18 ms·
Beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs
- trump4eva 1y ago[dead]
- WUMBOWUMBO 1y agoClueless human, but what stops a company from ignoring these laws from certain states? How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoNow I am curious as well. Are there…extradition treaties between states?
- School-Cotton 1y agoThe treaty in question is the Constitution. All states must grant extradition to any other state. It would be pretty crazy if you could kill someone in Arizona and then just walk over the border to California and not be able to be prosecuted…
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stonogo 1y agoYeah, that would be crazy, but the point here is that the "crime" is not being committed in Mississippi at all.
- zikduruqe 1y agoYou mean the Zone Of Death? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone) "The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (130 km2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of the Vicinage Clause in the Constitution of the United States, a person may be able to theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder"
- gjm11 1y agoThat's a separate thing -- it's not about being in a different state from where the crime was committed, it's about (supposedly) it being procedurally impossible to give you the jury trial you have to have, because literally no one lives in the relevant district.
- lazide 1y agoWhich really just means of anyone tried to exploit the loophole and wasn’t politically untouchable cough, everyone would just ignore the problem and assign them to some nearby district or whatever.
- dragonwriter 1y agoNo, because no one lives in the relevant combination of state and district, hence why only portion of the District of Wyoming that is actually in the State of Idaho is affected.
- gjm11 1y agoYup, sorry, I was imprecise.
- yardstick 1y agoSeems like the solution is to bus in new residents if such a trial was needed.
- delfinom 1y agohttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ny-gov-hochul-rejects-louisiana-extradition-doctor-abortion-pill-case-rcna192156 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ny-gov-hochul-rejects-l... >New York governor rejects Louisiana's extradition request for doctor in abortion pill case cough
- stronglikedan 1y agoExactly. We don't have a problem with too few laws and regulations. We have a problem with enforcement and accountability.
- bee_rider 1y agoIt seems like a problem of states trying to pass laws that control things outside their borders. The jurisdiction of Louisiana courts is Louisiana. I mean it would be absurd if an anti-death-sentence state started trying to extradite the executioners working in pro-death-sentence states for murder, right?
- svieira 1y agoIf the executioner did their work in the anti-death-sentence state it wouldn't seem to be absurd, no. E. g. if they had pulled the cord that activated the electric chair remotely from a pro-death-sentence state (tele-execution ... sounds very BlackMirror).
- bee_rider 1y agoI’d expect that to result in a very confusing court case. Fortunately, despite all the other messes going on, we haven’t tried anything that silly.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoMurder is a crime in all states. If the two states disagree on if a crime occurred, does the requesting state get to impose its laws on everyone?
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Murder is a crime in all states. Not by the same definition, no, its not, though there is a crime called "murder" in all states, and there tends to be significant overlap in the definitions.
- throwmeaway222 1y agoSo Murder is a crime in all states.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agoThere are certainly extraditions between states, so whether there's a treaty is rather academic
- fencepost 1y agoEven if there aren't (there are cases where individuals fight extradition to other states though I have no idea if that's ever effective, and questions of conflict between states has come up recently regarding interstate prescribing of abortion medications, etc. with some states explicitly stating that they will not cooperate with Texasistan), a civil judgement against an entity operating in one state could likely be enforced without even interacting with the state where that entity exists - e.g. if they're using a bank with a presence in MS, the state might be able to simply go after their accounts held with the national-scale bank.
- bcrosby95 1y agoIf they're able to elevate some of your charges to the federal level you're fucked. IANAL though so I don't know if/how that would happen.
- hopelite 1y agoYou can’t elevate something to federal charges that is not a federal crime, mostly committed across state lines (at least not in a just system); and the interstate commerce clause and possibly the free speech clause would likely be where that gets hung up. There is a certain group in the USA that is working hard on undermining the rights of the people of America, the enemies, foreign and domestic, per se; and this is part of their plank to control speech through fear and total control and evisceration of anonymity. I support controlling access to porn for children, especially since I know people who were harmed and groomed by it, but these types of laws are really just the typical liar’s wedge to get the poison pill of tracking and suppression in the door. I hope some of the court cases can fix some of these treasonous and enemy acts by enemies within, but reality is that likely at the very least some aspects of these control mechanisms will remain intact. If it really was about preventing harm against children, then they would have prevented children from accessing things, not adults. But that’s how you know it’s a perfidious lie. This MS situation is just another step towards what they really want, total control over speech, thought, and what you are able to see and read. This MS situation is just a kind of trial balloon, a probe of the American people and the Constitution and this thing we still call America even though enemies are within our walls dismantling everything. As you may have read, in MS they are trying to require all social media companies to “…deanonymize and age-verify all users…” …… to protect the children, of course. So you, an adult, have to identify yourself online in the public square that is already censored and controlled and mapped, to the government so it can, e.g., see if you oppose or share information about the genocide it is supporting … to protect Mississippi children, of course.
