Source: news.yahoo.com 2/28/24
The first age verification lawsuit against a major web porn purveyor is here. On Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that he was suing Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo.
Paxton claims it is violating HB 1181, a Texas law passed last year. The new law requires porn websites to use “reasonable age verification methods” to make sure viewers are 18 or above and to post warnings about porn’s alleged harms, along with a number for a national mental-health hotline.
“Texas has a right to protect its children from the detrimental effects of pornographic content,” said Paxton in a press release. “I look forward to holding any company accountable that violates our age verification laws intended to prevent minors from being exposed to harmful, obscene material on the internet.”
Paxton’s use of “obscene” here is somewhat misleading. While web porn might be “obscene” to some under the colloquial meaning of the word, it’s not de facto legally obscene—which is to say, it is generally protected by the First Amendment. Obscenity falls under an exception to free speech in the U.S., but far from all (or even most) porn is obscenity.
What Texas is trying to do here, then, is place a significant regulation on First Amendment-protected speech—and one a judge has already declared this unconstitutional, in a challenge to HB 1181 that’s still ongoing. But Texas is a state that never seems to shy away from unconstitutional laws, particularly where tech or sex are concerned. (See, for instance, the Texas social media law that went before the Supreme Court this week.) So—in a move that’s galling but not surprising—Paxton apparently isn’t going to wait for the challenge to Texas’ age verification law to conclude before trying to levy more than $1.6 million in fines against the Canadian company Aylo.
I know exactly what’s going to happen. They’ll push on this and make it happen. Then oops, there’s a leak and we get a mile long list of the legislatures browsing for Asian Midgets in Bondage, likely the very person proposing this.
Paxton should be more concerned with his own criminal defense. He has delayed his trial over 8 years, its good to be the AG of Texas!!
Gosh, I thought all these lying Texas politicians love to lie how they are for limited government and regulations. I guess that is what they believe until they decide it is up to government to parent your children. No need to be pushing parents to be responsible. That is what government overreach is for.
Don’t believe their lies. Their intent is to force people to live as they want them to live. To force their will upon others. Big government.
Aylo/Pornhub is a Canadian company. How does a state have any jurisdictional right to regulate a company out of state much less out of the country. Regulation of commerce is a federal function and not a state one.
It has nothing to do with kids and everything to do with monitoring you.
Every kid in the country 10’s of millions, has a phone that can view the most disturbing porn imaginable with a 2 second word search. Every parent knows it, and very few place preventative programs to block it.
Imo the parents should be charged with providing a child porn. It makes no difference if its on a phone or in a magazine. The video may be hosted somewhere else but it is directly accessible on their phone, or computer. If you had NAS in your house with porn on it, and they viewed it, would that make it legal? Of course not.
Then you’d see the registry change.
This is good. Kids are nothing if not ingeniously creative in circumventing barriers. It will force kids to learn how to use the dark web. Then they will have access to a place totally outside of government control. We will have hope for a free future, away from the tyrants, scum, pigs, and fascists that run America.
I’m not sure how far this will fly. I haven’t watched porn in a long time, but in the past all you had to do was click “I’m over 18” and you were in. The only way I can see to verify one’s age is to upload one’s ID and I’m not sure many people would be comfortable doing that because first of all, its a privacy issue, and second, with all the hacking going on, someone could probably do a data breach and get copies of everyone’s ID. If hackers can get into a bank with all the security there to get people’s data, how much easier would it be for someone to hack into a porn site?
This is so exhausting Hey, Texas. You didn’t get to take credit for protecting children from porn after you constantly fail to protect them from guns and bullets.
They don’t have VPNs in Texas?
Kids are dropping dead left and right because of f**k’n Fentanyl, Heroin, Crack, and Meth in this country, and this is what this A**Hat is spending taxpayer money on fighting???? I swear you can’t make this sh*t up!!!!
Yeah, more Hysterical Idiocy to lose our collective minds over! Ok…
“Texas has a right to protect its children…” what about the responsibility of Parents to prevent their children from accessing these “harmful materials”? Why is it that everytime Karen and Darren freak out of over some bull****, the legislature has to step in and parent for them?
Easy, look at the world we actually live in.
Working 60+ hours a week at a go nowhere job you hate. Then rush through all the Housework you can’t put off any longer, or afford to have done for you, so you can start your side hustle Uber gig. Oh, there’s also dealing with all the judgement and criticism from your Dad and the Karen he dumped your Mom for. Dealing with the propaganda network of your choice telling you how America is circling the bowl. Only after all that do you finally get to wash down all the pills with a couple of bottles of wine, while you binge watch Friends for the thousandth time with those that truely love you…your cats.
Somewhere along the way, parenting may also happen.
This is the real America we actually live in. Miserable, pointless lives filled up with crap we have to do so we can continue to be comfortably miserable. Vacations, nights out with friends, good books, great TV, killer music streams, Wordle all help but are not really good enough… especially after you finally accept that…your cats don’t really love you, you’re just where the food comes from.
Sound familiar? Might not be your life, but this is the life that millions upon millions of Americans are actually living. However, not all of them are watching Friends… some are on P2P Networks binging other videos.
I would never put my personal information into a porn site, it’s not that serious. Nowadays people can just go on Twitter and see pretty much anything, their hearts desire.
Back in the day when I was on probation, my PO would take my phone and go through it for about 5 minutes and then give it back. This was in the early stages of the smart phones, I remember asking them what are you looking for and she said, To see if there’s any pornography or sexual images downloaded into your phone or if you’ve been visiting any porn sites like “PORNHUB”
The crazy part is my case had nothing to do with porn or the internet BUT she didn’t care, she was trying find anything she could to violate me.
We must doxx and shame anyone who supports registries. Minor Attracted People are People Too! I live one state away from the a**hat who publishes that awful cartoon Nobody’s Property where this little psychopath redhead named Nadia goes around killing Minor Attracted People for sport, and the whole town, including the police, know and let her get away with it. The guy who makes this s**t thinks it’s funny to kill Minor Attracted People. He must be stopped. I’d attach a sample but it’s just too disgusting.