Dem
47
GOP
53
The folks who run the state of Ohio are all-in on the MAGA goal of rolling the clock back to the 1950s. Or maybe it's the 1850s; we can never quite remember. What they do not seem to know is that even if they are successful in their time-machine acrobatics, there will still be plenty of pornography in the world. There were all sorts of underground magazines and films of that sort 75 years ago. And if you go all the way back to the antebellum era? Well, back then, it was certainly easier to procure a prostitute than it would be today, even if you are in New Orleans or Las Vegas or Times Square. And it was (probably) easier to get some smutty pictures, too (it's a very close call, they weren't/aren't hard to find in either time/place).
We mention this because a few "activists" in the Ohio legislature seem to have missed the fact that if people want pornography, they will find a way to get it. And so, these activists have been trying to pass a law that would compel adult sites to do age verification before allowing users to access them. Keeping people under 18 from viewing such material is a goal that many Americans, including many readers, might well agree with. But, as a practical matter, it is nearly impossible. There are lots of jurisdictional issues when it comes to enforcement, particularly if a website's HQ is in Peoria, IL; its registrar is in Buffalo, NY; and its servers are in the Bahamas. There are also lots of tools that tech-savvy people, including tech-savvy teenagers, can use to defeat various verification schemes. It is also the case that, in the modern version of the dilemma faced by Justice Potter Stewart, it's not too easy to draw the line between "site that is pornographic" and "site that has nudity or other such content but is not pornographic." Consequently, past efforts to pass an anti-porn bill in Ohio have languished in committee, as even most Republicans in the Buckeye State didn't want to take on this particular challenge.
Proving that they've been paying attention, the anti-porn legislators took another tack, borrowing a trick from the bag used by the members of Congress. When Ohio passed its most recent budget bill, the anti-porn legislation was stuck in there as an amendment. That was enough to make the anti-porn faction's fantasies into reality, and to finally make certain that underage Ohioans could no longer visit adult sites.
Or... not so much, as it turns out. See, the committee process (aka "markups") actually has a purpose. Several purposes, in fact, and one of those is to allow people who know what they are talking about to go through legislation with a fine-toothed comb, and to potentially identify and fix problems. Because there was no markup process, there was no serious vetting of the legislation. And so, it contains a passage exempting "interactive computer service(s)" from its provisions. It is hard to know exactly why that ended up in there. Maybe there was copying and pasting going on with other bills. Maybe the lawmakers were trying to make sure the law didn't apply to Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, for fear of political blowback (or for fear of those entities yanking their political contributions).
In any case, "interactive computer service(s)" doesn't actually mean "social media." There's a fair body of federal communications law on this point, and it actually means "any site where you can create an account." Since nearly every porn site either offers the opportunity to create an account (e.g., PornHub) or basically requires an account (e.g., OnlyFans), then nearly all porn sites are "interactive computer service(s)," as that term is defined by law. And so, they are exempt from the Ohioans' attempt at censorship. And so, the would-be censors in Ohio most certainly did not achieve their goals. In fact, they almost certainly did the opposite. The adult sites now have every motivation to REALLY push account creation, so as to make abundantly clear they are "interactive." It's possible that some 16-year-old Ohioan would have been "User2278927" but will now decide to establish accounts at their preferred sites, and become—we don't know—8008L0V3_67, or YAYPEN15, something like that.
Obviously, we do not approve of government censorship when that censorship has to do with some faction's notion of morality, as opposed to being in service of some greater public good. If parents don't want their kids to see such material, then it's on the parents to solve that problem. And we definitely don't approve of a self-appointed minority of moral arbiters doing an end-run around their colleagues, so as to achieve their goals. So, those folks deserve to be the butt of the joke, and that's exactly what they are right now. (Z)