- dragonwriter 1y agoYou can't "elevate" state criminal charges to federal charges, though the state can simply seek your extradition (which, if the receiving state resists, the federal courts can enforce, because it is a Constitutional obligation). (It is possible for state charges existing to make other actions federal crimes, though, e.g., there is a federal crime of interstate travel to avoid prosecution, service of process, or appearance as a witness. But state charges themselves can't get "bumped up" to the federal level.)
- VWWHFSfQ 1y ago> How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state? It's a good question. Maybe something with interstate commerce laws?
- petcat 1y agoThere used to be the "Oregon sales tax loophole" where residents of neighboring states (Washington, California, Idaho) would make large purchases (car) just over the border in Oregon where there was no sales tax. That loophole got closed once inter-state data sharing became possible and Oregon merchants were required to start collecting those out-of-state taxes at the point of sale.
- chrismcb 1y agoThat wasn't a loophole. It was just a bunch of people evading taxes.
- petcat 1y ago> people evading taxes Avoiding taxes. It's different. It was always perfectly legal to travel to another state to buy something expensive and bring it back home. No crimes were committed. It was a loophole that you could buy in Oregon specifically to avoid $1,000s in sales taxes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 1y ago> It was always perfectly legal to travel to another state to buy something expensive and bring it back home. It was legal to do that. If it was purchased out of state with the intent of bringing it back home, then (assuming the home state was California) California use taxes were always owed on it. Other states with sales taxes also tend to have similarly-structured use taxes with rates similar to the sales tax rates. They were legally avoiding sales taxes, but also illegally evading use taxes, and, moreover, there is very little reason for the former if you aren't also doing the latter, unless you just have some moral objection to your taxes being taken at the point of sale and the paperwork and remittance to the government being done by the retailer instead of being a burden you deal with yourself.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Clueless human, but what stops a company from ignoring these laws from certain states? The threat of lawsuits. > How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state? If you are intentionally doing business in a US state, and either you or your assets are within the reach of courts in the US, you can probably be sued under the state's laws, either in the state's courts or in federal courts, and there is a reasonable chance that if the law is valid at all, it will be applied to your provision of your service to people in that state. Likewise, you have a risk from criminal laws of the state if you are personally within reach of any US law enforcement, through intrastate extradition (which, while there is occasional high-profile resistance, is generally Constitutionally mandatory and can be compelled by the federal courts.) That's why services taking reasonable steps to cut off customers accessing their service from the states whose laws they don't want to deal with is a common response.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoThat sounds a lot like regulating cross-state commerce, which is traditionally the purview of the federal government. Not that I have any real faith in this particular federal government or Supreme Court jealously protecting federal supremacy in this particular case.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> That sounds a lot like regulating cross-state commerce, which is traditionally the purview of the federal government. Except for very specific things that are forbidden to the states in Art. I Sec. 10, or where Congress has specifically closed off state action in its own actions under the Interstate Commerce Clause, states retain the ability to regulate commerce in manners that impact interstate commerce so long as they do not discriminate against interestate commerce compared to in-state commerce in such regulations.
- next_xibalba 1y agoApparently, U.S. statutory and case law establish that a business has an "economic nexus" in a state can be made subject to that state's laws. An economic nexus doesn't require a physical presence, just sufficient economic activity. Sufficient economic activity is usually defined, by each state, according to revenue or volume of transactions. Another test for an economic nexus is something called purposeful availment, which is whether a business is targeting the residents of a jurisdiction. So it seems like, "Are you intentionally selling to Missouri residents?" To enforce all this, states can sue companies and they can take steps to ensure companies can't do business in their state (so like maybe force ISPs to block Dreamwidth?).
- hellojesus 1y agoIirc, there was case law where a site was successfully found guilty because the site allowed ads, and the advertisers were targeting based on ip location. Not the site! The site didn't even log that data. But the ads were used as the vector of purposful availment. When I get the time, I'll be hosting a site from my closet that allows anything short of csam and I will reject states like MS and TX. My final act will be to die. But I don't much want to live.
