Porn age verification law is unconstitutional, says judge
Porn age verification law is unconstitutional, says judge
A rebuke to a broad online age-gating push.
I guess it's for the best to keep it simple, but I kinda hate how to get anything done, we have to label it free speech. It's like we can't manage to make laws to reasonably keep people from imposing religious restrictions on the population so we have to classify everything as speech.
I'd rather we use the ninth amendment more often:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
This should be sufficient to defend a right to privacy, which online ID/age verification laws necessarily violate.
That's because free speech, by design, is one of the more important defenses against government overreach.
Part of the first amendment that's often overlooked/not talked about is freedom of religion, and separation of church in state. The first line is separation of church and state.
Yeah I agree, it's tricky though right? There's a defined difference between religion and religious agenda. I can't force someone to take a blood transfusion, unconstitutional, that's fine. But when politicians use religious agenda as a campaign promise, no one can be allowed a blood transfusion. Now it's no longer religion or separation. They're just pandering to the wants of the religious base. Supreme Court waking up one day and going You know what screw precedent, that should have got them out right away. But our government is not designed to be protected from that kind of thing.
It's an appropriate designation in this case, and an appropriate rebuke to the law.
Good writeup on this from Techdirt: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/31/court-says-texas-adult-content-age-verification-law-clearly-violates-the-1st-amendment/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A federal judge has blocked a Texas law that would require age verification and health warnings for pornographic websites, calling it unconstitutional and poorly defined.
In a preliminary injunction decision released today, Judge David Ezra ruled in favor of the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade association.
Ezra, a Ronald Reagan-appointed district judge, said HB 1181 had numerous problems that could limit internet users and adult content creators’ First Amendment rights.
It also draws on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Reno v. ACLU, which struck down most of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law regulating online pornography.
HB 1181 applies restrictions to sites that are deemed to be composed of one-third pornographic content — a bar similar to that of other states like Louisiana, which has an age-gating rule that went into effect around the start of 2023.
And finally, the ruling objects to Texas’ requirement that sites post factually debatable disclaimers about the alleged dangers of pornography, calling it unconstitutional compelled speech.
The original article contains 475 words, the summary contains 165 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
If not for the fact that I know conservatives are going to use it as a stepping stone to ban all porn in the future, I'm honestly fine with a porn age verification.
Maybe if we had some good way of verifying age without literally sending them a picture of our ID and saying, "I'm gonna look at porn now, okay?"
No one is going to do that, because that doesn't feel safe. That information will be stolen and used for blackmail.
My concerns beyond that are that it would force what kind of porn you watch to be traceable. And just because what you like is legal now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way. Stuff like sadomasochism that’s already controversial as heck all the way to stuff like gay porn. If such things become illegal I don’t trust that “it was legal at the time” will be seen as a good defense.
And beyond that the “warning” they were ordered to put up is blatantly false and fucked up
And even if it is legal, you probably don't want that information to be made public when the site inevitably has a breach.
Agreed. If not for the fact that these laws are obviously just a gateway to more porn restrictions, I'd support a strict pornography age verification. But because it's coming from only the far right conservative group, I know where things will end up if we give an inch. As for your porn being traceable, it already is. Your ISP/VPN sees all of your internet traffic, and you'd be a fool to think that the government doesn't have access to that info.
Sure, but not using this intrusive, flawed, easily exploited method.
Agreed. The level of access children have to pornography is likely something that should be better controlled. We need to really think about how to solve the problem while still allowing people to use the services and maintain privacy.