Texas Sues xHamster and Chaturbate (404media.co) 292
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just sued two more porn sites, xHamster and Chaturbate, alleging they aren't complying with age verification laws. As first reported by local news outlet KXAN, the Office of the Attorney General filed two civil lawsuits on Tuesday afternoon against Hammy Media, which owns xHamster, and Multi Media, which owns Chaturbate. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB 1181 into law in June, which requires porn sites to verify the ages of users through a driver's license or passport. If porn sites don't force consenting adults to hand over a government-issued ID in order to watch other consenting adults have sex on camera, they face heavy fines.
Paxton's lawsuit against xHamster asks the court to force the site to pay a civil penalty of up to $1.67 million, with an additional $10,000 a day since filing. For Chaturbate, it's $1.78 million plus $10,000 per day. Last week, Pornhub's parent company Aylo blocked anyone accessing its network of sites from a Texas IP address, and replaced its network of sites -- which include Pornhub, Brazzers, YouPorn and many more -- with a message about its rejection of age verification legislation that requires adults to show government-issued ID to access porn. [...] As of writing, xHamster and Chaturbate are still accessible in Texas and don't have requirements to verify users' ages with a government ID.
Paxton's lawsuit against xHamster asks the court to force the site to pay a civil penalty of up to $1.67 million, with an additional $10,000 a day since filing. For Chaturbate, it's $1.78 million plus $10,000 per day. Last week, Pornhub's parent company Aylo blocked anyone accessing its network of sites from a Texas IP address, and replaced its network of sites -- which include Pornhub, Brazzers, YouPorn and many more -- with a message about its rejection of age verification legislation that requires adults to show government-issued ID to access porn. [...] As of writing, xHamster and Chaturbate are still accessible in Texas and don't have requirements to verify users' ages with a government ID.
Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless these companies have a physical or legal presence in Texas... Isn't it the state's fault for not blocking external traffic it doesn't like?
Re:Err... (Score:5, Insightful)
If they accept payments from people who live in Texas, then they have a legal presence.
If they don't, then Texas doesn't have jurisdiction, and even if found guilty they can't really make them pay any civil judgement because Texas can't seize any of their assets.
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Re:Err... (Score:4, Informative)
It isnt uncle sam that is coming after you. It is the republicans of Texas.
texans have decided that not only if you sell goods to a texan, but also provide services to a rexan out of state that you have to follow all texan laws.
Ei texas law supersecede federal law and xivil rights in other states.
Re:Err... (Score:5, Funny)
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> If they accept payments from people who live in Texas, then they have a legal presence.
Nah, mate, that's the definition of Interstate commerce.
RIP Dallas data centers.
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Next step: State of Texas sues all their ISPs.
Re: Err... (Score:3)
Re:Err... (Score:4, Informative)
That's not how it works. If you go out of state to buy your drugs from another state or country where they are legal, your state needs to catch you and charge you not attempt to charge the dealer who is not breaking the law where he is operating.
No one is "pushing" porn to your computer unrequested, you have to send packets to them first requesting the data that resides in their location.
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That's not how it works.
We're talking about companies out of state that sell directly to people in state. We are not talking about people in state who leave the state, but porn on DVD's then carry them back in state where kids might steal and view them.
Re:Err... (Score:5, Interesting)
The conflict in Ukraine is a war of Russian aggression, not a "special military operation".
Would you now support Russia filing an INTERPOL red notice or requesting my extradition because I've put something on the internet that is illegal in their jurisdiction?
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Russia is in fact free to file whatever it wants. Why are we against people filing requests ? Just because they filed it doesn't mean it'll get approved.
Good ol neo Republic of Gilead. (Score:2)
Re:Good ol neo Republic of Gilead. (Score:5, Funny)
If they were really serious about this severe problem, they would kick all the people out of their state, so that nobody would ever see anyone else. Until humans are eliminated, Texas' vision cannot be fulfilled. FUCK HUMANS! (Err, I mean that figuratively, of course. You should never literally fuck a human. That's not even a thing, kids, I swear!)
Re:Good ol neo Republic of Gilead. (Score:5, Funny)
Until humans are eliminated, Texas' vision cannot be fulfilled. FUCK HUMANS!
If this happened, all the sheep, cows, dogs, and chickens in Texas would breathe a sigh of relief.
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Ken Paxton isn’t stepping anywhere.
Re:Good ol neo Republic of Gilead. (Score:5, Insightful)
So grateful Paxton is stepping up against these real harms on society like tits, ass, and even girldick.