- Paradigm2020 1y agoWhy block MS and TX? Anyway find a reason to live, unless you're objectively suffering there's quite a few
- hellojesus 1y agoSorry - poor wording on my part. I meant I would reject the states' new laws requiring identification of users to access social media on my site.
- jawns 1y agoIn case anyone is wondering what I was wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamwidth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamwidth
- mh- 1y agoAnd the law in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Montgomery_Protecting_Children_Online_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Montgomery_Protecti...
- jmclnx 1y agoThanks, I could not get by their really bad captha
- craftkiller 1y agoAh! Thank you. I was wondering why mjg59 needed to geo-block people on his blog. I had no idea dreamwidth was a platform and he was only a user of that platform. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else's content on that site. Now I feel dumb because I've been calling him "dreamwidth" in my head for years.
- rsynnott 1y agoI think there are quite a lot of Livejournal diehards on it.
- apt-apt-apt-apt 1y agoIf you're using a VPN while inside Missxi and access the site without age verification, would that cause the site to be in violation of the law?
- wonderwonder 1y agoSeems to work without issue in states that require age verification for pornography sites. Would assume a site like pornhub has spent money on lawyers
- mxuribe 1y agoIANAL but i don't think using a vpn matters...Because whether a user is using a vpn or otherwise or not, if the user is identified as from Mississippi, that would be the test for whether these guys would need to block or not. Like, if a user from Mississippi uses a vpn, and these guys don't know that and detect that this user's IP is from, say, Arkansas...how would they be held liable? Unless, i'm missing something, right?
- hopelite 1y agoI don’t see how, but the people trying to implement total control of speech, thought, and communication in America are a diabolical and crafty bunch that will likely try putting someone through the wringer for that one day. The end game here is total control and awareness of who is saying what at any time, in order to allow those messages to be thwarted.
- superfrank 1y agoNAL, but yes, I believe that it would still be a violation of the law. That said, laws aren't applied by robots and it's likely they would be given leniency if they could show they actually tried to respect the law. If they make an honest attempt to comply and a small number of people using VPNs slip through the cracks, if they're ever reported, they'll likely be given a slap on the wrist at most. If they ignore the law or do some obvious half assed attempt to comply and thousands of Mississippi users are still using their site and they get reported, it's far less likely that a judge will be lenient.
- lmm 1y ago
- superkuh 1y agoSometimes, often even, Dreamwidth can do the right thing like this. I fully support them in this fight and hope they win. But let's not pretend banning huge IP ranges for years at a time is new to them. Dreamwidth has been at the forefront of banning large swaths of the internet. They started doing it years before anyone else. Before the for-profit corporate spidering of HTTP/S content even began causing issues. This is well trod territory and entirely familiar for them and their upstream network provider they like to blame their inability to fix it on.
- kennywinker 1y agoFor those of us unfamiliar with dreamwidth: huh??
- tolerance 1y agoI think this has something to do with Cloudflare.
- superkuh 1y agoNah, not cloudflare. Just their upstream network provider (or so they say in support emails) and Dreamwidth's well established and long running practice of not caring that huge ranges of IPv4 are blocked from viewing any sites hosted on them. They do control the blocks but they have their tech support lie about it; as evidenced by this fine grain and specific blocking they're doing now re: Mississippi.
- tick_tock_tick 1y agoHow is this vaguely sufficient to meet the legal requirements of the law? They know geo-blocking is insufficient.
- d4mi3n 1y agoIANAL, but there’s a question of reasonable burden. Not sure if that applies here, but it’s not unreasonable to say you simply don’t want to do business in a state where the regulations are cost prohibitive. Given they make a reasonable effort to not provide a service to MI, it’s not really on them to police people trying to circumvent a state’s local laws. Pornhub and BlueSky have done similar in response to this legislation in Texas. Wikipedia and a few other sites blocked the UK to avoid being burdened by their Safety act. Pretty much every streaming platform implements regional geo blocking for licensing reasons. I’ll be curious to see how things shake out in the long run given the current political climate.
- madeofpalk 1y ago> Wikipedia and a few other sites blocked the UK No? Wikipedia is not blocked in the UK.
- Timwi 1y agoFor the record, Wikipedia has not (yet) blocked the UK. They are awaiting official classification by Ofcom of the Wikipedia website. However, the uncertainty is definitely vexing, and the direction this is going is truly worrying.
- d4mi3n 1y agoGood callout! Sadly, I’m unable to update my comment to correct. This whole area of law seems to be busy lately.
