That's a pretty good analogy, because nobody thinks that bars employing bouncers to check ID is some sort of conspiracy or conflict-of-interest.

Strictly speaking, it is classified as a conflict of interest.

It's a conflict of interest in that it's in the bars' (financial) interest to let people through.

It's not in the bars' financial interest to create a minimum drinking age via regulatory capture just so they can hire bouncers, or accept bribes or sell fake IDs or whatever. That's analogous to the insinuation I picked up upthread (if I read that comment correctly). Expecting industries to self-regulate until they show themselves incapable of doing so is pretty standard.

It is, but in practice it doesn't matter too much. In most (all?) jurisdictions in the US, bars can be fined pretty heavily or even lose their liquor license if they're caught serving people illegally, or if they even have people on the premises without their ID with them. Any extra revenue they might generate from letting in underage people isn't worth the risk of the consequences if caught.

Lol. You've never been to a college town I take it?

It's a gigantic conflict of interest that plays out exactly how you'd expect. I've never been carded going to a bar near my former university.

I live in a town with 3 colleges in SC and regularly see breweries card people. I've never been carded, but anyone with a young face is an automatic.

You're right, I'm generalizing unreasonably. But I think can say that this is a problem. I don't think it's a particularly lawless town.

Breweries and bars might be different too

The difference is that essentially no one minds a guy glancing at their id and handing it back, and no one cares if your coworker happens to see you going into a bar.

The law is a filter because of the obvious chilling effect: do you really want to risk an inevitable leak where your co-workers will potentially look up info about your porn habits tied to your real name?

> do you really want to risk an inevitable leak where your co-workers will potentially look up info about your porn habits tied to your real name

Why would it have your 'habits' tied to it? It's meant to ensure you're over 18 or whatever age - what possible reason would it have to identify individual URLs a particular identity visited?

Without this verification you have high confidence no one can know. After this, you are suddenly trusting companies to do the right thing.

Renting a porn vhs and having the guy photocopy and file your ID is a much bigger deterrant than just having to show your ID to the clerk.

>what possible reason would it have to identify individual URLs a particular identity visited?

Money. Marketing. Targeted advertising. Etc, etc, etc. Pornhub (and others) are completely free and use more bandwidth than I can wrap my head around. How do you think they pay for that stuff?

> Pornhub (and others) are completely free and use more bandwidth than I can wrap my head around. How do you think they pay for that stuff?

Pornhub sells a subscription service with additional features / content.

The ID verification is done by trusted third parties. There will be no link to a name and any browsing activity on Pornhub.

The age verification is done by pornhubs own company, to think they won't use this information seems incredibly naive.

Incredibly naive? I work for Pornhub, the last thing we want to handle is PII, it brings no value and has security risks.