Pornhub and Utah

Author: ludofl3x

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@Savant
said no Nigerian ever :D
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@Greyparrot
True, but that's the Nigerian government's fault
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@Savant
once the government goes too far
That's the point. They're not going too far. If a license is easy to get, the vast majority of people won't go outside the law to view illicit content. Why risk getting caught?
Sorry, there has been a context shift and I'm not sure if I did it. Are you talking about a license to view as well as upload?

Even if the license is easy to get, will enforcing that license be easy? How easily do gangs and cartels bypass car licensing requirements? Gun permit requirements?

A sex slave operation are going to be the only ones who can easily bypass this by using stolen or bought private keys. For everyone else it will be another annoying hoop to jump through, it will be a much bigger issue for porn distribution companies. If the distributors find it too annoying to do, they'll pull out. There are plenty of examples for this too, silicon valley giants have threatened to pull out of entire countries.

Thus the final reason to bypass the law would not be simply annoyance but the fact it is the only way to get to the majority of content.

with the right crypto technology no one can stop or trace
I don't think anyone has better tech resources than the FBI. Every time scammers think they're one step ahead of the US government, they're not.
That is a carefully maintained illusion to discourage attempts. I can't prove it to you until you learn enough math and computer science to understand private public encryption, but this isn't some Hollywood "Ohhh wow we spent millions of dollars so now we have +15 hacking".

The system is stacked in favor of the person trying to hide information, incredibly so.

When the FBI gets someone, it's because that someone made a tactical error; not because the FBI broke encryption. If you're familiar with a story a while back where the FBI was asking Apple to decrypt one of their phones, that is when I became sure this was a crafted narrative. After Apple refused the FBI claimed they had gotten into the phone without Apple's help. I am almost certain this was a lie.

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Are you talking about a license to view as well as upload
No, just to upload. But you could only legally watch explicit content that's licensed.

When the FBI gets someone, it's because that someone made a tactical error
Human error is so common that it's practically inevitable. That's why scammers get caught. The FBI is very good at latching onto a single error in order to take down a large network of criminal activity.

I think you're misunderstanding my main point. Illicit content will still exist, but it will be easier to identify, and law-abiding citizens won't watch it unintentionally, hence reducing demand and protecting the privacy of human trafficking victims.
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@Savant
Are you talking about a license to view as well as upload
No, just to upload. But you could only legally watch explicit content that's licensed.
So say you implement this law, and pornhub moves its servers to Brazil and says "can't serve the US anymore, we can't get all this content licensed"

Do you think everyone in the US will go "oh well, no more pornhub for us. Guess we'll just wait for something else"

No, they'll take the 5 minutes to download Tor and look at pornhub from Brazil. Once people are used to accessing porn through proxies they'll never go back.

I think maybe there is a technical solution, but it's a solution to a wider problem than simply porn. The wider problem is authorship, whether it's a song, art, porn, an essay, a book, etc.. etc...

People produce something, but a bunch of people try to steal it, even if there is no money involve they try to steal credit and in the worse case you can't even prove you made it.

What complicates this is pseudonyms, "pen names"; which would be a very big issue in porn production as just about no one wants their real identity publicly traceable to the porn they produce or consume.

It may be possible to create a cryptographic system that allows for psuedonyms that can't be traced back to one particular real person, but can be confirmed to be generated from a real person.

Creating such a pseudonym without the real persons private key would be impossible.

You could then have whitelists, government maintained or government influenced of confirmed citizens. Even the government couldn't trace a pseudonym back to the real citizen (without the real citizen's consent) but they could tell for sure that it was created from a real citizen.

When a person uploads anything they register a checksum on a public blockchain, thus forever proving that they were the originator.

This wouldn't really solve the sex trafficking, but neither does your suggestion; and for the same reason: sex traffickers are either getting people outside the system or they are kidnapping people in the system. If they have kidnapped someone of course that person will give up their private key. You might be able to have a "help me" decoy key but there isn't much that can be done when someone has your physical body at gunpoint.