And yet, any kid, of any age, can pick up a Bible and read out rape, incest, murder, genocide, and worst of all, slavery (which never existed in Texas /s). Not to mention some socialist who doesn't believe in capitalism who was obvioudly drunk or stoned when he curses a tree for not bearing fruit out of season.
Hans Kristian Graebener is Stonetoss.
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Laughing out loud at MTG's assertion that the Roman Catholic Church is satanic because they followed the rules in the Bible about charity. Yes, she used the word "satanic". You thought we were reverting back to the 1950s, but they're aiming for medieval times.
Now to be fair, lots of states are trying to crack down on minor's access to porn. It's a knee jerk reaction that ignores the reality that minors have always had access to porn for as long as porn has existed. Regardless of that wilful denial of rea
I don't get Texas priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:5, Funny)
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Bible Thumping state.
Debt and public education aren't as important as, ahem, societal decency and whatever.
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Debt and public education and cost money, i.e., raise taxes and spend more on education. Neither of those are high on the Texas R's list of things to be concerned with. The former would make those nice rich guys upset (the ones paying into Texas politicians' campaign funds) and the latter would mean educated voters, which is the last thing the R's of Texas want.
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Well I do know that the Protestant denominations that started getting all new-agey shed followers pretty quick and the Catholics never recovered from all the altar boy stories. Lots of empty churches in the Northeast, for instance.
I knew someone involved in a Lutheran church who was very insistent on her church's alternative denomination "Free Lutheran" because it rejected all that. They still had a modicum of comers but all old, very old. That was the only time i've broached the doors of a church to wor
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Trying to make sense of 'conservative values' as practiced in Texas is a waste of time. It's all a smokescreen for screwing poor people, people of color, and women, period.
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
People are walking away from Churches at the accelerated rate over it and it greatly accelerated decline. Maybe not in Texan megachurches, but a lot of Churches in blue states were completely taken over and now they no longer follow the Gospel.
Buddy, you have that backwards. https://newrepublic.com/post/1... [newrepublic.com]
The gospel hasn't changed, republicans have.
Moore told NPR in an interview released Tuesday that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
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"Turning the other cheek" surely means "mooning".
Re: I don't get Texas priorities (Score:2)
Found the bigot.
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Informative)
Wokeness is the opposite of equal rights and justice, it creates race-based hierarchies of dominance that oppress participants via constant purity seeking. It is anti-meritocratic, anti-free speech, and anti-equality.
Not according to Ron DeSantis, the self appointed fighter of all things woke. https://www.fox13news.com/news... [fox13news.com]
During the testimony, Warren's attorney, Jean-Jacques Cabou asked those within DeSantis' administration what "woke" meant to them.
The governor's general counsel, Ryan Newman, said, in general, it means "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them."
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Wokeness is the opposite of equal rights and justice
Yes, because extending a hand to people we have forcefully kept under our boot is not "justice". I hope you get robbed, and that they catch the guy who did it, and then that they say, ... well you're not being robbed now so you have nothing to complain about and no you're not getting any restitution.
Maybe you'd re-evaluate your position if you were systematically discriminated against your entire life, and if you started life on the back foot because your parents and their parents before them were systemati
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Being woke _literally_ just means being educated. You're feeding too much from the crazy alt-right trough.
Re: I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
With all problems at the border, in public education, debt and so on they chose to take on porn sites? Why?
MAGA outrage, married to "Won't someone think of the children?" An easy target.
Or perhaps a wrong headed idea to combat the sinking fertility rate? It's been tanking, and perhaps they think by eliminating pR0N, men will return to the plantation. Which of course is dumb. Overuse of pR0N is a symptom, not a proximate cause of the fertility rate issue.
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Because it's populist bullshit to use to win an election.
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" Because it's populist bullshit to use to win an election. "
Unless I'm mistaken, this is how an elected official stays an elected official.
Going against your constituents wishes, regardless of how silly those might be, is how you become an ex-elected official in a hurry.
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, the left is the one trying to radicalise people, on an article about how the right are pushing the radical banning of speech.
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember the days when "Children shouldn't have access to porn" wasn't a partisan and controversial opinion.
Now we have a gang of people, probably NAMBLA members, who think "Porn is free speech!"
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Interesting)
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Online Age Verification system that preserves privacy of adults is a very difficult problem and would probably have to be some kind of a delegated trust system. In a real world, showing your ID to enter a strip club nearly certainly would not to result in a permanent public record of such visit as it is not in business proprietor or visitor's best interest. The same is not true for current implementations of Online Age Verification.
