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Please also fight mandatory age verification with prison sentences. The European Parliament has already voted in favor of a law that mandates age verification f
by throwaway89201 1y ago
Please also fight mandatory age verification with prison sentences. The European Parliament has already voted in favor of a law that mandates age verification for pornography with a one year prison sentence. It was included as a last minute amendment into this bill [1]. See "Amendment 186". It has been completely missed by news organizations and even interest groups.
The full accepted article reads: "Disseminating pornographic content online without putting in place robust and effective age verification tools to effectively prevent children from accessing pornographic content online shall be punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 1 year."
It's not law yet, as the first reading is now sent back to the Council of the European Union, but I don't think it's very likely it will get a second reading.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-0116_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-011...
- BiteCode_dev 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't berate other community members on HN, no matter how right you are or feel you are. HN is for curious conversation, not battle. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- MrDrMcCoy 1y agoMaximum of at least one year? Is there some kind of award for how nonsensical a law can be?
- throwaway89201 1y agoMember states will implement this into national law. So in the case they will need to implement a maximum of one year or more (but not less). The final law as applied by a judge will just read "punishable by a maximum of [i.e.] fourteen months".
- ryankrage77 1y ago> maximum of one year or more If the max is one year, it can't be more?
- Aurornis 1y agoThe maximum value in each instance must be at least one year.
- rkomorn 1y agoIt sounds like it's "the maximum penalty must be at least 1 year", as in "your member state can't enact a law where the maximum penalty is less than 1 year". At least that's how I read it, but it's confusing.
- H8crilA 1y agoThis is correct. But the larger point is that even 1 minute of jail time for such "crimes" is unacceptable.
- zdragnar 1y agoThat larger point deserves its own thread. My newest pet peeve is someone jumping into the middle of a conversation with the equivalent of "I don't care about what you're talking about. What I want to talk about is more important". Oh look, now you've got me doing it to you. Drat.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago"Maximum term" is a specific legal concept, "at least one year" is the numerical constraint. Or, put another way: if(maxTerm >= 1) { // law implementation OK! }
- rimunroe 1y agoI don't think their confusion was on how numerical comparisons work, it was on how a "maximum term of imprisonment" could also come with a minimum duration. In other words, what does a "maximum term" mean if it's not the actual longest time someone could be imprisoned for? Are there lesser terms?
- TeMPOraL 1y agoRight. The confusion here is that this document isn't setting some maximum term, it's providing a constraints for multiple implementations of the law - it mandates that whatever maximum term any given country chooses, it must be no less than one year.
- rimunroe 1y agoYes, I think we all understand this. The thing which is confusing is why bother specifying a minimum length of one year if you're allowed to have lesser sentences?
- demiters 1y agoThat's not only asinine but also poorly worded. How is this getting approved?
- dragonwriter 1y agoIts properly worded, as it is an EU law declaring atandards for national laws and the implementing national law must specify a penalty range where the maximum is at least one year (but can be more). It seems worded poorly if you think of it as if the phrase was from a criminal law and not a law mandating and setting parameters for criminal laws.
- lucideer 1y agoWhile this is a specifically awful article, for obvious reasons, I find the idea of encoding specifics on carceral terms into any EU-level directive a bizarre overstep.
- raverbashing 1y agoYes it is and it would be very weird (to say the least) to have a criminal provision in such proposal
- throwaway4496 1y ago[flagged]
- mathiaspoint 1y agoGo after the people producing it. Stop bothering service and infrastructure providers. Doing that is either lazy or malicious.
- kachapopopow 1y agoOnlyFans is a multi billion dollar company.
- mathiaspoint 1y agoAnd they can be subpoena'd just like every other company. I believe they keep copies of everyone's driver's license so enforcement is trivially straightforward. Again malicious or lazy.
- throwaway4496 1y agoJust because it is bad for you doesn't mean it should be illegal, adults should be able to do what they please even if it hurts them. So this is a pretty practical solution to protect the kids without infringing on adults freedom per se, because even if some adults lose access, as I said, nothing of value is lost.
- rockskon 1y agoCollecting hackable blackmail material on millions upon millions of adults is practical?
- mathiaspoint 1y agoSure but there are a lot of people who disagree and I think what I wrote is a much more reasonable compromise with them.
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- steve_taylor 1y agoI personally support age verification for porn. However, age verification for almost anything else, e.g. Reddit, is a terrible idea.
- ngruhn 1y agoIdk age restricting Instagram, TikTok etc. might be good for teenagers mental health.
