter pornographic images. This is the definition of tailoring: content filtering, as opposed to age verification, can more precisely screen out sexual content for minors without limiting access to other speech.

Quote

Content filtering is especially tailored because parents can choose the level of access. In other words, parents with an 8-year-old can filter out content inappropriate for an 8-year-old, while parents with a 17-year-old can filter out content inappropriate for a 17-year-old. Using age verification, a 17-year-old will be denied access to material simply because it might be inappropriate for a young minor. Content filtering, by contrast, allows for much more precise restrictions within age groups.

In general, content filtering also comports with the notion that parents, not the government, should make key decisions on how to raise their children. See United States v. Playboy Ent. Grp., Inc. (2000) ("A court should not assume a plausible, less restrictive alternative would be ineffective; and a court should not presume parents, given full information, will fail to act."). Likewise, even as it upheld obscenity laws [including bans on distributing harmful-to-minors material to minors in face-to-face transactions -EV], Ginsberg v. N.Y. (1968) affirmed that "constitutional interpretation has consistently recognized that the parents' claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their children is basic in the structure of our society."

Content filtering allows parents to determine the level of access that their children should have, and it encourages those parents to have discussions with their children regarding safe online browsing. As the Principi article notes, it is this combination that is most effective for preventing unwanted exposure to online pornography. Age verification, by contrast, places little to no control in the hands of parents and caretakers. Thus, content filtering keeps the "parents' claim to authority in their own household to direct the rearing of their children " …

Quote

Again, changes to the internet since 2003 have made age verification more—not less—cumbersome than alternatives. Parental controls are commonplace on devices. They require little effort to set up and are far less restrictive because they do not target adults' devices.

Moreover, content filtering is likely to be more effective because it will place a more comprehensive ban on pornography compared to geography-based age restrictions, which can be circumvented through a virtual private network ("VPN") or a browser using Tor. Adult controls, by contrast, typically prevent VPNs (or Tor-capable browsers) from being installed on devices in the first place….

In addition, content filtering blocks out pornography from foreign websites, while age verification is only effective as far as the state's jurisdiction can reach. This is particularly troublesome for Texas because, based on the parties here alone, foreign websites constitute some of the largest online pornographic websites

globally. If they are not subject to personal jurisdiction in the state, they will have no legal obligation to comply with the H.B. 1181. Age verification is thus limited to Texas's jurisdictional reach. Content filtering, by contrast, works at the device level and does not depend on any material's country of origin.

Defendant disputes the effects of content filtering and argues that it is only as effective as the caretakers' ability to implement it. But even as Defendant's technical expert noted at the hearing, content filtering is designed for parents and caretakers to be easy to use in a family. The technical knowledge required to implement content-filtering is quite basic, and usually requires only a few steps. And the legislature made no findings regarding difficulty of use when it passed the law.

At the hearing, Defendant's expert repeatedly emphasized that parents often fail to implement parental controls on minors' devices. But Defendant has not pointed to any measures Texas has taken to educate parents about content filtering. And more problematically, the argument disregards the steps Texas could take to ensure content filtering's use, including incentives for its use or civil penalties for parents or caretakers who refuse to implement the tool. Indeed, draft bills of H.B. 1181 included such a measure, but it was abandoned without discussion. In Ashcroft v. ACLU, the Supreme Court gave this precise argument "little weight," noting that the government has ample means of encouraging content filtering's use. In short, Texas cannot show that content filtering would be ineffective when it has detailed no efforts to promote its use.

There's also an interesting discussion of the disclaimer requirements (which were struck down as unconstitutional speech compulsions) and the First Amendment rights of foreign sites distributing material in the U.S., but I hope to include those in separate posts.

Nice shout-out to VPNs above, and really love that the court actually understood that it's up to the parents to filter this material and that modern devices all have some kind of filtering built in for those parents who need it.

  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, ztejas said:

Someone explain - why hasn't this happened in other states? 

There's been lawsuits:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/08/08/age-law-online-porn-00110148

Quote

On June 15, 2022, a freshman legislator in Louisiana’s House of Representatives accomplished something no other lawmaker or activist in the country could claim: She passed a law that is changing the online porn industry.

Quote

Though the first of its kind, Louisiana’s age-verification bill was not the last. Nearly identical bills have passed in six other states — Arkansas, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Virginia and Texas — by similarly lopsided margins. In Utah and Arkansas, the bills passed unanimously. \

In just over a year, age-verification laws have become perhaps the most bipartisan policy in the country, and they are creating havoc in a porn industry that many had considered all but impossible to actually regulate.

Quote

Unlike past efforts to curb online porn that had simply declared the sites a danger to public health, these laws are not symbolic. And they are having real effects on how the massive online porn industry does business. Pornhub, the YouTube of pornography, gets more global users than Amazon or Netflix. In 2019, the last year Pornhub released its data, the site was visited 42 billion times, or 115 million times each day.

