4 ms·

There are some people who believe that access to certain services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age

by rtpg 3y ago

There are some people who believe that access to certain services should be age-gated. Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. In the Real World(TM) this is a fairly uncontroversial idea. The Internet is very wild west on these things and that has lead to interesting outcomes... but really age gating porn is in line with many things in the world.

thehm 3y ago
Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for their children to access. Responsible parents either teach their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it difficult to access, or both.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Prepaid phone cards are a thing.
  - thehm 3y ago
    Where I live, they can only legally be sold to people ≥ 18 years old. Maybe that should be more commonplace?
  - formerly_proven 3y ago
    But usually coupled to legally-mandated identity (and age, but it might not be 18) verification so you have an address to send the cops to when someone calls in a bomb threat.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  We've learned that parents aren't responsible in the USA. This might change with the parents on trial for the teen shooter recently but ultimately up to this point, unless it's physical neglect, the parents delegate to the schools and then get upset when their kids are taught non-racist ideologies. Or they force the school board to ban/burn books like it's nazi germany.
- dagw 3y ago
  Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Most cities are full of places offering free internet connections to anybody in the vicinity.
tokai 3y ago
Is the Real World only the USA? Cause where I'm from its not illegal for a sub 18 year old to buy a porn mag in a kiosk.
coldpie 3y ago
The analogy breaks down when you remember that everything you do on a networked computer is effectively public information. In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item", and then forget your name & face the instant they move to the next customer. But to do the same thing online, you are associating your name & face with the "secret item" to literally everyone on the planet for the rest of eternity. The calculus changes.
- WaitWaitWha 3y ago
  > In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item", and then forget your name & face the instant they move to the next customer. This is not exactly correct. The clerk might, but not the database the card was scanned into. Depending on the secret item such as certain OTC medications, alcohol, tobacco, the information is not forgotten but kept for an extended time, and is stored and correlated in a centralized DB.
  - least 3y ago
    This depends on what you're buying and where. In Virginia we have an ABC (Alcholic Beverage Control) which is the only place you can buy spirits. They do scan your ID. The grocery store does not. The restaurants do not. The porn shops presumably do not, either. Basically the only other time might be to buy something like sudafed at a pharmacy, but I haven't done so recently enough to know if that's actually scanned at all, either.
    - WaitWaitWha 3y ago
      > buy something like sudafed at a pharmacy Anything with pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine requires scanning by US federal mandate. It is done so the government can capture it across the nation. I am just saying that there are things that already have the requirements of data collection & retention both at Federal and State level in the USA.
least 3y ago
> Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. There's no practical way to check ID on the web. In your "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is just some person that works for an establishment looks at a little plastic card with your photo on it and checks to make sure the birthday is before a certain date, then they hand it back to you. To do something like this online would require something much more intrusive to personal privacy and adds another pointless complicated technological solution when a much more practical solution exists. That solution being parental controls.
- rtpg 3y ago
  Cell phone operators offering age verification is an actual real thing that exists right now in Japan. No ID handover requires. You need to make a user ID (and have a cell phone). The impossible becomes possible real quickly when businesses decide they need it to move forward.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    So your proposal is that every access to porn must be forever associated with your personal phone number?
    - rtpg 3y ago
      Well... if you pay for this stuff, you're already having a credit card involved (for example. Maybe you're buying gift cards, and age gating can happen there!). If you're not.... maybe the decimation of free porn is not a bad thing for the universe. I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are all talking about. I do think that there's a universe where self-governance sort of resolves these problems. Many industries have done this! In a universe where basically you needed a credit card to access this stuff ~always, this law would likely not exist.
      - 3y ago
kroltan 3y ago
The controversiality is exactly that in the Real World(TM) it's possible to either anonymously verify a certain age (by trivial visual inspection in most cases) or handle it in a way that does not require the potential storage of information (Handing - or better, showing - a cashier your ID doesn't mean they can take a photo of it and store for however many months) Meanwhile, back on Teh Interwebz, the only way we have right now of verifying age is by uploading photos, or equivalent information, of the identification document, which could be intercepted, stored, or otherwise pilfered with no further indication. I think there was someone proposing a cryptography-based way of proving "yes, this visitor has access to a non-minor identity", but that requires some sort of government (or similar) service that could also log incidental information, and would require some sort of digital identity service (for example gov.br here in Brazil): Service generates a random token, user gives token to identity service using their authentication, identity service replies with the token signed with a key whose public part the website knows. This would be "better", in the sense of you don't have to provide any actual identifying information to arbitrary websites, but very bad because now the government can log all age-check attempts. There is probably some more complicated solution to that, but it goes beyond me. In the meantime, my opinion is that online age checks are dumb, easily bypassed, and possibly dangerous. Until we find a proper solution, just educate yo kids properly. Friendly reminder that criminals don't have to obey laws, so actually dangerous websites (be it just psychologically, like I don't know, gore, to actual illegal things) won't be so kind as to implement an age check themselves anyways. If you want the minor you're responsible over to not view harmful content, teach them about the internet and have a healthy relationship with them so they trust you in the eventuality they see something disturbing.
arp242 3y ago
I remember trying to buy some video games when I was a kid, and they wouldn't sell it to me because it was rated as 15+ and I wasn't 15. People would also check ages at movie theatres; I had some trouble getting in to Jurassic Park with my friend but we did manage, and also regretted it as I was scared witless for months, demonstrating that these age limits are perhaps not entirely nonsense. A lot of people seem to have forgotten what the world was like 25 years ago.
- coldpie 3y ago
  The trouble for most people isn't age verification per se, it's the knock-on effects from that. Which do you prefer: 1) No age verification, or 2) Every access to online adult content is forever publicly associated with your personal information? I agree neither is ideal, but I think 1 is better than 2.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I don't think 1 and 2 are the only possible options. The thing is that thus far there hasn't been much incentive to develop technology that can verify people's age or other aspects of their identity in a privacy-friendly way, because the internet hasn't really needed it before. We should start by thinking about what we want to do: do we want to age-gate pornography? If so, why? If not, why not? And if we don't age-gate online pornography at all does that also mean a 10-year old can just walk in to a sex shop, live sex show, or BDSM club? Once we figured out some answers to that (and more) we can start thinking about the how of it all, keeping in mind that things like "access to online adult content is forever publicly associated with your personal information" would be undesirable. I don't think "well, it's kinda hard so [throw up and hands and give up]" is really a good way forward. I don't have complete answers for all of this either, but I feel a number of people here are far too dismissive about this. At this point we – the broader "hacker/IT community" – can either be part of the conversation or sideline ourselves by dismissing it all.
    - coldpie 3y ago
      There could be some future in which computer security actually exists, but I just don't see our industry going in that direction right now. In any case, that technology doesn't exist now so the options today, with this law in effect, are as I stated.