- mxuribe 1y agoIANAL, but if the actual legislation did not either recommend or dictate which method would be either good or even considered valid for purposes of enactment of the law, would it then be subject to interpretation? Also, for the enforcement agency who is/will be tasked with checking things out here...do they know whether geo-blocking is valid method or not? Its a silly law, don't get me wrong...but if its enforcement validation mechanisms are not up to snuff, i wonder how things will play out - both here in dreamwidth's case and other folks in a similar boat?
- trhway 1y agoit is just a new better Internet era - everybody to use VPN. Thanks to the conservatives for facilitating such a progress. For example, these days in Russia awareness and usage of VPN is well beyond any normal country. With Facebook and IG for example blocked for Meta being officially branded an "extremist organization" (by the way Taliban was taken off that list recently, so what do you guys in Menlo Park are cooking what is worse than Taliban? May be some freedom of speech? :) people in Russia of all strata is still using it, now through VPN, many from mobile devices. The thing of note from USSR/Russia here is that habitual violation of unreasonable laws breeds wide disrespect for the system of law as a whole, and it i very hard to reverse the flow.
- jmclnx 1y agoTrue, but the next thing, will VPNs be forced to age verify eventually ? It is possible some US States and maybe the UK will end up like China.
- trhway 1y ago>True, but the next thing, will VPNs be forced to age verify eventually ? it is like age verifying current generic access to the Internet. Sure, we'll come to this too (the anti-utopias aren't fiction, it is future :), yet we still don't verify such a generic access because it isn't the time yet, the society isn't yet totalitarian enough. As a preview - in Russia (i'm less familiar with China to comment on it) they do already attack VPN by making it illegal to advertise it, something like this.
- int_19h 1y agoRussia is doing quite sophisticated technological enforcement, as well - even if you're running your own VPN server, you need something like V2Ray or Trojan to get through.
- andybak 1y agoBetween this and the UK Online Safety Bill, how are people meant to keep track? Launch a small website and commit a felony in 7 states and 13 countries. I wouldn't have known about the Mississippi bill unless I'd read this. How are we have to know?
- bryant 1y agoProbably an area for Cloudflare to offer it as a service. Content type X, blocked in [locales]. Advertised as a liability mitigation.
- stuartjohnson12 1y agoClosely followed by the BETTERID act in response to sites using substandard identity providers, a set of stringent compliance requirements to ensure the compliant collection and storage of verification documentation requiring annual certification by an approved auditing agency who must provide evidence of controls in place to ensure [...] Regulatory capture in real time!
- gruez 1y ago>Regulatory capture in real time! What would you have preferred? Of course you'd prefer if the law never existed in the first place, but I don't see having a third party auditor verify compliance is any worse than say, letting the government audit it. We don't think it's "regulatory capture" to let private firms audit companies' books, for instance.
- sterlind 1y agoit's regulatory capture if there's an oligopoly of audit firms. it's regulatory capture if a cartel of ID verification companies are lobbying for specific requirements that lock out upstart competitors.
- zaptheimpaler 1y agoAny physical business has to deal with 100s of regulations too, it just means the same culture of making it extremely difficult and expensive to do anything at all is now coming to the online world as well, bit by bit.
- sixothree 1y agoEventually we're going to end up with freedom loving states and puritanical nanny states.
- hopelite 1y agoI see the larger objective as total control over all speech, thought, and information in more circuitous and pernicious ways than something in one of the poster-boys of “tyranny”. This is just the start and the trial balloons. The enemy within is a bit nervous about this attack on the most fundamental freedom that the Constitution is protecting, free speech, but they’re also very confident in themselves.
- int_19h 1y agoNo, we're going to end up with a lot puritanical nanny states policing different things, depending on their flavor of authoritarianism.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoYou think so? My state's supreme Court has interpreted our state constitution's freedom of expression clause even more broadly than the federal first amendment. It's hard to see how anything like that could survive judicial review here.
- luke727 1y agoThe makeup of a court is temporary. Maybe your court is "safe" today; that won't necessarily still be the case tomorrow.
- perihelions 1y agoRelated thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44990886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44990886 ("Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law (wired.com)"—175 comments)
- jmclnx 1y agoBluesky is doing the same in case people here did nor know https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-goes-dark-in-mississippi-age-verification/ https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-goes-dark-in-mississippi...
- mostlysimilar 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Montgomery_Protecting_Children_Online_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Montgomery_Protecti... > However, it doesn't apply to news sources, online games or the content that is be made is by the service itself or is an application website. What is an "application website"? I can't seem to find how they're defining that.