For the same reason if they have a real person they'll just use their license to upload.

If your idea was simply to block all porn produced outside the USA, good luck with that. That will definitely be bypassed when it only takes 5 minutes.

When the FBI gets someone, it's because that someone made a tactical error
Human error is so common that it's practically inevitable.
It gets less inevitable the more people use carefully designed systems. See bitcoin tumblers vs Monero.

The FBI is very good at latching onto a single error in order to take down a large network of criminal activity.
If they were that good, why is there a sex slave issue to begin with?

I think you're misunderstanding my main point. Illicit content will still exist, but it will be easier to identify, and law-abiding citizens won't watch it unintentionally, hence reducing demand and protecting the privacy of human trafficking victims.
In that case I agree, but with two caveats:

1.) It's easier said than done, there are a lot of stupid and totally ineffective ways of trying to verify origin of content. What I suggested is pretty much the only way that wouldn't create another giant bloated inefficient government agency.

2.) There is no point making it illegal to watch unauthenticated content since people can and will just bypass that at will. Making it illegal will only trigger a polarization that will move the industry into the darkness (like prohibition). On the other hand making it just information that is available for ethical consumers has a chance of slowly taking over the market over twenty years.
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pornhub moves its servers to Brazil
That seems to be the crux of your argument, but why would they do that when plenty of people in the US can still legally upload? Is no one going to serve the US market?
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@Savant
pornhub moves its servers to Brazil
That seems to be the crux of your argument, but why would they do that when plenty of people in the US can still legally upload? Is no one going to serve the US market?
Of course someone is going to serve the US market, pornhub; hosting American content from Brazil. The only way to stop it is to destroy the internet and make privacy coins illegal.

That's far less liability for any distributor  than being required to collect license information. Also there are tons of people who won't trust a distributor with their true name. What happens when that distributor leaks a database or simply sells your info for blackmailers?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
hosting American content from Brazil
No, because American content hosted from Brazil would be illegal if not verified. PH will host verified content as well in order to not cut out a huge market.

What happens when that distributor leaks a database or simply sells your info for blackmailers?
I'm pretty sure porn isn't anonymous.
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@Savant
hosting American content from Brazil
No, because American content hosted from Brazil would be illegal if not verified.
Illegal but unstoppable doesn't mean much.

What happens when that distributor leaks a database or simply sells your info for blackmailers?
I'm pretty sure porn isn't anonymous.
Apparently on pornhub it isn't:


Sounds an awful lot like your suggestion, and it was two years ago. I wonder what the outcome has been? It seems like the existence of this thread shows "easier said than done", either that or Utah is simply very confused about what could be reasonably expected.
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Illegal but unstoppable doesn't mean much
It does if people don't want to risk being arrested.

Sounds an awful lot like your suggestion, and it was two years ago
So you've just linked to something proving my plan works? This proves my point that companies will cooperate if forced to. But PH is not the only adult entertainment company, and I'm not sure we can rely on their goodwill to continue the policy indefinitely. Things change when laws aren't explicit. I'd be in favor of making the law clearer in this regard, and I don't think it's beating a dead horse.
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@Savant
Illegal but unstoppable doesn't mean much
It does if people don't want to risk being arrested.
Not much of a risk, hence the "unstoppable" part.

Sounds an awful lot like your suggestion, and it was two years ago
So you've just linked to something proving my plan works?
If it worked, why did the Utah law drive them out?
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Not much of a risk
A lot of people will assume it is a risk. People are very hesitant to break the law. The fact is that the police do find new ways to catch criminals. I'm arguing that human error will help criminals get caught, not necessarily flawed technology. So far, the perception of the FBI's ability to find criminals has discouraged a lot of would-be criminals. I think the FBI can adapt as much as the criminals can. It seems you would be arguing that eventually, it will be impossible for the police to find anyone who produces CP. I doubt they're going to let that happen.

 why did the Utah law drive them out
The Utah law required age verification and did not provide a good way of doing that. You linked to a new verification system that PH is currently using to prove that uploaded content is consensual. That's pretty much my proposal. That other companies are forced to do what PH is currently doing with regards to verification.
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@Savant
 why did the Utah law drive them out
The Utah law required age verification and did not provide a good way of doing that.
Are you saying that Yoti isn't verifying age even though it requires a government issued ID?
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@ludofl3x
Why would age verifications be bad for a site which specifically requires such verifications?

