Skip Navigation

Canada @lemmy.ca

sik0fewl @kbin.social

10mo ago

Blocking Pornhub access in Canada an option, owners say. Here’s why

globalnews.ca Blocking Pornhub access in Canada an option, owners say. Here’s why | Globalnews.ca

A House of Commons committee is set to study legislation proposed by Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne that would require Canadians to verify their age to access porn online.

Blocking Pornhub access in Canada an option, owners say. Here’s why | Globalnews.ca

A House of Commons committee is set to study legislation proposed by Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne that would require Canadians to verify their age to access porn online.

You're viewing a single thread.

68 comments

Any law is only as effective as its level of enforcement. I have a hard time understanding how they think they can regulate access to porn on the Internet. If anything, if legitimate, more mainstream sites get more difficult to access, will our youngsters really stop their Google search there, or will they just click on the next link that just won't have age verification, with potentially much "worse" porn than what they'd have watched initially lol? Did any of the countries that implemented age verification already really see any significant impact?
- Students figure out how to dodge any website blocking schools put into place. It just takes one kid to figure it out, then it spreads through the whole school, and pretty soon everyone is using a sketchy free VPN that might be doing man-in-the-middle attacks or running a crypto miner or whatever.
  The only real solution is parental (and teacher, in the context of schools) training and supervision. Anything else and students will figure out Tor, or VPNs, or private trackers, or pirate streaming sites, or random sketchy websites (depending on what they're trying to block). It's futile, and encourages students to do unsafe things to get around the blocks.
  This will be no different. There are hundreds of ways to avoid this. For a high-profile example, see "VPN" search trends in Utah after porn sites geoblocked the state of Utah.
- At the same time determining how to regulate goods on a digital marketplace is important to figure out.
  Your points are all valid but eventually we’ll need to figure out proper age verification and identification for some things.
  Idk if porn is where it needs to start but just because it’s hard and not easy doesn’t mean it will stop.
  Regulation invariably always brings “black markets” but it doesn’t mean it’s bad on that alone.
  
  eventually we’ll need to figure out proper age verification and identification for some things
  Don't we already have identity verification for many sites where our personal identity matters - banking, government stuff, etc? For the rest, it's like trying to change the color of the sky cause we don't like blue. Short of a fundamental protocol-level change of how the internet works (won't happen any time soon), or adding a centralized level of control like China's Great Firewall and/or forcing ISP-level censorship on top of outlawing VPNs (you'll probably be hard-pressed to make a good argument for this), controlling what one can access on the internet just won't happen.
  Also not sure why anyone would think it's a good idea to hand over our personal information to random websites, even if just for "age verification". I can't even trust my bank with my data, giving it to random commercial sites that have all the incentives in the world to track my consumption habits and link them to my personal identity would be utterly idiotic, porn or not. Hell, we're already doing it with Facebook or Google tracking us across the web, now we want to be required by law to give them our ID as well?
  It's a typical reactionary play to attack the surface of an issue without addressing the root problem. For this particular issue, blocking porn access on sites that will comply will just make it that they'll find their porn elsewhere, that's all, while ignoring the underlying education issue. It's a smoke show that literally doesn't address anything.
  
  @folkrav is right here
  And I'll posit that you likely wouldn't like this ability to exist in the first place.
  Let me walk you through a thought experiment. Any system that requires a verification step is likely tied to identity and putting up a gate to get in based on the identity or using it to get a token to access it ties you to that activity. Ok great let's not let the kids see porn, but the exact same approach can be used to prevent or put a chilling effect on people seeking lgbt content, anti Vax content, unionization information,church gatherings, crypto schemes,academic research, Israel, Palestine, or anything really.
  The internet was never intended to be a secure place it was intended to survive a devastating nuclear attack and keep information flowing. Tacking on arbitrary mortality gates is Orwellian and not how the internet was designed to function. Maybe these guys need to a seperate network (without blackjack and hookers) just for the content you want kids to see and not tell them about the internet till later because these proposed measures are like outlawing the letter q because you don't like that it leads to the word question.
  
  And all of these laws are disingenuous, wrapped in classic “won’t someone please think of the children”
  
  What I am saying is eventually we’ll need to have a better age verification process than that.
  I don’t want to provide my full identity, it would be cool for a zero trust information exchange. This sort of thing is being worked out already with OIDC. Allow the site access to ONLY the information it needs, in that instance age.
  I am saying eventually we will have to get there, I don’t have to agree with it and neither do you. But it’s happening.
  I don’t mean to argue in favor of what is being done here, I’m saying at some point we will need a better system and these things will have to happen and fighting AGAINST them is probably less beneficial than fighting for the system to be done properly.
  These current events are a good place for us to highlight how dumb it’s being done.
  
  "Better" than what, and how, exactly?
  OIDC still needs you to trust one of the parties. Who should I both trust with my age online, and would be fine with letting know where and when I'm trying to jerk off?
  There's no doing this kind of thing "properly". One absolutely should fight against idiotic laws.
  
  There absolutely IS a way to do secure sharing of necessary credentials on demand with the user controlling the data.
  It’s possible. Maybe we ought to make good systems instead of just fight bad ones?
  
  Those systems are getting worked on regardless. It's not either/or. Fight the bad ones regardless.
  
  [...] eventually we’ll need to figure out proper age verification and identification for some things.
  I don't mean to be a "specifics sam" but why? In nearly every case I can think of legitimately dangerous activities (like buying radium or a gun) already necessarily require the user to have access to a credit card or PayPal. Porn is weird specifically because the vast vast majority of porn is just advertising to find the few whales that spend massive amounts of money on it.
  So, like, what's an example of some other kind of content that's free that we don't want children to look at but we're okay with adults looking at?
  
  Key point in my opinion is the definition of « what things » should be so tightly regulated wrt to age for one thing. I doubt access to porn by minors is a proven societal problem and even more so that the proposal to solve via the verification mechanism is proportionate.
  This reeks of puritan religious bullshit.
  Anecdotally I didn’t turn out to be a psycho as much as my relatives that piously shy away from porn.

68 comments