00:00Ohio lawmakers passed a law requiring age verification to view porn sites, but most of the major porn sites are actually exempt.
00:10The new age verification law is now in effect. However, organizations exempt from the law are providers of, quote, an interactive computer service.
00:19Those are defined in Ohio the same way they're defined at the federal level.
00:23This law basically says websites aren't liable for third-party content. And in doing so, it defined the category of services that were protected by this law.
00:35And it defined them as interactive computer services. The statute essentially says that any purveyor of pornography on the Internet is excluded from the statute.
00:48So why would Ohio lawmakers allow such a major exemption in their law? Well, for one, it actually passed as part of a massive budget bill instead of a standalone law.
00:59By short-circuiting the process, the bill didn't necessarily get all the attention that it might have gotten through a normal channel.
01:06And so it's actually not surprising at all to me that a state legislature would flub something like this, especially when it comes to Internet law, the legislatures don't understand the technology.
01:17Twenty-four states, including Ohio, now have age verification laws for pornographic websites.
01:23Backers of those laws say it's simple and helps protect children.
01:27The only thing Pornhub has to do is use some type of an online age verification agency to verify the age of those that are trying to access their website.
01:40So there are many independent age verification agencies available that they could use.
01:51People against those laws argue there's data privacy issues.
01:55The bill actually tries to address that by saying that some of that information is restricted for further usage or collection.
02:03But in practice, we have no reason to believe that there will be adequate privacy protections in this process or that there will be adequate government enforcement of any privacy violations.
02:17When it comes to keeping kids from porn, Goldman said it should be done at a device level, not a server level.
02:23Should we try to control content at the server level where it's available or not available to the entire population under the same rules?
02:31Or should we allow the regulation to take place at what we call the client level, that each individual device or user decides for themselves what's appropriate or not?
02:41For Straight Arrow News, I'm Lauren Keenan.
02:43If you want more on this story, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit san.com.
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