The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to block a Texas law requiring pornographic websites to verify the age of their users.

The justices rejected an emergency appeal filed by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry. The provision of House Bill 1181, signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott, remains in effect even as the association’s full appeal is weighed by the Supreme Court.

There were no noted dissents from the court’s one-sentence order.

Similar age verification laws have passed in other states, including Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.

The Texas law carries fines of up to $10,000 per violation that could be raised to up to $250,000 per violation by a minor.

  • SuiXi3D
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    847 months ago

    ‘Court allows Texas to ban porn websites’ is closer to the truth. None of them have the ability (or desire) to implement a system to accurately verify anyone’s identity.

    • @pleasejustdie
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      457 months ago

      In uh… unrelated news VPN usage in Texas up almost 300%.

      • SuiXi3D
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        117 months ago

        I might’ve recovered my long-standing NordVPN account…

      • @GraniteM
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        57 months ago

        Pornographic DVD and print media sales up a similar amount!

    • @disguy_ovahea
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      257 months ago

      It will become more compelling for them as more states enact similar legislation. The article states that Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia already have.

      Enabling identification systems for porn websites will lead to a massive privacy concern. It’s only a matter of time until one has its user database hacked.

      • sylver_dragon
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        147 months ago

        It’s only a matter of time until one has its user database hacked.

        Not exactly porn, but the Ashley Madison data breach was in the same zip code. It caused a lot of embarrassment for a lot of people. But, self righteous prudes will be self righteous prudes, not matter what they are trying to limit/ban.

        • @disguy_ovahea
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          37 months ago

          I remember that. It ended a lot of marriages. Y’know, you’d think the repressed and closeted Christians would care more about the privacy of the porn they watch.

          • sylver_dragon
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            117 months ago

            What they think/fear privately doesn’t matter, Evangelical Christianity is a performative religion. The entire goal is to appear to be the most pious prig on the block. What you get up to, behind closed doors, doesn’t matter, unless you get caught. And no one believes that they will get caught. So, the religion devolves into a game of “one-ups-man-ship”. With each one trying to prove how “holy” they are by claiming ever higher standards of “holy”, while basically none of them live up to the ideal they are putting forth. When a member’s discretions get exposed, they then have to engage in a ritual “purification”, claiming how bad they were, that they have learned the error of their ways and now they have found God again (he got lost behind the dryer with the socks). And all will be forgiven, so long as you do not question the delusion religion.

      • @lepinkainen
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        17 months ago

        The states will only need to implement a properly verifiable online ID system first.

    • @[email protected]
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      77 months ago

      Suggestions for one on a whole house scale. Ideally I’d love to be able to do some method of split tunneling where I route banned IP ranges over the VPN vs normal traffic over standard routes. I guess I could set up a vpn tunnel on my synology and then add static routes to it on my gateway…

      • @[email protected]
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        27 months ago

        Yeah if you’re willing to do some sysadmining, it’s pretty easy to set up any vpn supporting openvpn or wireguard. Set the default route to be over the ISP interface, and then direct a list of known IP ranges over the vpn interface.

  • Match!!
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    217 months ago

    did the teen birth rate get too low or smth

    • @foggy
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      7 months ago

      Nah, military enrollment.

      There aren’t enough poors being minted for the upcoming world war.

      No more abortions, no more porn. Oh btw your kids are gonna get fucked so hard, joining the army will seem like a good idea.

  • @goatman360
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    17 months ago

    They claim wanting to protect children and teens but these states are the easiest to find and get guns, regulated and unregulated. It’s strictly puritanical lawmaking wanting to be a pissing contest of who can get church and state combined.