Not counting online gambling (which is a grey area, besides), is there anything that is illegal to do online (based in the US) that it’s actually legal to do in real life?
Here in NC I cannot buy liquor online but I can buy it in a state run store.
Many of the responses in this thread will end up being things which are illegal online only for tax or licensing reasons. Liquor and cigarettes are great examples. There’s nothing wrong with these purchases online in theory, but as a matter of practicality, the gov’t can’t control it as well as they can in real life.
Judging from the comments in this recent article on the subject, another big problem that the authorities have with online tobacco sales is age verification. Even if the tax issues are taken care of, the FDA is still concerned that underage teens are able to get online smokes. I’m not personally sure that your average teen is patient enough to wait a few weeks to get their hands on (cheap, nasty) smokes, but the politicos seem to think it’s a big problem.
Depending on state laws, teens under 18 can see each other naked and engage in sexual activities. Online, no one under 18 can be seen in any sexual act by anyone of any age.
Nice, you mentioned the one thing I was thinking kids can get away with online and not IRL. That is, looking at porn.
Yeah, it’s like those kids who took phone pics of eachother naked getting nailed for child pornography.
There’s restrictions on ordering Sudafed over-the-counter in Oregon - ID required, limits to prevent buying in bulk, etc. I wonder if an online pharmacy that sells OTC medication would exclude an Oregon shipping address, like Vineyard websites do for certain states.
The sudafed thing is nationwide. It’s called the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. The drug in question is pseudoephidrine, which is used to make Crystal Meth. You can purchase 3.6grams (large box of claritin D) daily, but not to exceed 9 grams every 30 days. A little known fact about this law: a prescrition bypasses it, as prescriptions are not logged into the database, unlike OTC purchases.
I suspect that this too is more of a regulatory thing than an inherent quality of the act.
In other words, if one was in a jurisdiction where the age for doing such things in real life was 16, then not only could 17-year-olds do it in real life, but in theory other people could watch them online, provided that the watchers were in that same jurisdiction. The reason this is only in theory, is that in practice there’s no way to prevent them from being watched by people who are in a jurisdiction where the age limit is 18.
Truth be told, I suspect that there are some jurisdictions where the age for this stuff is 21, and the ubiquitous “18” is merely a compromise for convenience’s sake.
In the US, traditionally, most human conduct is regulated at the state level. Most bad conduct is a state level crime, not a Federal one.
Enter the Internet, where anyone can be anywhere and state laws don’t practically reach.
You get an impetus for a blanket Federal law which addresses either the conduct, e.g. gambling, or providing a venue for the conduct, e.g. a gambling web site.
And there is always the tension between making the Federal law as strict as the strictest state, or only as strict as the least strict state, or some kind of politically-weighted average.
So there are going to be all sorts of areas where the overlap between online federal alw and offline = state and local law diverge. Look to the states & localities which favor loose regulation to find the ones likely to permit stuff which is illegal online.
Note also that the so-called red vs blue state distinction isn’t helpful. Both crowds like to regulate; they just like to regulate different things.
I…did not know that. Thanks for the education.
But what if the state of Florida passed a law against posting on the SDMB? I could get in trouble for that, no? The enforcement would have to be pretty intense, but it wouldn’t be a problem for the FL Attorney General to trace my IP address and find that I was posting here, right?
I doubt this is true. Whether or not the two minors can legally have sex is a totally different question from whether they or someone else can record and/or distribute a live feed of the act as pornography.
I see now that my post was too vague. Please reread my post, and instead of the words “doing such things”, please substitute “allowing people to look at your naked body”.
What about “cyberstalking,” or whatever it’s called? That case where an adult woman pretended to be a teenager online, and slagged on the girl next door, calling her a slut and claiming she had various sex acts, and the kid killed herself?
IRL, you could spread a lot of nasty gossip about a neighbor kid. Even if she took it hard, you could probably get away with it. Yes, it’s slander, but who sues for that?
Not sure if this really counts, but there are some things you can sell to someone else in person, but not via the net only because it’s illegal to mail or ship them to the buyer, such as firearms and (I think) some kinds of hazardous materials.