Pornhub walls off Utah in age-verification law protest Smut surfers in Utah are facing disappointment if attempting to visit Pornhub lately. Rather than their planned, er, viewing, they're instead greeted with a video informing them all access to the site has been blocked within their state. In that safe-for-work video, shown to all Pornhub visitors with a Utah IP address, Cherie …
Of course it was! "Mass debate" in this case entailed keeping the discussion inside the Utah legislature, the only "mass" they care about.
Who are "they"?
They’re overwhelmingly members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (86%).
"They are mostly white (93%).
They’re predominantly men (76%)."
And, of course,
"They are very Republican (78%)."
Did you REALLY expect anything else??
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/01/20/utah-legislature-who-are/
Maybe El Reg also uses IP Tracking tech and hence knows how many website visitors access the site from each and every country, and possibly each/every state/county/shire etc.
And if the majority are US-based, then clearly the editorial will be more focussed on US based content.
Maybe El Reg needs to create country-specific news sections, just to appease any of the non-US netizens?
"And if the majority are US-based, then clearly the editorial will be more focussed on US based content."
And yet, when it was slightly less US focussed, it attracted a great many US readers. So sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. It's how advertisers work. If a market is expanding, concentrate on that one, even if what you are doing alienates other markets and removes the uniqueness you had.
"The Tory government had spunked millions on the project (despite every man and his dog in the IT industry and others saying it was a stupid idea) to then cancel it."
The politicians (of all stripes) have to make sure they milk everything they can for the most amount of money possible even if it is destined to fail. How else can they keep their family members and friends employed? They can also shift a bunch of the 'studies' to think tanks that will hire them when they fail to be re-elected.
"Er, this is kind of relevant to the UK, 'cos we have had that 'Online Safety Bill' with it's proposed age verification requirement, but without any method proposed of achieving that goal."
The state of California approved the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads and put the work of coming up with some draft laws on the highway patrol. The problem was that testing was approved before the highway patrol had any time to consider what sort of regulations might be appropriate. The FAA approved a regulation that made real-time tracking of drones (Small commercial stuff, not military) without there being any mechanism in place to do the tracking. ADS-B is out and cell service isn't available or reliable enough in many places to come up with a system based on that. This means that OEM's have no way to add the functionality and people like me with older drones that are no longer made won't have a way to upgrade so it's another $1,200 or more for a new one.
Though some are probably secretly mad they can't get to pornhub anymore.
If you look at stats for whatever reason Utah is always #1 in the US for porn browsing. I guess the Mormon religious repression has to find an outlet somewhere. I have to think there are some people in Utah pretty unhappy with that status, so effectively banning one of the biggest porn websites across the whole state has to make them happy. Unfortunately for them, there are countless sites, and most of them will simply ignore Utah's laws and they won't be able to do anything about it!
It's pure politics and BS at it's worst here. Seems the far right is going after everything (except power, greed and maybe adult beverages... oh... and mistresses.) I'm not sure how this will all end up but things are a bit scary.
I'm reminded of an old curse.... "may you live in interesting times."
Traditionally, the Mormons are keen on large families. I expect they want to keep people making new voters rather than wasting genetic material and time doing other things. Singing, "Every sperm is sacred......" Ok, that was aimed at Catholics, but it's still people in tall hats and robes telling others what to do.
"Though some are probably secretly mad they can't get to pornhub anymore."
The internet is all about porn and cat videos. The bigger trick is not seeing ads and promos for those. I'm amazed that the "adult entertainment" is still around since it's so easy to find free naughty movies and photos with very little effort.
There are a non-trivial number of Mormons in Nevada. And, given that Nevada infamously is heavily into sex, gambling, alcohol, caffeine (a no-no in Mormonism) and the US Air Force, which is well-supplied with personnel heavily into sex, gambling, alcohol, and caffeine, the Mormons there tend to be, ahem, Hard Core.
Exits to 'Charlie, He's My Darling', a song that implies other practices that Mormons won't like.
Geolocation works exactly the same for IPv6 as it does for IPv4. The owner of the addresses registers the assignments of blocks.
For example, if an ISP's POP in Utah has a /20 pool of IPv4 addresses (enough for 2^12 users) and a /44 pool of IPv6 addresses (enough for 2^12 users with a /56 each), both blocks will (or should) be recorded as being used in that POP, and that will trickle through to geolocation databases.