- btown 1y agoIt’s unclear how that phrase got into the wiki; the bill text https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2024/html/HB/1100-1199/HB1126SG.htm https://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2024/html/HB/110... does not seem to mention that phrase.
- sebastiennight 1y agoThanks, Section 3 is much clearer than the Wikipedia wording.
- sebastiennight 1y agoYeah the Wikipedia explanation has faulty grammar. I couldn't figure it out either. My understanding is that this is similar to the law the UK passed recently except instead of verifying age of users for "adult" content, every platform needs to verify (and log) age of all users for all content? It can't possibly be that ridiculous.
- mostlysimilar 1y agoIt's Mississippi. Least educated state in the US. Not surprising the elected officials didn't think this one through.
- kube-system 1y agoThe law mentions that it does not apply to job application websites. https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-45/chapter-38/section-45-38-5/ https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-45/chapter-38... That's probably what the wikipedia author meant to say
- pear01 1y agoAs an aside, it would be curious if deepening political polarization creates a trend of blocking IPs from specific states or regions for whatever reason... perhaps in such a scenario there would be interesting relations or comparisons between the digital and physical divides...
- miki123211 1y agoIs there even such a thing as a "Mississippi IP?" I.E. Are US ISPs, particularly big ones like Comcast, required to geolocate ISPs to the state where the person is actually in? What about mobile ones? Where I live (not US), it is extremely common to get an IP that Maxmind geolocates to a region far from where you actually live.
- kube-system 1y agoGeoIP services are not 100% accurate, but that doesn't mean they're completely useless. The law in question requires "commercially reasonable efforts"
- beefnugs 1y agoRemember that massive surveillance capitalism apparatus that has been created for years? Now everyone must pay for it to legally comply with whatever arbitrary bullshit no matter how expensive the data becomes
- kube-system 1y agoThe most popular GeoIP database has a free tier that would easily work for this. And there are many other options.
- tzs 1y ago> The most popular GeoIP database has a free tier that would easily work for this The free tier does have limits on the number of API calls can you can make. But the good news is you don't have to use their API. You can download the database [1] and do all the lookups locally without having to worry about going over their API limits. It consists of 10 CSV files and is about 45 MB compressed, 380 MB uncompressed. For just identifying US states from IP address you just need 3 of the CSV files: a 207 MB file of IPv4 address information, a 120 MB file for IPv6, and a 6.7 MB file that lets you lookup by an ID that you find in one of the first two the information about the IP address location including state. It's easy to write a script to turn this into an SQL database that just contains IP ranges and the corresponding state and then use that with sqlite or whatever network database you use internally from any of your stuff that needs this information. If you don't actually need Geo IP in general and are only adding it in order to block specific states you can easily omit IPs that are not mapped to those states which would make it pretty small. The database has 3.4 million IPv4 address ranges, but only 5 359 of them are listed as being in Mississippi. There are 1.8 million address ranges in the IPv6 file, and 3 946 of them are listed as being in Mississippi. Here's how to get the Mississippi ranges from the command line, although this is kind of slow--the 3rd line took 7.5 minutes on my M2 Mac Studio and the 4th took almost 4 minutes. A proper script or program would be a lot faster. grep ,MS,Mississippi, GeoLite2-City-Locations-en.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > 1 sed -e s/^/,/ -e s/$/,/ < 1 > 2 grep -f 2 GeoLite2-City-Blocks-IPv4.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > MS-IP4.txt grep -f 2 GeoLite2-City-Blocks-IPv6.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > MS-IP6.txt Also a proper script or program would be able to look specifically at the correct field when matching the ID from the locations file to the IP range lines. The commands above just hope that things that look like location IDs don't occur in other fields in the IP range files. [1] URL=https://download.maxmind.com/geoip/databases/GeoLite2-City/download?suffix=tar.gz curl -L -u userid:license_key $URL > db.tar.gz
- reader9274 1y ago[flagged]
- baseballdork 1y agoNo, be loud about bad laws.
- valbaca 1y agoGlad we didn't have you at the Constitutional Convention. Also "operate in or leave" doesn't make a lick of sense on THE INTERNET
- tomhow 1y ago> Stop crying about it Please don't comment like this on HN. We need everyone to avoid ideological flamebait and unkind swipes. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kstrauser 1y agoSince some idiotic courts have ruled a website’s Terms of Service to be legally binding, why can’t I just say no one from Mississippi is allowed to access my site and be done with it? I’m not being glib. Honestly, why can’t I? There’s precedent for saying that’s unauthorized access, so the feds (not the state; “Interstate Commerce Clause” and all that) should prosecute the visitor for violating my ToS.
