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I am going to make an interpretation that you think age restrictions are good public policy in general, and asking why others disagree. In the edit you say that

by belorn 2y ago

I am going to make an interpretation that you think age restrictions are good public policy in general, and asking why others disagree. In the edit you say that "we all appear to agree that age verification is an acceptable goal", but I would disagree with that. I find age restrictions to be good public policy in general if-and-only-if the target of the restriction has a clear cost that is shared socially. Abuse of tobacco products and alcohol has a clear link to medical health care and the government is responsible to fund health care. The link between tobacco and cancer is an established fact. Alcohol has a more fuzzy link with poor health, but I suspect it get less fuzzy regarding children. The research that links porn and health is very much in dispute, similar to research that links violent movies and crime. At best it is inconclusive. Some countries has age restrictions on movies, others do not. There is also research on violent music and crime, violent games and crime, and the quality of all the research seems to be beyond poor. I do not think its good policy at all to construct laws using those. My conclusion is that governments should not make laws without having good ground to stand on. Until the quality of the research improve I find it better to let parents and schools determine when a specific child is mature enough to view specific media, be that movies, music, games, porn, or any other media.

skhunted 2y ago
The vast majority of the people I've interacted with don't think hardcore porn should be viewable by children. Those who disagree and welcome to advocate for changing of the law in this regard. It is indisputable though that age verification laws regarding porn have been in place in the country for many decades. The internet is not special in that such laws/social mores do not apply. Such is my opinion.
- belorn 2y ago
  In my country (Sweden) we do not have a specific age restricting law regarding purchasing porn. What we do have a generic law that forbid any film in cinema and TV broadcast from being viewed by children under 7, 11 and 15 years old if viewing that film is considered harmful for that age group. What is harmful is then delegated to a government department of censorship. A funny thing however is that the department of censorship was closed down in 2010, being at the time one of the worlds oldest with a creation date of 1911. With the closure, the above law has no longer any practical effect but the cinema industry and TV broadcast still volunteer to honor it to some degree. Historically, the department of censorship focused mostly on violent movies, but a famous examples was the cartoon Darkwin Duck which was deemed too violent for viewing by children. Teenage violence was often connected back in the days with violent scenes in specific movies. Public support for government censorship is currently in minority. The vast majority of people seems to think that publisher, cinema owners, parents and schools do a better job in deciding what should be viewable by children. Occasionally a specific film or game jumps into the news (like GTA 5), but they tend to die down fairly fast. Porn discussions also pop up once in a while, but they die down similarly fast since support for a return of government censorship is really low and the political parties generally know this. The only specific law about porn we do have is displaying of porn towards people without their consent in a way that can be seen as off putting. This target behaviors like people sending nudes to others without their consent.

by belorn 2y ago

skhunted 2y ago

The vast majority of the people I've interacted with don't think hardcore porn should be viewable by children. Those who disagree and welcome to advocate for changing of the law in this regard. It is indisputable though that age verification laws regarding porn have been in place in the country for many decades. The internet is not special in that such laws/social mores do not apply. Such is my opinion.

belorn 2y ago
In my country (Sweden) we do not have a specific age restricting law regarding purchasing porn. What we do have a generic law that forbid any film in cinema and TV broadcast from being viewed by children under 7, 11 and 15 years old if viewing that film is considered harmful for that age group. What is harmful is then delegated to a government department of censorship. A funny thing however is that the department of censorship was closed down in 2010, being at the time one of the worlds oldest with a creation date of 1911. With the closure, the above law has no longer any practical effect but the cinema industry and TV broadcast still volunteer to honor it to some degree. Historically, the department of censorship focused mostly on violent movies, but a famous examples was the cartoon Darkwin Duck which was deemed too violent for viewing by children. Teenage violence was often connected back in the days with violent scenes in specific movies. Public support for government censorship is currently in minority. The vast majority of people seems to think that publisher, cinema owners, parents and schools do a better job in deciding what should be viewable by children. Occasionally a specific film or game jumps into the news (like GTA 5), but they tend to die down fairly fast. Porn discussions also pop up once in a while, but they die down similarly fast since support for a return of government censorship is really low and the political parties generally know this. The only specific law about porn we do have is displaying of porn towards people without their consent in a way that can be seen as off putting. This target behaviors like people sending nudes to others without their consent.