- fc417fc802 1y agoI agree. If we have to have age verification laws I'd rather they be applied to social media networks over some size than to porn sites. That said, I think requiring ID is generally a bad idea regardless. Much better would be some standardized way for websites to tag the type of content in a header coupled with third party filtering solutions that could be applied at the network (ie firewall) or device level.
- ElectroBuffoon 1y agoWe already have standards: PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R... ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocating_Child_Protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin... What seem to lack is the will power to use them. Or after seeing in the linked site: *EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not. Demand fairness. they really want mass surveillance for the plebs even by creating a weak point for enemies. To hell not just with rights but also defence. So any excuse will do.
- fc417fc802 1y agoWell don't I feel like an uninformed dumbass. Talk of standards aside, pornhub apparently includes the following header if you visit it. rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA RTA stands for "restricted to adults". So the large websites, ie the entities that would actually be bound by any proposed legislation, are already proactively facilitating network operators and parents filtering them out. And apparently have been all along. Wild.
- Aeolun 1y agoThe standard for robust and effective age verification is extremely low, given how I’ve seen anyone do age verification. It’s also pointless if we’re talking about the internet, you are essentially outsourcing your porn production to foreign countries
- Yokolos 1y agoForeign countries with less regulations and protections for sex workers and actresses.
- account42 1y agoThe standard for robust and effective age verification is a moving target. Foreign websites will be solved the great EU firewall that will inevitably come "to protect the rule of law" once these legislations are passed.
- Svip 1y agoA little more context: that article 3 paragraph 2.a. was added by parliament (not proposed by the Commission). But paragraph 1 (same article) was altered to this text: > Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the intentional conduct referred to in paragraphs 2 to 8 is punishable. (Emphasis being the change.) So they only mean the intentional act of putting up pornography without age verification? Just feign forgetfulness, I guess. How is a negative act an intentional one? Or moreover; how do you prove it? I know neglect and gross neglect are things, so I assume they mean if you don't do it after being asked to.
- NoboruWataya 1y agoThe positive intentional act, I guess, is disseminating the material. Proving intent and various ancillary concepts like knowledge, etc, are the bread and butter of prosecutors, so I don't think the act would be as difficult to enforce as you suggest. Sure, there might be corner cases where you can say "oops I forgot to password protect that Dropbox link" but certainly porn websites that don't do age verification will have a hard time arguing their conduct was not intentional.
- Svip 1y agoWhich leads to my next questions: What is pornography material? Do drawings qualify? What about text? What about softcore pornography? What about a non-profit outfit? What is the amount of pornography material I need to have for it to be considered disseminating? Someone uploads a few suggestive fan art drawings to my niche bulletin board and now I am liable for a year in jail?
- circlefavshape 1y agoA judge will decide the above. That's how the law works
- calgoo 1y agoAlso, what what methods of sharing? If a 16 year old shares some porn with some friends and it happens to be on a digital system somewhere, can that kids now go to jail for over a year?
- raxxorraxor 1y agoNews organization welcome any barrier to social media networks, they are heavily biased on these topics. The "modern" journalist of today doesn't really care about freedom of information either. Speaking of which, the EU is also working on a "free speech" law for journalists and against them being arbitrarily banned by platforms. One would think this law could easily be extended to everyone since it is not at all trivial to determine who gets these benefits and who doesn't. Most outlets today are some form of court reporter in one way or another. That trust in media is sinking is quite expected and in many cases reasonable too.
- stephen_g 1y agoWe have this issue massively in Australia too - literally almost 100% of the push to implement a social media ban (where ‘social media’ is anything that an unelected bureaucrat called the ‘eSafety commissioner’ feels like, which, for example, wasn’t going to include YouTube until they changed their mind) came from a single Murdoch newspaper campaign. It just wasn’t a thing anybody else was talking about, and then suddenly it was apparently the most important thing the federal Government could be doing that apparently had to be rushed through in about two weeks with almost no oversight (normally here it can take years to get reform that normal people have been long calling for into Parliament) - honestly it was absolutely bizarre. I have no hesitation saying that the newspaper that pushed it doesn’t give a single damn about the kids - they have a serious hatred of Meta in particular but also Google. The whole thing was concern trolling because they were angry that they are going to get cut off from the last shakedown they lobbied for (called the media bargaining code).
- red-iron-pine 1y agothe modern journalist doesn't get to have a say -- big media companies and their editors are calling the shots. hell, a ton of articles are already ghost written by automated tools, and a lot of "bias" is simply not reporting on certain things.