- superfrank 1y agoFor the same reason a bars don't just ask people to sign a document saying they're 21 in lieu of an ID. The laws are written in a way where the responsibility for enforcement falls on the operator of the business. In both cases, the business doesn't actually have to verify anything if they don't want to, but if it's found that they're allowing violations to happen, they will be held legally responsible.
- acuozzo 1y ago> The laws are written in a way where the responsibility for enforcement falls on the operator of the business. Excluding "identity theft".
- valbaca 1y agosounds similar to how many remote job applications skirt around posting the actual salary range by not allowing residents of NY, etc. to apply
- kube-system 1y agoYou can't contract away something that the law requires of you.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> Since some idiotic courts have ruled a website’s Terms of Service to be legally binding, why can’t I just say no one from Mississippi is allowed to access my site and be done with it? That would allow you, perhaps, to sue people from MS that used your site for violating the ToS (though, "some idiotic courts have ruled" does not mean "the courts which actually create binding precedent over those that would adjudicate your case have ruled...", so, be careful even there.) But that doesn't actually mean that, if someone from MS used your site and you took no further steps to prevent it you would not be liable to the extent that you did not comply with the age verification law. > There’s precedent for saying that’s unauthorized access, so the feds (not the state; “Interstate Commerce Clause” and all that) should prosecute the visitor for violating my ToS. Most things in interstate commerce, except where the feds have specifically excluded the states, are both federal and state jurisdiction, but neither the feds nor the state are obligated, even if applicable law exists which allows them to, to prosecute anyone for violating your ToS. You can (civilly) attempt to do so if you are bothered by it.
- chris_wot 1y agoThis is happening in Australia, and it's awful legislation.
- thelastgallon 1y ago>Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. Reminds me of Silicon Valley. PiperChat has grossly violated COPPA as there was no parental consent form on the app leading to a 21 billion dollar fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zU7sV4bJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zU7sV4bJE
- mystraline 1y agoWell, we can blame the voters of Mississippi for their ass-backware representatives, who they evidently like, for these ignorant laws. Cut the ignoramuses from the US internet until they can learn to be decent people. Serves them right, and well, legally.
- greenie_beans 1y agoi don't maybe read a few history books about the south before you write off an entire state. or just look at some data: https://ballotpedia.org/Mississippi_gubernatorial_election,_2023 https://ballotpedia.org/Mississippi_gubernatorial_election,_... very incurious/very unhacker
- sch-sara 1y agoSurprising how quickly everyone is expected to comply with these laws - within a week you're supposed to block what could be a portion of your user base? Most areas of governance usually give years of preparation ahead of anything actually being enforced. This is so short-sighted.
- isk517 1y ago> This is so short-sighted. Might as well be the slogan of the current era
- gruez 1y ago>Surprising how quickly everyone is expected to comply with these laws - within a week you're supposed to block what could be a portion of your user base? But the law was signed over a year ago[1]? The recent development was that the injunction blocking the bill from being implemented got struck down. I'm not sure what you'd expected here, that the courts delay lifting the injunction because of the sites that didn't bother complying with the law, because they thought they'd prevail in court? [1] https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024 https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024
- wat10000 1y agoI don’t think it’s short sighted. They just don’t care.
- TrnsltLife 1y agoWhy geoblock Mississippi but scramble to comply with California right to delete. Political favorites? Easier to implement? Something else?
- LambdaComplex 1y agoMaybe already had the implementation ready because of EU regulations?
- walls 1y ago'Why would you comply with the forth largest economy in the world, but not the second poorest state in the country?'
- anonym29 1y agohttps://archive.is/XuUkc https://archive.is/XuUkc
- xyst 1y agoProject 2025 at work
- nativeit 1y agoNow they also have their own paramilitary, better funded than most national armies. I'm afraid people have a very naive view of what life looked like for an average German resident in the late 1930s. Just because tanks aren't running down Main St, Normalville, USA doesn't mean we aren't treading in seriously dangerous waters just now. We are pushing past points of no return every day this continues.
- Havoc 1y agoI guess the uk isn’t the only place with lawmakers that have no grasp on technical matters but yolo it anyway
- Nursie 1y agoFar from it. Australia is trying to age-block social media at the moment (we'll see what happens in december), the EU is likely to move on this stuff before long, lots of US states are doing it... it seems like it's the way of the future, one way or another.
