4 ms·

Supreme Court Declines to Block Texas Porn Restriction

29 points by Jimmc414 3y ago

emtel 3y ago
for actual information: https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/04/court-allows-texas-to-enforce-age-verification-for-online-porn-sites/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/04/court-allows-texas-to-enf... First paragraph: > The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to temporarily block a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify their users’ ages. In a brief unsigned order, the justices turned down a request from a group of challengers that included an adult industry trade association to put the law on hold to give them time to seek review of a ruling by a federal appeals court.
- kolbe 3y ago
  To add, this is a part if the legal process that isn't well understood by the public, and often misrepresented in the media. It's not even well-understood by experts, frankly, but it's important to note that this is a stage in the legal appeal process where SCOTUS can choose to kind of temporarily pre-rule on a law being challenged, based on very brief arguments. It's often used in cases where failing to act on one side or another presents a serious risk of something happening before the court can rule. For example: an execution. SCOTUS can "stay" an execution, that is, prevent the execution from happening, because, well, if the guy gets killed before the trial, and then they find in his favor, they can't undo the execution. In a case like this, it's not surprising that they found no significant irreparable harm to Texans if the law remains until the courts can rule.
  - kichik 3y ago
    We need a "dumb it down for the non-lawyers" on every article that mentions courts. ELIANAL. I always try to ask my lawyer friends, but they are sadly not very good at dumbing it down.
adamredwoods 3y ago
Age verification vendors do this. Sites can do this discreetly and securely. Therefore, I agree it's a state commerce issue, not an amendment issue.
- nness 3y ago
  Griswold v. Connecticut?
  - adamredwoods 3y ago
    That one is direct blocking. But in doing some research, I've found one against my own argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti... Reno vs ACLU 1997 >> "We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. ... It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not "reduc[e] the adult population ... to ... only what is fit for children."[1] ..but... >> Justice O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, agreed with the decision "as of 1997" but expressed interest in the idea of creating an "adult zone" on the Internet that was made inaccessible to minors through "gateway technology" that had been investigated by a lower district court. If such technology could be introduced, they wrote, zoning portions of the Internet to prohibit adult content could be as constitutional as such zoning is in the physical world.[8] Can a website with a specific barrier to entry be thought of as "zoning"? Perhaps.
deleted 3y ago
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wesamco 3y ago
It's fun to think about a technical solution that if implemented by the state and porn websites it would be privacy preserving, I have a hunch some form of cryptography can be part of this solution. some form of cryptography that would allow the website to check if something like a hash of a state identification number is of a real ID number, but this hash-like thing would not allow the website nor the state to know to what ID number it belongs to (e.g. with a database lookup of the hash), it would allow them only to know that it belongs to some real/actual ID number. does anybody know of any form of cryptography that would allow anything like this?
- Nasrudith 3y ago
  There is no such thing just because of logistics alone. All it would take is one 'adult ID' to be shared enmasse. If they can start analyzing the patterns to see that one adult provides 1000s of uses per minute across many IPs, then it isn't privacy preserving. Besides, they are clearly looking to build a panopticon. Privacy preservation is the opposite of their goal.
- xyzzy123 3y ago
  All sorts of sticky bits here. If the main thing the age verification service is used for is watching porn then how much privacy can you really have? The verification side knows you're watching porn and can look at your ISP records or ask the registered providers if you accessed using token / session x if they really need to e.g. unmask your specific fetish or find out about your activity. There are some difficult tensions between building for privacy vs being auditable. Another specific part that seems difficult is the need for a biometric bind. There's no clear way to do this without invasive UX that's bad for the use-case. If you want to make assertions about a natural person then you need to bind them to the credential with a biometric match, to prevent IDs from being copied or shared. If you perform that on the client it's amenable to all sorts of hacking, "the drm problem" where you are asking a computer or mobile device to act as a little policeman. The device is no longer "yours". If you perform it on the server you need to be passing images or better video back to a service. You can have the best protocol and procedures in the world but you will never convince customers that is private & anonymous. It all depends on requirements tho. If the goal is mainly to prevent say, 8 year olds stumbling across porn websites, and not to stop a motivated 8 year old from accessing them by stealing parent credentials or using workarounds they found on a forum, then the problem is fairly tractable and could probably be solved within the credit card ecosystem alone.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Actual link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-declines-block-texas-pornography-restriction-rcna149877 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