- torginus 1y agoEU is like: We will protect your sensitive personal documents so that only trusted government institutions and ones held to the highest standards of privacy (such as banks) may have access to it. This is to prevent abuse and identity theft. Also please upload them to BigBootyXXX.com if you want to have a wank
- sillysaurusx 1y agoAt the end of the day, "think of the children" has been an ancient rallying cry that’s used to justify all kinds of bad behavior. Often ironic, as you say. Also banks were one of the most vulnerable. I’ve often wondered why. My first reaction is "because their code comes from coders who only want to work at a bank," but I don’t want to be unfair. Perhaps it’s "from people comfortable with lots of bureaucracy". Either way, when I was a pentester, banks were one of our main types of clients, and their code was often bad. So it’s doubly ironic to claim banks are exemplars of how to do privacy.
- freedomben 1y agoI consulted with several big banks, and while there are some great developers there, on the whole, the devs were largely passionless and were just there for the job. Many of them actively dislike coding, and it really felt like they were just there for the high pay. I think that type of developer really thrives in a move slow, heavy bureuacracy environment where velocity is not something people care about. The high security can be annoying, but everywhere I went they had enough processes and out-sourcing of security to experts and tools that the average dev didn't really have to think about it. On many teams there would be one person or so who (mostly) understood the area they were responsible for and could deliver quickly, but not every team had somebody like that. One thing that I did think was a positive is that (perhaps because of all these things) is that it was a very low-ego environment, and people were generally open-minded about learning new stuff and/or better ways to do things. Overall I really enjoyed working with the people at banks, despite everything taking longer than you would think it should :-)
- 1y ago
- gershy 1y agoAm I insane for being somewhat in favour of this? I think the accessibility of adult content on the internet is a disaster.
- microsoftedging 1y agoIn principle, not at all. But there is no way to do this properly at all. No matter how secure the companies that do this say it is, it's another possible vulnerability. You can't play whack a mole with the internet. People will always find a way to move smut or whatever on the internet. It takes no time at all to spin up more and more sites, and there's a million ways around them (vpns, etc). All it does it just push people to more and more fringe sites, when moderation is likely to be lax and the content more extreme. Ideally it wouldn't be viewed at all, but it's just how the internet is. It also sets a terrible precedent for censorship- in the UK, we've already seen, on Reddit for example, subreddits dedicated to quitting addictions being age gated, and it'll only get worse.
- notTooFarGone 1y ago>But there is no way to do this properly at all We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas?
- AngryData 1y agoTry what exactly? Its illegal to stream movies for free, but there are hundreds if not thousands of illegal streaming sites. How would porn access fair any better at being regulated away?
- jsmith45 1y agoThe European Commission's proposed interim solution for age verification (ageverification.dev) is actually pretty good vs the shitshow of the US and UK. It works like this: 1. You contact an age verification provider (e.g., national eID schemes, banks, or mobile operators) and provide proof of identity, which they will verify possibly against government databases or whatever, etc. Once they confirm your age they will issue you with a bunch of Age attestations. At this point you don't even know where you will use these, so that info literally cannot be sent to the provider. The attestations are a JWT-like envelope with a payload conceptually equivalent to `{"nonce": "LARGE_RANDOM_HEX_STRING", "age_over_18":true}`, signed with the provider's public key. (The actual implementation is more complex). 2. This is stored in a local app, which will guarantee each attestation only gets used once (to avoid linking user across relying sites). There is no special authentication of the app in the protocol with the replying site, so you can write your own. The Commission provides an open source reference app. There is a standard protocol for communicating with verification providers, however it is not mandatory, so using the reference app might not support all verification providers, but should support a variety. 3. When you want to visit some site needing age verification, and you already have a verified account, you just sign in, otherwise, that site will use a standardized protocol to request proof from the app. The app will provide just the attestation token. The relying site does not get any info about your identity, other than the attestation token. Plus of course, the relying party must accept any age verification provider approved by the commission, not just its preferred one. The EC's solution also supports the app providing the relying site a Zero-Knowledge Proof of having such a token, which makes it possible for the relying site to learn the user's identity even if colluding with the age verification provider.
- throwaway274592 1y agoAs a citizen of an EU country, I am really piss* off that the EU Parliament just gets to set the law in all countries. Do we have independent countries anymore? It does not seem that much different between federal government and states. It feels like occupation.
- darqis 1y agoyou have a throwaway account because you fear dang's censorship and rightly so
- AlexeyBelov 1y agodang's censorship? You should see what a typical [dead] comment looks like, it's not dang censoring people who praise emacs while he loves Vim.