- jansper39 1y agoHonestly this sort of thing seems to be popping up everywhere now. Almost feels like a co-ordinated effort.
- wat10000 1y agoI wonder if these state laws are at some point going to collide with Apple’s Private Relay service. It’s included with an iCloud subscription, and very easy to turn on, so I imagine Apple has way, way more users than a typical VPN provider. And they make no effort to ensure your exit node is in the same state as you are. A most it will keep the same “general location,” and there’s an option to let it use anything in the same country and time zone.
- 627467 1y agoSame with UK's OSA: don't most governments already have the tools to block domains based on operator compliance with laws? What's wrong with that approach that leads to this kind of universal jurisdiction approach? I leave my home computer network open to the public and now suddenly I'm liable to some random jurisdiction around the world because someone in that location decides to call my computer? China's GFW seems benign in comparison
- causality0 1y agoAn adult contracts with the ISP. The ISP provides unfiltered internet access to the adult. It is the adult who then chooses to provide access to adult, social, or otherwise-restricted websites to children. I don't see how this isn't obvious to any court.
- ggm 1y agoThe USA has a F(ederal) CC. Not S(tate) CC. I appreciate that not all modern post 1776 democracies are the same, but in Australia, whose constitution was informed hugely by the US constitution, Federal communications law takes supremacy over states, and states laws cannot constrain trade between the states. There are exceptions, but you'd be in court. "trade" includes communications. So ultimately, isn't this heading to the FCC, and a state-vs-federal law consideration? -Not that it means a good outcome. With the current supreme court, who knows?
- Manuel_D 1y agoIn theory, the US constitution forbids states from interfering with interstate commerce too.
- ggm 1y ago<insert Yogi Berra quote about theory and practice here>
- cobbzilla 1y agoIn theory yes, but in reality the "Dormant Commerce Clause" is weak protection. We've let states set their own "internet services" taxes, making selling anything online in the US a regulatory nightmare. A third-party vendor to manage (and keep up with) the tax laws to stay compliant is basically required for anyone selling online, or risk the wrath of various state tax bodies.
- cobbzilla 1y ago> With the current supreme court, who knows? In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh said it was likely unconstitutional (but apparently not obviously enough to enjoin it) [1]. So it's going into effect, then the lawsuit follows. Similar laws in California, Arkansas and Ohio were all found unconstitutional, so I am hopeful. That said, these were all district court decisions, and all of them are being appealed. When they lose on appeal, they go to the Supreme Court for (hopefully) the final smack-down. Interestingly, reading the summary MS HB1126 [2], this law is doing two things. It regulates companies and defines crimes. States are allowed to set their own criminal codes. If Mississippi drops the mandate part and passes a new law that simply defines certain things as crimes with corresponding penalties, that law would probably be constitutional. [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a97_5h25.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a97_5h25.pdf [2] https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024 https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024
- firesteelrain 1y agoStupid question - can’t these websites use a service like id.me and not store anything?
- otterley 1y agoIt’s not a stupid question, and I have the same one.
- Saigonautica 1y agoWhile I realize I'm not entitled to read this website, I'd like to report it seems to be geoblocking me in Viet Nam. I get a 403 Forbidden. I was totally ready to consider blocking US IP ranges too, if there was a good reason. I run a small business and 0% of my customers are overseas.
- dh2022 1y agoHow can any website determine the location of a user that uses a VM inside an Azure/AWS/GCP data enter? My VM inside Azure WestUS2 geolocates somewhere in WA state…
- BrenBarn 1y agoOur legal system is a shambles that is clearly not prepared to handle this kind of thing, even setting aside the situation with the supreme court. It's become clear that the "shadow law" of simply passing unconstitutional statutes, filing frivilous lawsuits, etc., is operating independently of the real legal system moves too slowly and does not have adequate mechanisms to prevent what is essentially a DDoS attack. All justice is delayed and so all justice is denied.
- dudefeliciano 1y agothe comparison to a DDoS attack is very clever. Also in regards to the "muzzle velocity" strategy of Trump/Bannon
- eviks 1y agoHow does DDOS explain the fact the the Supreme Court didn't deny service, but simply decided not to block an unconstitutional law?
- dudefeliciano 1y agoI dont think OP was referring only to this singular event, this is just a "request" in a much wider DDOS attack.
- tempodox 1y agoNot blocking an unconstitutional law _is_ denial of service by the Supreme Court (although DDoS referred to more than that).