More than that, it is borderline impossible to prove that the person currently using a computer is the person who provided identification, because there's nobody from the company looking at the user and looking at the ID and comparing them. It's not like going into a bar, where they can verify that the ID looks legit, but immediately realize that this pimply-faced 16-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed white boy is probably not a 45-year-old woman from Bangladesh.
The only way you could really do it would be
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Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
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During the testimony, Warren's attorney, Jean-Jacques Cabou asked those within DeSantis' administration what "woke" meant to them.
The governor's general counsel, Ryan Newman, said, in general, it means "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.
https://www.fox13news.com/news... [fox13news.com]
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While attempts to ban porn are a bad idea as it a violation of fundamental rights, it does not pose near the danger of erasing gender norms and roles from society. .
You finally said it. Women should get back in the kitch and raise the children. Also don't vote and be quiet when men are speaking.
What I told you, MIlton Berle, Jackie Gleason, and Bob Hope all used to perform in drag?
I honestly don't care what genitals a person has. Are you more comfortable as a women than a man? Great! If you're happy then I'm happy.
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You realise that this is a "problem" naturally too, right? Most people don't fall neatly into XX and XY chromosomes. Even if they did, the presence of a Y chromosome is not the only thing that determines even physical gender, let alone how someone thinks about themselves. Plenty of people that you would define as women have higher than average testosterone production, higher than average muscle builds, etc. All these supposed injuries that you theorise would be occuring are *already* occuring because th
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What did furries ever do to you?
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4)
Do you have any examples of roles that need to be "gendered" without which population would collapse?
Yes, motherhood.
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LOL, found the deluded Red Hat propagandist.
Re:I don't get Texas priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
The problems on the border should not bother Texas, most are G-d fearing Christians and consider themselves to be part of a Christian Nation. They should be welcoming them with open arms. Come on Gov. Abbot, are you a Christian or not?
And that's only one contradiction. The U.S. and certainly Texas has been very responsible for global warming, the very global warming that is causing droughts in Central and South America. So the Texans are screwing up their environment and then turn around and refuse to accept the fallout, i.e., immigration over the border.
And if Texas really wants to get serious about the border, they can and probably will find a way to plug the gaps with a Big Ol' Fence that will be burrowed under, flown over, cut through, etc. And Mexico can decide to really close the border to trade. That should make the rest of the states really happy with Texas.
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With all problems at the border
You seem unaware that Texas and the federal government are currently duking it out in court because the federal government is saying that Texas’ attempts to pass and enforce border control laws at the state level are contrary to the US’ sovereign right to control immigration. The Supreme Court passed it back to the appeals court just a few days ago, which then blocked Texas from enforcing its own laws again. So what exactly would you like them to do?
https://www.reuters.com/legal/... [reuters.com]
https://www.n [nytimes.com]
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I live in Texas. Slashdot is literally the only place I have seen or heard anyone reporting on or otherwise talking about this. At all. Were I not on Slashdot, I'd have zero awareness that this was even a law on the books.
I agree with the idea that needlessly burning political capital or turning substantial portions of the public against you is a bad idea, but I'm not convinced that's happening here. Obviously, my experience is anecdotal, however, so I don't expect it to be in any way convincing, but my sen
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With all problems at the border, in public education, debt and so on they chose to take on porn sites? Why?
Because kids. Think of the kids. Look at us. We are responsible adults because we look after and protect your kids. Vote for us. Border? Education? Don't you understand your kid nearly saw a boobie, and I'm not talking about the bird! Just think of how much we saved your kid.
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This is what happens when you elect christian nationalists. They’re getting ready to fire Mike Johnson because he’s exactly the person voted for and were too dumb to realize it.
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Because they don't actually want to solve problems.
They want to get people worked up and distracted by "stuff those evil perverted people are doing" so they can both satisfy their lust for power and funnel tax money to their friends who will give them a kickback.
Ir's really quite simple, and if you think "your team" doesn't do it, I can get you a great deal on a gently used bridge.
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Because conservatives don't care about anything except your personal life. They profit from problems, they profit from debt, and they benefit from an education system, that is broken.
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My nickname means Blue.
Unconstitutional (Score:5, Insightful)
This crap already went to the US Supreme Court in the 90's and was ruled unconstitutional. These Texas legislators need to be impeached and removed from office for gross negligence. We shouldn't have to endure these assaults on our liberty over and over again.
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This is a different Supreme Court.
It is quite ridiculous to see these clowns legislate, though. Freeze Peach! No wait, not like that!