It's not an issue for pornhub though:
$ dig +short pornhub.com aaaa
$
The state of Utah in the United States passed a law in 2019 requiring all providers of online pornographic content to include an opt-in age verification system, with fines for non-compliance. This law was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in 2020, and its fate is still uncertain.
Regarding the statement comparing the Utah law to potential age verification laws in the UK, it's worth noting that age verification for online pornography was indeed proposed in the UK a few years ago, but it was eventually dropped due to concerns about privacy and security. However, the issue has been raised again recently, with some politicians calling for stricter measures to protect children from accessing adult content online.
While the specifics of the Utah law and potential UK laws may differ, the underlying concern for protecting minors from accessing pornographic material online is a common thread. There are certainly arguments to be made on both sides of the issue, with some arguing that age verification is a necessary step to protect children, while others raise concerns about privacy, security, and the potential for unintended consequences.
They don't get it, but let's also take a moment to blame the LIBERALS, yes the liberals (note: i lean that way) for *continuing* to be ABSOLUTELY SPINELESS and never pummeling them, nonstop, with their hypocrisy, at every available opportunity, until the World+dog is so sick of it all that the conservatives cower away in fear.
But no no, can't have that. We wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, right??!
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"It's odd firearms are now the major cause of death amongst children in the USA, overtaking vehicular death, yet states like Utah have a driver's license, but no license required for gun ownership."
It's not a good idea to quote the current US President. Firearms in the US are NOT a leading cause of deaths for under 18's. I'd be wary of any stats that include gang related violence as those "children" are acting like adults.
BTW, there are many many laws in the US regulating firearms. There are also laws about driving too fast, drink driving, theft, etc. A recent shooter was booked and released from custody a week ago after committing a major crime. If they judges aren't going to keep hold of criminals when they've been caught, ....... A story today was about a resident in San Francisco that's had his home broken into 8 times recently. The police don't even bother to pretend to take reports and advised him to hire some private security. I expect he'll have all sorts of fun trying to get compensation from his insurance since they require a copy of a police report.
Utah has some of the most permissive gun laws in the country (ref. Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 2013. Per this Wikipedia article, carrying a firearm with the intent to unlawfully assault another is a class A misdemeanor under Utah law.
But of course, one's willy is not considered a firearm in Utah. Wonder why that is...
Ahem. It’s possible that you have not seen “Full Metal Jacket”. And let me quote R. Lee Emery playing R. Lee Emery as a Drill Instructor: “This is my rifle, this is my gun, one is for fighting, one is for fun.” (At least 50% of Mr. Emery’s lines were ad-libbed; he was playing a Marine DI, a role he had played for decades for real. He was really good at being a DI.)
"Per this Wikipedia article, carrying a firearm with the intent to unlawfully assault another is a class A misdemeanor under Utah law."
I'd see that law as a waste of time on the part of lawmakers. To make it stick, you have to prove intent in court which can be very difficult. If a person did use a firearm to assault somebody or tried to shoot somebody and missed, that's not as hard to prove. I see it as another likely knee-jerk piece of legislation that was in response to some incident. There are tremendous numbers of laws already in effect about doing an injury to somebody and surrounding the use/possession of firearms. What's needed is for district attorneys and courts to implement and uphold those laws. Anybody willing to use a weapon that isn't in self-defense shouldn't be somebody that's released from custody hours after an arrest. There should be at least some evaluation done on that person to find out if they are stable.
Is that South Barnsley Lane, South Jordan, Utah, 84009?
Looks like a nice place. Shame about the porn.
Forgetting VPNs and bouncing connections for a minute, and it's mainly down to the tendancy of cable companies to do more local IP routing. The DSL companies in the UK tend to route IP internally, nationally, over MPLS.
In addition, in America, they tend to peer more locally to "the internet" - I'm in Swansea. My (DSL) ISP connection hits "the internet" in London. All UK physical telco DSL providers I've seen work in a similar way.
It's therefore not easy in the UK to tell where a DSL customer is, other than based on the whims of the telco who might tend to get their dhcp servers to group per area. Google regularly has me moving all over Wales. In the past, google would think I was in Scotland - presumably a prior user of the IP address I had been allocated was determined through other means to be in Scotland.
I don't know about now, but when Virgin was NTL, the IP routing was more local whilst still internal. You'd see things like cpc-gors.swan.blahblah.ntl.net when a connection was from gorseinon in swansea, for instance.
Basically, geolocation for UK phone-network based internet is a crap shoot. In other places, it is easier to pin down.
And in addition to all that, Utah is around the size of England and Wales!
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