- eviks 1y ago> passing unconstitutional statutes > independently of the real legal system The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something. It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.
- LeoPanthera 1y agoIs someone maintaining a list of what territories have which restrictions so I don't accidentally commit an international crime?
- deadbabe 1y agoWhen will people understand geoblocking won’t save you? If a Mississippi user is on a VPN and they access your website you must still comply. If you have a competitor, you can hire a bunch of Mississippians to access their website by VPN, collect evidence of them doing so, and then report them to have the shit fined out of them. It will pierce their corporate veil and leave them personally bankrupted, ending their website.
- Asraelite 1y agoIf that actually works, that's terrifying. Do you know of examples of companies facing legal trouble despite geoblocking efforts?
- deadbabe 1y agoNot companies, just small individuals who couldn’t afford the legal battle.
- Asraelite 1y agoThat shouldn't matter, I'm just curious if it would actually be sufficient legal grounds for a suit or if it would be dismissed immediately.
- deadbabe 1y agoIt is more than sufficient. The law doesn’t care about “Mississippi IPs”, the spirit of the law is if a person is accessing your website from Mississippi, you must verify their age, regardless of what path they are taking to reach it. Can’t verify where they are from? Then you just verify them anyway, you don’t get to just be lazy because you don’t know your user. If you don’t, there is a case that you are being negligent.
- Asraelite 1y agoIs that just your opinion or is there case law supporting that?
- adastra22 1y ago> On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? Did your lawyer review this? Because you just committed a felony.
- squokko 1y agoOne thing that's interesting about these regional laws is that they all necessarily use geolocation, but the regional laws are jurisdiction-based. Geolocation is inaccurate in many circumstances and also just insufficient in some circumstances (VPN, near a state border, proxied requests, embedded content, etc.)
- vasco 1y agoIt would be of great benefit to the internet if servers couldn't geolocate clients.
- Fabricio20 1y agoInteresting, all I see is "403 Forbidden" when I open this website, and Im not even from the mentioned location's country! I guess might as well block everyone to avoid any possible future litigation.
- andreareina 1y ago403. Are Singapore IPs being geoblocked as well?
- DocTomoe 1y agoPlease make sure to use the correct HTTP code for the block: 451 - Blocked for legal reasons.
- eviks 1y ago> And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with Since you can't really block all state IPs, but also since prosecution isn't bound by honesty, this retaliatory risk doesn't decrease much (though hard to assess precisely).
- VagabundoP 1y agoNot arguing for or against this law, but at some point if your site reaches a certain size that it is having a distortion effect on democracy or society in someway I'm going to want transparency and regulation. You can't have it both ways. Tech oligarchy is just another road to fascism city.
- chung8123 1y agoIf hosting companies make this an easy block/choice it just becomes the CA cancer warning where everyone does it. Then everyone in Mississippi and locales that adopt this have to use a VPN.
- selinkocalar 1y agoThis is the inevitable result of inconsistent privacy laws across jurisdictions. Instead of one clear federal standard, we get a patchwork of conflicting requirements. Small companies can't afford legal teams to navigate 50 different state privacy laws. So they just block entire states rather than risk compliance violations. This helps no one - not consumers who lose access to services, not businesses who lose customers, not states that wanted to protect their residents.
- Bender 1y agoMight it be sufficient to dynamically block anyone that has a registered home address in Mississippi for their payment method? Most ISP's span multiple states. Google have additional information about IP addresses that updates dynamically based on cell phone, wifi and other magic usage so maybe ask them if they have some javascript that queries their site for more specific city/state details. Also call Pornhub and ask how they were blocking specific states to meet legal requirements.
- groby_b 1y agoIf I were in Dreamwidth's shoes, I'd be very much concerned with minimizing legal exposure, not number of users excluded. At 10k/user*day, it's a reasonable choice to block as broadly as makes sense. Tough for the neighbors, but nitpicking "resident" is not a good choice here.
- andybak 1y agoFrom my perspective that means "the entire US". I don't live there and I have no idea how to not break this law.
- jayknight 1y agoFor the Bluesky ban, I'm not in Mississippi, but whatever IP Geolocation service they're use thinks I my home internet is in Mississippi. It's doubtless that lots of people inside Mississippi but near borders aren't being blocked, because that's just not a thing that's really possible.
- Falkon1313 1y agoUnlikely. You wouldn't have a payment method address for any free/non-paid/gifted account.
- aidenn0 1y agoDefinitely not because the law would apply e.g. to someone who lives in a different state, but loads the site while physically in Mississippi.