Several governments have already effectively banned sites like Pornhub by creating regimes where people have to mail their ID to a central clearinghouse (which creates a huge chilling effect.) The article talks about “reasonable age verification measures” and so saying it’s unenforceable seems a little bit premature. Also, you can bet those measures won’t be in any way reasonable once the Florida legislature gets through with them.
In my opinion, these governments haven't implemented 'effective' bans (though maybe chilling, as you say) but primarily created awkward new grey markets for the personal data that these policies rely on for theatrics. Remember when China 'banned' youth IDs from playing online games past 10PM? I think a bunch of grandparents became gamers around the same time...
Another example is some Korean games requiring essentially a Korean ID to play. A few years ago there was a game my guild was hyped about and we played the Korean version a bit. You more or less bought the identity of some Korean guy via a service that was explicitly setup for this. Worked surprisingly well and was pretty streamlined.
Which is exactly what happens for markets that are desirable enough. We compare bans of things not enough people care about, to bans of things that people are willing to do crazy things for. They don't yield the same results.
At least from personal experience, when there was a period where my ISP in the UK started requiring ID verification for porn, I literally ceased to watch it.
Making something difficult to do actually works to _curb_ behavior.
You're proving the argument that the parent set forth. Anyone who wants to visit Pornhub can just visit one of the many sites that isn't abiding by the new law. However, that's not due to a lack of legislation, but rather a lack of enforcement, or, perhaps, enforceability. If laws always worked I'd be for more of them. My argument is not that we should never make laws because it's futile but rather that some laws are more futile than others and having laws go unenforced weakens government and enforcing them inequitably is injust.
Also social policy enforcement is a generational thing. The UK is only just getting toward outright banning cigarettes by making it illegal for anyone born after X date from ever buying them. Eventually you have a whole generation that isn't exposed to smoking and on the whole thinks the habit is disgusting, which it is.
Except that some people born after that date will still acquire them, get addicted, and then what? Prosecute them like drug possession?
It's infantilizing and dumb. Grown adults should be allowed to smoke tobacco if they so wish and smoking rates are already way down due to marketing and alternatives. Noone needs to be prosecuted.
You don't need to prosecute any buyers at all though. All you need to do is make it illegal to sell in shops, and illegal to import. There will be a black market, sure, but how many people are going to go through the trouble and expense to source black market tobacco? Not that many. And everyone benefits because universal healthcare means everyone shares the cost of the health effects that are avoided.
I think it's hyperbolic to look at tobacco like other drugs. Tobacco is a lifestyle thing, it doesn't get you high, it's a cultural habit. There are only upsides to getting rid of the social demand for it.
If you think taking tobacco away from consumers is infantilizing, why yes, yes it is. We are dealing with children's futures. Adults get to continue smoking, children less likely to even want to smoke as the social acceptance goes down and with that there is less and less desire to smoke. Nicotine doesn't do much other than get you addicted, no one is chasing after a pronounced high with it, people start smoking because it's perceived as cool.
I can't imagine an adult wanting to start smoking, most adults get addicted in their teens.
I think you have have an import ban, and a black market, and still see significant gains in eroding the demand. I do not think people should be prosecuted for possession, but the UK will probably make some bad decisions there, but that doesn't mean the overall policy is bad.
My main issue is that the only effective way to ban access to a website is to also ban VPNs and any sort of network tunneling. A great firewall would have to be constructed which I am very much against. Even China’s firewall is surpassable and it is questionable how much it is worth operating given the massive costs which would be incurred.
I think the government should invest in giving parents the tools to control their child’s online access. Tools such as DNS blocklists, open source traffic filtering software which parents could set up in their home, etc.