In my opinion porn should be banned and distributers/producers imprisoned. But this is a good first step
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@Dr.Franklin
Is there a point in asking if you have a justification for that opinion?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It required uploading an ID every time the site is visited. I don't think the law was very practical. PH wanted to identify users once and greenlight devices, which I think is reasonable.
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@Savant
That sounds like Utah just wanted to ban porn without dealing with 1st amendment challenges, which is exactly my point about regulation and permits.

When the government is providing information people can decide if it's reasonable or not. In this case they would see right through the BS and go to PH anyway.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
just wanted to ban porn without dealing with 1st amendment challenges
Well that's what the Supreme Court is for. I think my proposal is much more reasonable.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Porn is evil, simple as that.
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@Dr.Franklin
Q: Is there a point in asking if you have a justification for that opinion?
A: Porn is evil, simple as that.

Real Answer: No, there is no point asking.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Can another internet be made in competition with existing internet?
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@hey-yo
There's no need. It's the government that would have to make a competing internet if they wanted to control it.

Understanding this really requires a fair amount of knowledge about networking and IT.

The internet is more a protocol and a collection of servers than anything else. The protocol defines how to transfer data and resolves addressing. DNS is how you go from a www.debateart.com -> 104.21.70.199. Routing is how every node between you and the server addressed by 104.21.70.199 knows where to send packets.

There are huge nodes, giant central routers controlled by governments. DNS registries also have some interface with government (or else two people could claim to own the same domain name).

That doesn't mean the government "controls" the internet, I mean they do in a sense. They can try to restrict traffic from certain IPs or domain names passing through the nodes they control, but because the protocol is not designed to be observed by government agents it can be encrypted, both the contents final destination, and origin.

If "we" needed to get around government censorship we only need to replace the big nodes they control and the DNS registries. This can be done in a distributed manner using peer to peer mesh networks. Many people have already put a lot of thought into this. Any rumblings from the various governments of the world would only accelerate development.

Then the internet becomes our internet. All the same websites.

Of course the government can then declare that any person or company who isn't using government controlled nodes or protocols designed to be snooped by the FBI/CIA is violating the law, but that isn't significantly different from them simply creating their own internet. A crime which 3/4 the population are guilty of will just be prohibition 2.0. It won't last.

To give you an example in between full peer-to-peer and what exists now, consider starlink. Suppose SpaceX sees the writing on the wall, they open source the network and lock the firmware to a blockchain signoff. Effectively donating the network to the population on Earth.

Then even if a court didn't buy "but we don't own it anymore" there would be nothing else to do but shoot the network down. Again, if we're at the point that a government is shooting down communications satellites for the sake of control and censorship, and we don't insurrect the hell out of them? We're doomed.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
That is my justification
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@Dr.Franklin
Then you're philosophical handicapped, at best you shouldn't be on a debate site. At worst you're a danger to your fellow men.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
ok.

29 days later

DianeEllison
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"That's an interesting development you mentioned about Pornhub and Utah. I haven't heard any specific reactions, but it's not surprising that the recent law about age verification requirements led to Pornhub blocking access in Utah. Pornhub is a scrapyard. But it's got people scrambling for VPNs, huh?  By the way, if you're looking for some alternative adult content, you might want to check out https://ehocams.com. It's a rad site where you can explore and enjoy all sorts of spicy stuff. So, keep the VPN searches going if you're in Utah, and remember to stay curious and safe! Cheers!"