Comment on Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year agoHmm, the article is a little confusing, but it sounds like they’re mostly just complaining about the age verification, not really suing over that specifically. The real sticking point, and the one they actually stand a good chance of winning in court is about the warning they’re being required to display that’s both libelous and factually false. Texas for better or worse is within their rights to require age verification, even the very odious version of it being proposed that would require collecting state IDs, so it’s unlikely that they would actually win if that was their only issue with the law. Fortunately Texas (and others) massively overstepped by trying to slap a health and safety warning a la cigarette packages onto porn sites since they let a bunch of nutty politicians write the text of the message rather than actual medical professionals (probably because they couldn’t find any respectable medical professional that would endorse their wacky notions).
pjhenry1216@kbin.social 1 year ago
Not really. It does kind of tread on the first amendment. Like, imagine I wasn't allowed to say something to you because the government doesn't allow me to. What does that sound like? Like, you can't put barriers on free speech.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a stupid take misunderstanding both the 1st amendment and free speech. The government is only prohibited from restricting citizens’ free speech against itself.
But the government regulates all kinds of corporate speech, they’re not allowed to lie, some are mandated to put certain labels and information on their products, many are required to submit financial reports, etc.
Also, there’s plenty of limits on free speech for citizens when applied to other parties: libel, slander, defamation, hate speech, etc.
But you can criticise your government, you can even slander them and have no requirements on being truthful while doing it.
If you don’t understand the rights, you are vulnerable to having them taken away by someone who knows to avoid the specific words you’ve memorised.
pjhenry1216@kbin.social 1 year ago
They restrict speech that violates the rights of others. And much of that is in civil court, not criminal. And a lot more of that is consumer protection in regards to how to legally sell something, not simple speech. You're confusing a lot of things with speech that are absolutely falling under entirely different regulations. And to be clear, the lawsuit does claim both aspects are violating the constitution. It's not just the warning that they're complaining about.
You're misunderstanding in your explanation shows you are less well versed in this aspect than I am.
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There is no absolute right to free speech as has been ruled again and again and again. Restricting access to pornography to adults is one of the areas that has been ruled as an allowable restriction, or more accurately there are laws against providing children with pornography, just like there are laws restricting access to alcohol and tobacco. The interesting argument in this case is, can the state require a specific mechanism of restriction be employed. Looked at another way, would the case hold up if instead of porn we were talking about alcohol? If Texas required a site selling wine for instance to maintain a database of customers state IDs would that be legal? I suspect the answer would be yes, but it’s debatable, so it’s risky to bring a lawsuit with that as its sole basis.
The warning on the other hand, that’s a MUCH stronger argument. More so even than censoring speech, compelling speech is looked down on far more severely. The law is asserting as facts, things that at best are debatable, and at worst are just downright lies, and forcing sites to repeat those dubious “facts” is really not going to go over well. They are so bad in fact as to verge in libel. Focusing on the warning label is a pretty easy slam dunk in their case, while going after the ID portion is much more iffy. I don’t think they’ll be successful in getting the law overturned on the basis of the ID collection, but I do think they’ll succeed on the basis of the required warning label.