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Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

802 points · 405 comments · hn_acker

  1. forshaper · · focus · HN ↗
    Can someone explain why it wouldn't work to have porn companies use only certain domains, and filter based on those domains, if people are so intent on blocking it?
    1. braiamp · · focus · HN ↗
      Because you shouldn't get behind a thing that shouldn't exists. Technical solutions to societal problems are and will always be naught and fraught with unnecessary jump roping. In this case, the content itself isn't dangerous, what is dangerous is consuming it without the correct context, ie. education.
      1. reddalo · · focus · HN ↗
        They don't care about education, they don't even care about consumption of content. They just want a Trojan Horse ("it's for the safety of our children!") in order to accustom people to censorship.
    2. bell-cot · · focus · HN ↗
      What's the enforcement mechanism if some porn company in Elbonia "forgets" and uses hothothot.el, instead of hothothot.porn?
      1. kstrauser · · focus · HN ↗
        Here my genius self sits, momentarily wondering what M-x hothothot does in Emacs.
        1. rcfox · · focus · HN ↗
          <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1172&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;1172&#x2F;
      2. thaumasiotes · · focus · HN ↗
        A Utah state organ sues them in Utah court, obviously.
      3. someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
        also the whole point of having .el is to be outside US jurisdiction so the US can&#x27;t mess with their domains except for cutting off the whole country (which would splinter the internet).
    3. andrewflnr · · focus · HN ↗
      The smart version of this is that adult content providers send a header or something with every response that contains NSFW, and then you use parental controls on client devices to not show those responses. This even works for sites that show a mix of kid-friendly and adult content cough reddit cough. It offers fewer opportunities for general purpose censorship, though, so there&#x27;s less interest.
      1. CamperBob2 · · focus · HN ↗
        NSFW where? Salt Lake City? New York City? Dubai? Turkmenistan?
        1. andrewflnr · · focus · HN ↗
          Haha, fair point, sort of. Probably as determined by the jurisdiction of the hosting servers, broadened a bit for error margin. But there&#x27;s pretty broad overlap. The discrepancies are likely to be small. If they used the exact some logic that they currently use for age-gating, that would already be an improvement.

          The obvious enhancement is for the metadata to be a little more specific about the content, making it easier for them to just provide facts without making a judgment about whether the content is &quot;appropriate&quot; in any given jurisdiction&#x2F;household&#x2F;etc. Most obviously, we might want to treat medical images and historic art separately.

          1. simoncion · · focus · HN ↗
            &gt; The obvious enhancement is for the metadata to be a little more specific about the content, making it easier for them to just provide facts without making a judgment about whether the content is &quot;appropriate&quot; in any given jurisdiction&#x2F;household&#x2F;etc.

            And because this mechanism would enable guardians to set up reasonably-effective automated censorship for the vulnerable humans in their care without requiring that they provide any information about those humans to any third parties, neither big &quot;social media&quot; companies nor the politicians into whose ears they whisper want anything to do with it.

        2. goobatrooba · · focus · HN ↗
          Easy, no one seems to care about nude men so all you need is an indication of the range of women&#x27;s skin shown

          * Face showing - banned in middle Eastern Muslim countries * Bellies showing - banned in south east Asian Muslim countries * Ankle showing - banned in India * Shoulders showing - banned in catholic countries * ... * Nipples showing - banned in US * Genitals showing - banned in Japan * Personal name mentioned without a personal data release form - banned in Germany * (End of list)

          If necessary can be supplemented by a range of the commonly accepted levels of male nudity * Any skin showing - banned in Vatican * Penis showing - banned in US * (End of list)

          So we have a binary numerical code, or a ternary if you add also practices (ranging probably from female eye contact with the camera and male-female touching over male-male intimacy up to bestiality).

          (Hope clear that this is sarcasm.. do not build the torment nexus!)

        3. someonebaggy · · focus · HN ↗
          You can use different codes to specify what the page contains. Airlines support more meal codes than they actually stock because meals for multiple categories - every VGML (vegan) meal is valid for someone who requests VOML (vegetarian with eggs and milk allowed). And every page with no human skin showing is valid for someone whose filtering rules are no skin except the face!
    4. petcat · · focus · HN ↗
      The US Congress evaluated [1] the legality of forcing adult websites onto certain TLDs in the 2000s and it was determined to be legally ambiguous and would almost certainly face substantial 1st amendment challenges. So they didn&#x27;t pursue it.

      <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.everycrsreport.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;20080714_RL33224_1e6b938ac811728e431489084d35dc26e4e8c720.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.everycrsreport.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;20080714_RL33224_1e6b93...

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