FrailFastBasenji-size_restricted.gif

Lawsuits are filed:

Quote

Lawsuits have been filed by the porn industry’s trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, against Utah and Louisiana, but in the meantime, porn companies have had no choice but to comply with the laws. According to Ethical Capital Partners, the private equity company that owns Pornhub, traffic in Louisiana has dropped 80 percent.

Quote

In the other three states where the laws have been in effect for months — Utah, Mississippi, and Virginia — Pornhub did something even more unprecedented: It simply stopped operating. Users in these states who attempt to visit the site are greeted with a safe-for-work video of Cherie DeVille (a porn star), clothed, explaining the site’s decision to pull out of the state.

As the video instructs, some angry porn users have called their legislators, but that has not dimmed the joy of lawmakers. According to Utah state Sen. Todd Weiler, the chief sponsor of Utah’s bill, many of his colleagues are celebrating the improbable and unexpected retreat of the pornography behemoth. Weiler said his colleagues “think it’s hilarious” and have been “high-fiving” each other in boyish triumph.

 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, deft said:

The pics for this item in the 55 gallon variant are hilarious if it’s the one I think it is.

Edit: this one

#LubeLife Water Based Personal Lubricant, 55 Gallon Sex Lube for Men, Women and Couples (Free of Parabens, Glycerin, Silicone and Oil) https://a.co/d/8CRgrIA

Holy shit

81iLFh7H0WL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

812R5xD-sbL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

81Cdo-YCiTL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, deft said:


The pics for this item in the 55 gallon variant are hilarious if it’s the one I think it is.

Edit: this one

#LubeLife Water Based Personal Lubricant, 55 Gallon Sex Lube for Men, Women and Couples (Free of Parabens, Glycerin, Silicone and Oil) https://a.co/d/8CRgrIA

I dont know man....$969.69 seems like a lot of money. Plus I just noticed that the Passion Lubes product from my post ships with a keg tap.

image.png.178c0c9788ccb2ff36cedb3727927d46.png

GQP parties at Nick Fuentes' place about to get turnt the fuck up!

  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/28/2023 at 9:43 PM, KYHorn said:

Agreed. We have lots of problems. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about this one while we wait for the state of our politics to change. In fact, working together to get something done could help create an environment where working on larger issues is feasible. Ignore the quote box below.

It doesn't mean we HAVE to do something either. This is a law that will be very hard to reverse regardless of if/when our politics change. How many politicians are going to run on a platform that will inevitably be labeled as "making it easier for kids to watch porn?"

Edited by SquishMitten
  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

It doesn't mean we HAVE to do something either. This is a law that will be very hard to reverse regardless of if/when our politics change. How many politicians are going to run on a platform that will inevitably be labeled as "making it easier for kids to watch porn?"

they just need to frame it as free speech

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

It doesn't mean we HAVE to do something either. This is a law that will be very hard to reverse regardless of if/when our politics change. How many politicians are going to run on a platform that will inevitably be labeled as "making it easier for kids to watch porn?"

They've platformed on "thoughts and prayers" re school shootings for decades. Why should a rolling back a bullshit, unenforceable no porn on the internet law hurt them?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, South Austin said:

So for the last night of free online porn without fear of government intrusion, I'm thinking of either Cambodian midget lesbians, Egyptian stepmothers, or Pregnant German masseuses.  What's in your queues?  And any special dinner plans?

"either?"

No comprendo, amigo.

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, I saw an article on CNN on Florence Pugh (Oppenheimer, Black Widow) that seemed somewhat relevant. She apparently wore a see through dress that showed nipple (gasp!) and got some heat for it. What surprised me, CNN published the images:

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/florence-pugh-dress-backlash-scli-intl/index.html

(NSFW?)

Spoiler

 

Pugh called out those who criticised her body in an Instagram post.

 

Pugh addressed the body-shaming comments in an interview with Elle magazine.

 

Puritanical laws like this would almost certainly be pushed and expanded to cover any content certain folks are against. And even if the state loses its attempt to enforce, as the saying goes, you can beat the rap but not the ride. And, as pointed out in the order on the injunction, even the mere threat of paying the cost of the ride is enough to stifle free speech. 

6 minutes ago, South Austin said:

So for the last night of free online porn without fear of government intrusion, I'm thinking of either Cambodian midget lesbians, Egyptian stepmothers, or Pregnant German masseuses.  What's in your queues?  And any special dinner plans?

Who is going to tell him?

Edited by Dahobbs
Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

So, I saw an article on CNN on Florence Pugh (Oppenheimer, Black Widow) that seemed somewhat relevant. She apparently wore a see through dress that showed nipple (gasp!) and got some heat for it. What surprised me, CNN published the images:

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/florence-pugh-dress-backlash-scli-intl/index.html

 

"Pugh went on to question: “Why are you so scared of breasts?”

image.gif

  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.



×
×
  • Create New...