The bill has now landed in the Senate for consideration
This seems entirely unenforceable. All an adult site has to do is say “We’re not doing business in Wisconsin” and block Wisconsin IP addresses. Then if someone from Wisconsin accesses their content via a VPN, well, literally the point of doing that is that your traffic no longer appears to be coming from Wisconsin. So how would they know?
The only workable version, as the article suggests, is to basically ban VPN operators from selling to people in Wisconsin. But even then, with a little technical know how, or a good guide, someone can rent a $5 VPS and set up their own Wireguard tunnel to route all their traffic through it and boom, now they’re a customer from Germany. So are they going to ban VPS as well? This isn’t a solvable problem and never will be.
So how would they know?
Because they do a whois on the IP and see it’s owned by a VPN provider or a VPS provider and then they block it.
But only the VPN provider would know if the source is Wisconsin. And only if they’re using one VPN. Double up and now no one knows.
Right, since the web site doesn’t know where you are, they don’t know that you are not in a jurisdiction that requires ID, so they play it safe and ask you for ID regardless.
Many don’t “play it safe” in that fashion. It’s safer to not know. For them. Because if senators and other congress critters start getting tracked provably, then things can turn sour really quick.
Imagine of grindr required id? Every GOP event would be a lawsuit minefield for then.
Many don’t “play it safe” in that fashion.
I know. I was only saying that they can, and some do, so we can’t just assume that having access to VPN or VPS will get us around these laws.
If a website geoblocks a state, then that state no longer has any jurisdiction to that website. If the state doesnt want users accessing ‘restricted’ sites with vpns, they should be imposing their laws on the local isps to block vpns…
If a website geoblocks a state, then that state no longer has any jurisdiction to that website.
Yes, it would be more likely for a site that is geoblocking to be ok with clients using a VPN.
If the state doesnt want users accessing ‘restricted’ sites with vpns, they should be imposing their laws on the local isps to block vpns…
Sure. But my argument still stands that a site which is not geoblocking such states and has a lot of direct revenue to lose (meaning a commercial site like Fansly which makes all their money by taking a cut of the creators’ revenue, using payment processing services like Visa and Mastercard, and is based in the US so they can be sued by multiple states) can detect that you’re on a VPN (and by the same method that you’re connecting from a cloud service provider like AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, etc) and subsequently make you ID yourself just to cover their own liability. They don’t have to detect you’re in Wisconsin or Texas or wherever, they can just blanket push the ID check on all known VPN and cloud provider IPs and be compliant with all country and states ID laws in one go. That’s a much easier technical implementation for them in order to stay compliant everywhere.
What liability? If they are on a vpn there is no indication where the user originates from. States can sue all they want, but they have no legal standing as they have to prove users from their states are accessing restricted sites. It is utterly ridiculous to uphold a website to a state laws they have no presence in.
All website have to do is geoblock and reject payments from those states. If users bypass those restrictions, thats on the state to figure it out from.within their state.
Or do you think retailers across state borders should stop a customers from buying products that are ‘illegal’ in their home state?
What liability?
The liability of some asshat like Ken Paxton suing them over Texas residents being able to access adult content without an ID by going through a VPN, and then Visa/Mastercard pulling out, and killing their revenue. Pornhub didn’t really care about all the reported abuse content at first. They only cared when payment processors got involved and then Pornhub deleted all of the content uploaded by non-verified users and required users to be verified before they could upload. Look at what just happened with adult games on Steam and Itch because of pressure from payment processors.
It is utterly ridiculous to uphold a website to a state laws they have no presence in.
Then maybe you can convince Fansly to stop requiring an ID for connections from VPN providers (they are already doing this).
All website have to do is geoblock and reject payments from those states.
Why in the hell would a company that makes their money off of a percentage of the creators’ revenue (sites that already have ID requirements and implementation for the content creators to keep the payment processors happy) rather than ad revenue do that? If the creators start losing huge chunks of revenue because either the platform is blocking a third of the country or the payment processors leave, then the site will lose the content that brings the customers to it.
Or do you think retailers across state borders should stop a customers from buying products that are ‘illegal’ in their home state?
No, I don’t. And I don’t think sites should be complying with these stupid ID laws either. But here we are, and here they are. So what does my opinion even matter?
I dont get your argument.
Yes websites that want revenue from all states would have to adhere to all states laws…
Whats with the circular logic?
In response to this initial statement
Then if someone from Wisconsin accesses their content via a VPN, well, literally the point of doing that is that your traffic no longer appears to be coming from Wisconsin. So how would they know?
My argument is that sites don’t have to know if you are from a jurisdiction that requires an ID, if they want to take the “leave no chance” approach of instead ensuring you’re not from such a jurisdiction. They will know you’re on a VPN because they can reverse lookup an IP to see that it is owned by a VPN provider (or VPS provider), and the site can choose to either block you or ask you to age verify based on what they do know instead of what they don’t know.
Stupid ignorant tech-illiterates trying to speak tech.
So sick of these fascist fucking filth.
A lot of restrictions do not matter anymore when you sail the high sea.
I’m sure xHamster will be right on that /s
The worst part about this is the long term consequences of this. Sure you banned porn but now there is massive black market for it where you know women are going to be abused and less protected than today.
Not only than but AI generates porn videos. Sure avg home PC does 5 second video in 5 hrs but what else ppl going to do? there is no porn! They’ll scronge through old sears catalog to get off.
Like who’s winning with these laws? All I see are losses all-around.
What exactly are they even trying to accomplish?
Removed by mod
How are they going to stop people from using international sites and VPNs?
I know, what if we set up one big giant firewall to block anything objectionable! It could monitor traffic for the whole nation! Make Access Gated Again!
/s
My problem with these measures is that none of them make the internet Chinese enough. I want a total crackdown on Silicon Valley and separation of all minors from the adult internet, with only educational content available. It would be part of the wider program to rebuild the USA’s skilled industrial labor force. I am the only person in the country with the wherewithal to become climate internet Stalin.
/sincere
The space between Minnesota and Michigan wants to ban vpns!
