There is no end to the Christian fundamentalists.
I’m not even sure what sort of porn a little plastic card would appreciate.
Naked crash test dummies and vibrators.
Insert your own “stick shift” joke here.
This is essentially a backdoor attempt to ban online porn in the state, since the websites don’t want to deal with the security risks in ID verification and will just block users from that state instead.
Fortunately for Ohioans, VPNs exist and are legal.
I see what you did there. You’ve been VERY NAUGHTY!!
Will there be stiff penalties?
And wouldn’t it already be stiff?
Yeah, this is the case in the majority of southern states at this point with major sites like PornHub just blocking you if your IP comes from that state.
Aside from VPNs, this also just encourages people to seek out shadier porn sites that are hosted in countries that don’t give a shit about Ohio state law. Such sites are also more likely to host content dealing with underage participants, non-consensual sex, and other stuff that the major sites have some interest in trying to distance themselves from. So the savvy people use VPNs to watch porn and the others wind up at totally-legit-porn-dot-ru and it’s hard to think of the upside for this law aside from messaging how virtuous Ohio is.
I read a post from someone from here in Tennessee that age verification is now required. He was able to do it with face recognition. It used the camera on his computer and it was able to verify his age. It was a one-time thing because it was associated with his account.
Wondering… could a teenager “borrow” his father’s driver’s licence to get something set up? Then share username and password with his friends? .
Carrie Nation rides again!
Hey
Ho
Way to go
Ohio
[The only decent thing Rush Pigbaugh ever did]
And since they’re tying it to (basically) a Driver’s License, shall we assume they’ll be doing training and testing in order to ensure that people are ready, safe, and competent to consume online pornography?
And just what would that look like?
Hm.
So very much this.
Okay, I’m going to be the killjoy who says I don’t want my daughter growing up in a world where the average age for first viewing porn is 12, and teens regularly watching hardcore porn before even having their first kiss is the norm. I don’t think it’s healthy; it leads to unrealistic expectations on both sides, and to young people believing there is something wrong with them when they can’t live up to or don’t enjoy the things they see in porn.
I’d like to make it more difficult to get hold of porn rather than banning it completely, and it sounds like this scheme will do that, one way or another. Whether it will ultimately make things better or worse, we’ll get to see. Hopefully someone is studying the results.
It will not make it any more difficult to view porn online.It will only make it more difficult to view sites based in the US..
As was said
Which is fair but this will do nothing to stop that. If you type “naked boobies” into your search engine, you’ll just eventually land upon some site hosted in central/eastern Europe, Russia or southwest Asia where the hosts aren’t worried about how mad the Ohio legislature gets.
The “enforcement” is to require porn hosts to verify your age or face fines. If you’re a “reputable” porn host like PornHub, you just decide to forego the risk and say “No one from an Ohio IP is allowed here” rather than let someone in and get fined because they beat the system. If you’re running a porn host out of Estonia, you don’t give a shit because you’re not going to be extradited to Ohio to pay some fine. So our 12 year old gets blocked from PornHub and goes down the list until he gets to the shadier site being hosted overseas.
I don’t want to hijack, but maybe this is relevant. Why do internet providers bother to tell [whoever] where their customers are located? In other words, why is this set up so Pornhub can even know what state I’m in? (Ignore VPNs for now).
So PornHub can tell you about “Desperate women near you”.
And I don’t mean to be sarcastic, but isn’t it for much the same reason that your license plate has to be prominently displayed on your car – traceability?
ETA: which can be useful for data gathering, analysis, and marketing in no end of commercial ventures.
At its most basic, if someone is at your door saying “knock, knock” you probably want the option of asking who’s there. In theory, that’s what your IP address provides (though not on a granular level).
I have a further thought
Of course you will find “hardcore porn” on Pornhub and most porn sites based in the US. You will not find- actual rape, pornography involving minors, bestiality and various other nasty things. Those are, very properly, against the law in this country.
If you need to prove legal age to view US porn sites, the very easy answer is to view porn sites in other countries. The chances of accidentally stumbling on something that is illegal in the US are fairly high. The chances of finding that material if you actually look for it are close to 100%.