Are you arguing that we should not regulate porn, alcohol, and cigarettes? Or that we shouldn’t have digital ways to do the regulating we’ve been doing for decades?
If the discussion was a question of whether to regulate or not, I’d see more where you’re coming from. But the discussion is about how to effectively respond to the enforcement of existing laws now against websites. Society has grown up and we’re not comfortable giving the internet a pass because digital identity is hard.
> Are you arguing that we should not regulate porn, alcohol, and cigarettes?
Most of the important regulations around these things have nothing to do with the topic at hand. Requiring bourbon not to contain methanol and adult performers to be tested for STDs aren't related to the internet.
And once we're talking about the internet, those things are in a different category because alcohol and cigarettes are physical objects. You can't download vodka from Russia.
Whereas if you want to stop kids from downloading porn from other parts of the world, the police state that would require is the thing wars have been fought against and righteously so. Not because of the porn but because of what it would take to actually make those laws effective, and what it would be used for as soon as it's in place.
But ineffective laws aren't worth having, because they're all costs with no benefits, not least because then people will keep trying to make them effective and the only means to do that is the police state.
> Society has grown up and we’re not comfortable giving the internet a pass because digital identity is hard.
I feel like this kind of language is designed to make people angry. As if you're not an adult if you can look at a trade off against privacy and free speech and say "that's not worth having" instead of implementing every creeping authoritarian proposal specifically because the last one didn't solve the problem.
You’re missing the point entirely. I’m talking about age requirements to purchase alcohol and cigarettes and view porn. There is not a world where we decide to restrict purchase by age in meatspace but throw up our hands and say “whelp we just can’t have digital ID presentation that would ruin society I guess we should give up on digital age verification and just let kids do whatever”. Whether the restrictions are justified or not or stupid or not, we’ve decided they should exist (and there are much more “legitimate” use cases for ID verification that happen entirely online with no meatspace concerns like banking and underwriting etc. so it’s somewhat a straw man to get hung up on porn). We’re not going to not apply our laws to the new technology that emerges as time progresses…
> There is not a world where we decide to restrict purchase by age in meatspace but throw up our hands and say “whelp we just can’t have digital ID presentation that would ruin society I guess we should give up on digital age verification and just let kids do whatever”
We've been living in exactly that world for decades without issue.
It makes perfect sense for meat space to be treated differently from the internet. A downloaded picture of a cigarette can't be smoked. The only thing that can happen on the internet is the exchange of data, and an ID requirement for that is absurd.
> there are much more “legitimate” use cases for ID verification that happen entirely online with no meatspace concerns like banking and underwriting etc. so it’s somewhat a straw man to get hung up on porn
Amazing how those use cases have survived for these decades without such a law. If I don't need to send a copy of my ID every time I sign into my bank account, what possible argument could be made for the requirement I do so to watch porn?
> Whether the restrictions are justified or not or stupid or not, we’ve decided they should exist
No, we have not collectively decided they should exist. Plenty of laws exist which are unpopular either because of the goal or the execution. Even if a law has majority support, that doesn't mean the minority can't argue against keeping or expanding it. A restriction being unjustified or stupid is a very good argument for not doing additional unjustified or stupid things to enforce that law. It's rather silly that there is a federal law forbidding leaving the country with more than $25 in nickels but it's on the books. Ensuring this law is thoroughly enforced with universal mandatory cavity searches looking for rolls of nickels would be indefensible.
Then change the law. I’d probably vote with you. That’s besides the point.
The hacked up solutions for the things existing “perfectly fine” over the last few decades are complete crap. Anybody who’s ever had to take photos of their ID then a confirmation selfie knows this. Anybody who’s had to apply for a loan or open a bank account online knows this. We have wonderfully secure cryptography and you’re arguing we should keep using plastic cards that you can’t even sha256sum.
> There is not a world where we decide to restrict purchase by age in meatspace but throw up our hands and say “whelp we just can’t have digital ID presentation that would ruin society I guess we should give up on digital age verification and just let kids do whatever”.
And after you take the rose tinted glasses off, it was full of spam and scams and abuse and all the other low reputation poor security crap that happens when anybody can be anybody all the time. And if that world was good/sustainable then nobody would be working to make digital identity possible, would they? We grew up in it, now it seems we’re work working to iron out the kinks.
Not everything needs or should have strong ID. But no I don’t want my children stumbling into a porn site because they got click jacked by unscrupulous advertisements they never consented to being solicited with. I don’t want them learning about the world that way. A simple age check without revealing any personal info supported by the digital credential standards being discussed here would absolutely be an improvement.
Having my age checked at the time of purchase for alcohol rather than having to present my ID to the delivery person would also be an improvement.
>Society has grown up and we’re not comfortable giving the internet a pass because digital identity is hard.
I'm not comfortable giving society digital identity, because being a human and not abusing the primitive is even harder still. And we can't take it back once we've built it. It's just there for every wannabe despot to start building systems of oppression with. And there's an awful lot of them running around with the "best of intentions" to line the way to hell.
The problem is using physical identity online sucks. Well intentioned and honest people want to fix that issue. I have flown entirely with a mobile drivers license without pulling out a physical ID for the last few years. It’s objectively better and it’s already here. It’s heaven. You can’t really be arguing that when some service needs your ID that uploading photos of it is better from any angle. There’s not a one.
If the discussion was a question of whether to regulate or not, I’d see more where you’re coming from. But the discussion is about how to effectively respond to the enforcement of existing laws now against websites. Society has grown up and we’re not comfortable giving the internet a pass because digital identity is hard.