Recently I heard a question that threw me for a loop, namely that of porn site legality. Most porn sites have a warning which threatens minors not to enter, but hypothetically, if a minor was found with having gone there, what could the legal punishment be? Are they going to give minors fines for viewing porn? Or would the webmaster get fined for some type of youth corruption illegality? What’s the Straight Dope?
For now and the forseeable future, there are no fines or other punishments for either party if a minor should happen to wander into a porn site. Those warnings are placed by the webmaster of the porn site as an attempt to be responsible, sort of, and, hopefully, avoid the implementation of real fines…which would be impossible to collect anyway.
The only web content which causes police action is child pornography and that’s only because such stuff is illegal in almost all countries throughout the world…so it doesn’t help to locate your server outside the U.S.
What always throws me for a loop is they’ll have the adult content warnings under a topless or worse picture. You’d think that if they were going to even bother putting up the warning they’d at least put a semi-clean picture over it.
Hi Satyagrahi
I am an adult webmaster, and I think you should give us bit more credit than that. No one thinks kids should have access to pornographic material, and anyway, no one wants to be involved with the hassles of a parent complaining, let alone attention from the law.
It’s all a bit academic, really, as pretty much everything you can find on a website you can find on free-for-all newsgroups.
abby
“The age of your users impacts the website. According to Federal Trade Commission regulations through the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), a website must get a parent’s permission for children under 13 to disclose information. Also, remember that children under 18 should not be permitted to view information which is adult in nature. In addition, children under 18 may not be able to agree to contracts such as your website user agreement and purchase contracts. Finally, FTC also regulates advertising and other content directed at children.” http://adultchamber.com/members/legal.htm (NO naked pictures here or any
obscenity, whew).
Also try: http://xxxlaw.net/ (I looked it, there are NO naked pictures or obscenity, after all, its a lawyer site)
Abby, I meant no offense to those webmasters who do make a sincere and responsible effort to screen out minors…but it remains a fact that the great majority do not.
Also, there have been several attempts at laws to regulate porn on the Internet. Two, to my knowledge, have been struck down by the courts and all such laws are unenforceable. It is the nature of the 'Net that it is international. If any one country declares some type of content illegal, servers located elsewhere make it freely available. China is, at this moment, limiting access to the 'Net entirely in order to limit outside news access. If the U.S. legislative bodies do find some way to phrase a law such that it stands up in the courts, web hosting servers will spring up in the Caribbean and elsewhere…and porn will forge onward.
The thing I dislike most about the majority of porn sites (Yes, I’ve looked at a few, purely for study purposes, of course. 
), is the attitude most project regarding women. It doesn’t bother me that minors might see pictures of the act of sexual intercourse but it bothers me greatly that such pictures are usually accompanied with hostile and degrading commentary including the words ‘slut’, ‘whore’ and so forth.
Abby, I apologize if I’ve tarred you with too wide of a brush. What’s your take on these issues?