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This crap already went to the US Supreme Court in the 90's and was ruled unconstitutional. These Texas legislators need to be impeached and removed from office for gross negligence. We shouldn't have to endure these assaults on our liberty over and over again.
The fifth circuit court of appeals says otherwise: https://cybernews.com/news/age... [cybernews.com]
Precedent doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in 2016 a lot of lefies warned about the danger of losing the Supreme Court. How People like Amy Barret, who couldn't answer high school civics level questions at her confirmation hearing but could lie under oath about her acceptance of Roe v Wade's precedence.
If they didn't care about Roe, what makes you think they'll care about the obscenity cases from the 90s?
There's only one way out of this, now that the courts are an openly partisan political tool, and that's to give them over to someone else. That means keeping the Democrats in charge of the White House and Senate.
Thomas & Alito are both retirement age and both likely to face corruption charges after the election. Odds are good they'll retire instead of letting those investigations get in the way of their vacations.
If you want to stop stuff like this you know what to do, it's up to you to do it.
Plutocracy (Score:3)
When the rich can buy most the judges and many politicians, we are no longer a democracy, but a plutocracy.
This is mod bait (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a surprisingly sophisticated tactic. Are you a professional? I know there are a few still around here, mostly people who's job it is to protect Elon Musk's reputation that are left over from when "slashdotting" was a thing.
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Re: Unconstitutional (Score:2)
Re:Unconstitutional (Score:4, Informative)
This crap already went to the US Supreme Court in the 90's and was ruled unconstitutional.
No it didn't. The Supreme Court doesn't deal in generalities. It ruled specifically the CDA the way it was applied and COPA the way it was applied were unconstitutional. In separate cases they have upheld that you can restrict access to pornography.
Supreme Court rulings hang on specific details... and specific judges.
Re: Unconstitutional (Score:2)
We need a new legislation - The right to wank!
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This SCOTUS doesn't care about what was done in the past and are here to let everyone know they don't.
Past precedent is not a legal standing. If this court wants to undermine the previous one, then there's nothing to stop them. They have already undone a lot of this. Your first amendment rights don't exist anymore. The private corporations in bed with the GOP ensure that; and the GOP itself requires sites to not filter content while simultaneously taking them to court for not removing the content they disag
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The right to privacy. Imagine if you had to submit government ID to access the Internet and every site or resource you access is recorded against your ID and stored for eternity to be (ab)used at anyone's whims.
You have no problem with this? Is China a good role model for society?
Children have been able to access "incorrect" material since the beginning of time. In fact it was used as a argument against the printing press, libraries, books. You think that is a good thing?
Most (sane) people believe that chil
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Republicans already want you to show ID going outside. I remember years ago our state police was working with ICE. They did mandatory road blocks to check citizenship.
The reality is they won't require ID's for other sites...sites with violence, gore, guns...they clearly don't care about the children accessing pro-gun videos; because that would inconvenience their blithering idiots.
I say require ID for every website. You wanna buy something, prove you're 18. You wanna post something, age verification.
But no.
Just a quick reminder (Score:2, Informative)
It's so much money that we could let every single person on the other side of the border in to take Texas jobs and just take the money being spent pretending to keep them out while still letting them in so we can have the cheap labor and just give it to the people Texas so they can lounge around
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Newsom is going to cream him.
While he's dicking around at the border Newsom looks to be getting his forced medication of the homeless off the ground, it's a Republican wet dream.
I get it, but...really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand not wanting kids to see porn. Back in the dark ages, it was magazines and maybe VHS films, and shops wouldn't serve kids. Today, on the Internet, that's just not possible.
The thing is: this law isn't going to help. It makes the politicians feel good about themselves, but any kid with an ounce of technical skill knows what a VPN is. And if they don't, one of their classmates does. Also, cynically, the very people who pushed a law like this are probably among the biggest porn consumers. "The guilty dog barks the loudest."
The world has changed. Pandora's box is open. Parents are just going to have to parent.
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I understand not wanting kids to see porn.
What I don't get is why seeing some sex is so impossibly terrifying, but portrayals of decapaitations and disembowlments and such are peachy keen.
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Good thing the bible covers all things perverted and violent. Wait until you get to the part about big donkey dicks and women who get the father drunk to have sex with him.
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So we ban the thing that is normal, but promote wide spread display of the things which are not. Got it. AC logic is once again on point.
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It certainly can work.
That VPNs mean you can't simply geo-fence based on IP does not make it 'not your problem' in the eyes of the law, depending on what requirements are actually set.