by rtpg 3y ago

thehm 3y ago

Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? To use your analogy, it is parents who are paying for the alcohol and then leaving it in a place where it is easy for their children to access. Responsible parents either teach their children about appropriate alcohol use or make it difficult to access, or both.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Prepaid phone cards are a thing.
- thehm 3y ago
  Where I live, they can only legally be sold to people ≥ 18 years old. Maybe that should be more commonplace?
- formerly_proven 3y ago
  But usually coupled to legally-mandated identity (and age, but it might not be 18) verification so you have an address to send the cops to when someone calls in a bomb threat.
gabereiser 3y ago
We've learned that parents aren't responsible in the USA. This might change with the parents on trial for the teen shooter recently but ultimately up to this point, unless it's physical neglect, the parents delegate to the schools and then get upset when their kids are taught non-racist ideologies. Or they force the school board to ban/burn books like it's nazi germany.
dagw 3y ago
Where can one buy an internet connection without being at least 18 years old? Most cities are full of places offering free internet connections to anybody in the vicinity.

tokai 3y ago

Is the Real World only the USA? Cause where I'm from its not illegal for a sub 18 year old to buy a porn mag in a kiosk.

coldpie 3y ago

The analogy breaks down when you remember that everything you do on a networked computer is effectively public information. In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item", and then forget your name & face the instant they move to the next customer. But to do the same thing online, you are associating your name & face with the "secret item" to literally everyone on the planet for the rest of eternity. The calculus changes.

WaitWaitWha 3y ago
> In a physical store, you can show the clerk your ID, they'll verify the birthdate, sell you the "secret item", and then forget your name & face the instant they move to the next customer. This is not exactly correct. The clerk might, but not the database the card was scanned into. Depending on the secret item such as certain OTC medications, alcohol, tobacco, the information is not forgotten but kept for an extended time, and is stored and correlated in a centralized DB.
- least 3y ago
  This depends on what you're buying and where. In Virginia we have an ABC (Alcholic Beverage Control) which is the only place you can buy spirits. They do scan your ID. The grocery store does not. The restaurants do not. The porn shops presumably do not, either. Basically the only other time might be to buy something like sudafed at a pharmacy, but I haven't done so recently enough to know if that's actually scanned at all, either.
  - WaitWaitWha 3y ago
    > buy something like sudafed at a pharmacy Anything with pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenylpropanolamine requires scanning by US federal mandate. It is done so the government can capture it across the nation. I am just saying that there are things that already have the requirements of data collection & retention both at Federal and State level in the USA.