29 points by Jimmc414 3y ago

for actual information: https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/04/court-allows-texas-to-enforce-age-verification-for-online-porn-sites/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/04/court-allows-texas-to-enf... First paragraph: > The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to temporarily block a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify their users’ ages. In a brief unsigned order, the justices turned down a request from a group of challengers that included an adult industry trade association to put the law on hold to give them time to seek review of a ruling by a federal appeals court.

kolbe 3y ago
To add, this is a part if the legal process that isn't well understood by the public, and often misrepresented in the media. It's not even well-understood by experts, frankly, but it's important to note that this is a stage in the legal appeal process where SCOTUS can choose to kind of temporarily pre-rule on a law being challenged, based on very brief arguments. It's often used in cases where failing to act on one side or another presents a serious risk of something happening before the court can rule. For example: an execution. SCOTUS can "stay" an execution, that is, prevent the execution from happening, because, well, if the guy gets killed before the trial, and then they find in his favor, they can't undo the execution. In a case like this, it's not surprising that they found no significant irreparable harm to Texans if the law remains until the courts can rule.
- kichik 3y ago
  We need a "dumb it down for the non-lawyers" on every article that mentions courts. ELIANAL. I always try to ask my lawyer friends, but they are sadly not very good at dumbing it down.

adamredwoods 3y ago

Age verification vendors do this. Sites can do this discreetly and securely. Therefore, I agree it's a state commerce issue, not an amendment issue.

nness 3y ago
Griswold v. Connecticut?
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  That one is direct blocking. But in doing some research, I've found one against my own argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberties_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reno_v._American_Civil_Liberti... Reno vs ACLU 1997 >> "We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. ... It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not "reduc[e] the adult population ... to ... only what is fit for children."[1] ..but... >> Justice O'Connor, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, agreed with the decision "as of 1997" but expressed interest in the idea of creating an "adult zone" on the Internet that was made inaccessible to minors through "gateway technology" that had been investigated by a lower district court. If such technology could be introduced, they wrote, zoning portions of the Internet to prohibit adult content could be as constitutional as such zoning is in the physical world.[8] Can a website with a specific barrier to entry be thought of as "zoning"? Perhaps.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

wesamco 3y ago

It's fun to think about a technical solution that if implemented by the state and porn websites it would be privacy preserving, I have a hunch some form of cryptography can be part of this solution. some form of cryptography that would allow the website to check if something like a hash of a state identification number is of a real ID number, but this hash-like thing would not allow the website nor the state to know to what ID number it belongs to (e.g. with a database lookup of the hash), it would allow them only to know that it belongs to some real/actual ID number. does anybody know of any form of cryptography that would allow anything like this?

Nasrudith 3y ago
There is no such thing just because of logistics alone. All it would take is one 'adult ID' to be shared enmasse. If they can start analyzing the patterns to see that one adult provides 1000s of uses per minute across many IPs, then it isn't privacy preserving. Besides, they are clearly looking to build a panopticon. Privacy preservation is the opposite of their goal.
xyzzy123 3y ago
All sorts of sticky bits here. If the main thing the age verification service is used for is watching porn then how much privacy can you really have? The verification side knows you're watching porn and can look at your ISP records or ask the registered providers if you accessed using token / session x if they really need to e.g. unmask your specific fetish or find out about your activity. There are some difficult tensions between building for privacy vs being auditable. Another specific part that seems difficult is the need for a biometric bind. There's no clear way to do this without invasive UX that's bad for the use-case. If you want to make assertions about a natural person then you need to bind them to the credential with a biometric match, to prevent IDs from being copied or shared. If you perform that on the client it's amenable to all sorts of hacking, "the drm problem" where you are asking a computer or mobile device to act as a little policeman. The device is no longer "yours". If you perform it on the server you need to be passing images or better video back to a service. You can have the best protocol and procedures in the world but you will never convince customers that is private & anonymous. It all depends on requirements tho. If the goal is mainly to prevent say, 8 year olds stumbling across porn websites, and not to stop a motivated 8 year old from accessing them by stealing parent credentials or using workarounds they found on a forum, then the problem is fairly tractable and could probably be solved within the credit card ecosystem alone.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Actual link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-declines-block-texas-pornography-restriction-rcna149877 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]