There is nothing stop Texas from going after payment processors, hosting companies, banks, etc as accessories if they want to do so other than it could prove disruptive to their otherwise seen as business friendly state. Its not like Texas can't try and convict the owners of xhamster and their business partners in In-absentia
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The problem is that giving children the tools they need to get by in a world where porn is freely available on the internet means sex education, and they really don't like that. For reasons I won't speculate on they seem to prefer children to be ignorant about sex and the things they experience.
The law isn't supposed to help (Score:4, Insightful)
It's Republican government 101. Track everybody, stuff cash in your pockets, and keep everyone panicking while you run out the back door with the cash.
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Some kids will use vpns to get around this, most likely won't though and getting porn from friends is like going back to pre internet days for porn which means far less accessibility for kids. Not zero of course but like pretty much everything in life this is not an all or nothing issue
Honestly I'm not for or against this type of thing as there are both up and downsides to it but to claim kids in Texas wouldn't have significantly less access to porn with stuff like this thoroughly implemented is pretty naiv
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When the law doesn't help then they will just rally to remove them from the internet.
Don't you know that's how it works. GOP wants something banned...so they pass bad laws that make the situation worse so they can justify a full ban.
They will say "okay, this doesn't work" and come out with a 100% ban for everyone.
adults are obsessed with sex (Score:5, Interesting)
Why exactly are these adults so obsessed with stopping children from watching porn? The first porn I ever saw was a Playboy magazine that my friend found in his parents closet. You're not gonna stop kids from watching porn. And it's not gonna screw them up... It's sex. It's one of the basic human things, really one of the basic animal things.
It's so weird that adults are so obsessed with trying to stop kids from understanding or seeing a thing we all know every human will eventually do anyway. Might as well make it illegal to watch depictions of drinking, smoking, cursing, or violence.
It's a moral panic (Score:4, Informative)
When your policies don't make your voter's lives better you still need to make them feel like they got something for the effort of voting for them.
the American Republican party does this with moral panics. "Woke", trans kids, the gays, porn, video games, etc. Go back far enough and you'll find stuff like "those people" stealing our women. And no, not necessarily black folks, the Jews, Italians and Irish were slotted into that spot too.
This makes voters feel like they got a win even though every year their lives get a little harder and they take on more work for less pay.
If you're going to rob somebody blind you don't want them thinking rationally, and keeping them fearful and panicking is a great way to do that.
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Heh, you're comparing sneaking a peak at a Playboy when you were a kid with the depraved shit you can find on the Internet today? Playboy is / was just naked ladies laying about, a far cry from a woman being penetrated by 3 dicks simultaneously followed by a bukakki finish like you might find widely available on any porn tube site today.
You're just not making an apples to apples comparison.
Re:adults are obsessed with sex (Score:4, Insightful)
But everything is like that. Sex isn't a special case.
Wargames and Tron did not spoil my ability to learn programming. Learning about reality in the presence of fiction may be hard, but many people somehow manage anyway.
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Sounds like an argument for sex education.
I'm curious to see if Texas will go after Reddit (Score:5, Insightful)
Because there's a million metric fuckton of porn of all kinds on Reddit.
That would be a lot more interesting that Texas going after "real" porn sites, and it would spectacularly highlight how utterly futile their endeavor is.
Units of measurement (Score:5, Funny)
It makes a Friday so much more bearable to know that porn is measured in fucktons.
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Be aware that anal porn can be appropriately measured in both fucktons and shittons, though.
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I hear in Europe they don't use fucktons because of the metric system. It's all measured in Royales with Cheese's.
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Because there's a million metric fuckton of porn of all kinds on Reddit.
That would be a lot more interesting that Texas going after "real" porn sites, and it would spectacularly highlight how utterly futile their endeavor is.
What is available isn't relevant. It's a case of going after big players first. Reddit for all the porn it has makes up a tiny portion of porn compared to the bandwidth of Pornhub and xHamster.
Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
Barry Goldwater warned us back in 1994.
Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me.
Just cut off service to Texas entirely. (Score:4, Interesting)
TX institutions are a demented, pseudo-American cult that gets away with everything, and people both in Texas and nationwide need to start holding them accountable for once.
What a shock (Score:5, Insightful)
They just want to ban pornography for adults, the kids are just an excuse.
They should start fining every resident of Texas who tries to access these sites instead and see how long they stay in office.
Glad they are focusing on the important stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Thank god they are cracking down on these evil sex sites! Meanwhile in Texas....
The rate of firearm-related deaths in Texas has reached a level not seen since the 1990s
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]