least 3y ago

> Thus follows that a web page offering the service should handle this age gating, in the same way that alcohol sellers are responsible for checking that their customers are of drinking age. There's no practical way to check ID on the web. In your "Real World" the vast majority of the time checking ID is just some person that works for an establishment looks at a little plastic card with your photo on it and checks to make sure the birthday is before a certain date, then they hand it back to you. To do something like this online would require something much more intrusive to personal privacy and adds another pointless complicated technological solution when a much more practical solution exists. That solution being parental controls.

rtpg 3y ago
Cell phone operators offering age verification is an actual real thing that exists right now in Japan. No ID handover requires. You need to make a user ID (and have a cell phone). The impossible becomes possible real quickly when businesses decide they need it to move forward.
- coldpie 3y ago
  So your proposal is that every access to porn must be forever associated with your personal phone number?
  - rtpg 3y ago
    Well... if you pay for this stuff, you're already having a credit card involved (for example. Maybe you're buying gift cards, and age gating can happen there!). If you're not.... maybe the decimation of free porn is not a bad thing for the universe. I do believe in privacy rights, but... free porn just doesn't feel like a must-exist thing in the sense we are all talking about. I do think that there's a universe where self-governance sort of resolves these problems. Many industries have done this! In a universe where basically you needed a credit card to access this stuff ~always, this law would likely not exist.
    - 3y ago

kroltan 3y ago

The controversiality is exactly that in the Real World(TM) it's possible to either anonymously verify a certain age (by trivial visual inspection in most cases) or handle it in a way that does not require the potential storage of information (Handing - or better, showing - a cashier your ID doesn't mean they can take a photo of it and store for however many months) Meanwhile, back on Teh Interwebz, the only way we have right now of verifying age is by uploading photos, or equivalent information, of the identification document, which could be intercepted, stored, or otherwise pilfered with no further indication. I think there was someone proposing a cryptography-based way of proving "yes, this visitor has access to a non-minor identity", but that requires some sort of government (or similar) service that could also log incidental information, and would require some sort of digital identity service (for example gov.br here in Brazil): Service generates a random token, user gives token to identity service using their authentication, identity service replies with the token signed with a key whose public part the website knows. This would be "better", in the sense of you don't have to provide any actual identifying information to arbitrary websites, but very bad because now the government can log all age-check attempts. There is probably some more complicated solution to that, but it goes beyond me. In the meantime, my opinion is that online age checks are dumb, easily bypassed, and possibly dangerous. Until we find a proper solution, just educate yo kids properly. Friendly reminder that criminals don't have to obey laws, so actually dangerous websites (be it just psychologically, like I don't know, gore, to actual illegal things) won't be so kind as to implement an age check themselves anyways. If you want the minor you're responsible over to not view harmful content, teach them about the internet and have a healthy relationship with them so they trust you in the eventuality they see something disturbing.

arp242 3y ago

I remember trying to buy some video games when I was a kid, and they wouldn't sell it to me because it was rated as 15+ and I wasn't 15. People would also check ages at movie theatres; I had some trouble getting in to Jurassic Park with my friend but we did manage, and also regretted it as I was scared witless for months, demonstrating that these age limits are perhaps not entirely nonsense. A lot of people seem to have forgotten what the world was like 25 years ago.

coldpie 3y ago
The trouble for most people isn't age verification per se, it's the knock-on effects from that. Which do you prefer: 1) No age verification, or 2) Every access to online adult content is forever publicly associated with your personal information? I agree neither is ideal, but I think 1 is better than 2.
- arp242 3y ago
  I don't think 1 and 2 are the only possible options. The thing is that thus far there hasn't been much incentive to develop technology that can verify people's age or other aspects of their identity in a privacy-friendly way, because the internet hasn't really needed it before. We should start by thinking about what we want to do: do we want to age-gate pornography? If so, why? If not, why not? And if we don't age-gate online pornography at all does that also mean a 10-year old can just walk in to a sex shop, live sex show, or BDSM club? Once we figured out some answers to that (and more) we can start thinking about the how of it all, keeping in mind that things like "access to online adult content is forever publicly associated with your personal information" would be undesirable. I don't think "well, it's kinda hard so [throw up and hands and give up]" is really a good way forward. I don't have complete answers for all of this either, but I feel a number of people here are far too dismissive about this. At this point we – the broader "hacker/IT community" – can either be part of the conversation or sideline ourselves by dismissing it all.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    There could be some future in which computer security actually exists, but I just don't see our industry going in that direction right now. In any case, that technology doesn't exist now so the options today, with this law in effect, are as I stated.