Starting in April, the UK has a new law that requires purveyors of porn to block access to their website until the user has provided personal information to VERIFY their age, which means they are giving their personal ID's to the site-holder (although it looks like there may be some way to circumvent this by paying 5GBP for a one-time 24 hour access period).  Failure of the siteholder to do the verification can result in a 250,000 GBP fine.  This means various porn sites are going to have a list of real ID's for people who access porn sites.  What are the chances this info will be leaked or sold and misused for nefarious purposes?  I would say pretty high.  

-- Modified on 3/12/2019 5:47:04 AM

Do we want 9 and  10 year olds to be able to access the same info that ALL adults can? I would think not.  

 
Now of course that blame should fall on the back of the parents but as I am sure you know, parenting has reached new levels of idiocy and fecklessness in the last 20 years or so.

 
Today's parents want to be cool, and be their kid's friend, so many have taken a hands off approach to what their child digests through various mediums.  

 
But even good parents can struggle with modern day tech as well. Kids can do more behind their parents backs with just their phone and lounging on their bed these days then I could out on the street when I was a teen.

 
I happen to be a fan of prostitution. A very very very big one. lol. Rumor has it you are a fan as well. That said, I don't want it out in the open, on the streets, in cars within a child's view, etc etc etc. It has a time and place. And to me, so should porn.  

 
I am concerned as you are about giving out an I.D. That has abuse written all over it. This is a complex issue with no easy answer as far as I can tell. I am not sure what the solution is, tbh.

the effects of sexual images on young children?

I know the anti-porn side has a lot of stuff, but I would discount that heavily.

The internet has been a copious source of porn for all for over 20 years now.  I have not seen any erosion of society on account of it.

When I was young, I was exposed to porn in the form of magazines under my older brothers' mattresses.  Whether that is a reason I became a hobbyist is debatable, but even so, not a deleterious outcome to society.

On the other hand, putting people's private information into the hands of "who-knows-who" could be disastrous.

I agree with your observations with regards to juveniles (or if they are accessing porn should we say "juvenile delinquents?  lol)  Perhaps the answer is to offer a blocking app for the phones of children, and put the burden on the parents to face a hefty fine if THEY don't block the porn on their children's phones.  If they choose to abdicate their responsibilities as parents, it would shift the financial penalties to them rather then impost them on third-party website owners that otherwise are operating an adults-only business that is within the law.  Much like FOSTA/SESTA, while seeking to protect one specific class of people, other classes lose rights as a result.  Adults should have the right to view online porn anonymously, if they want to.  There is enough technology available to structure it in a way that doesn't burden adults, while still protecting the children.  I think the real problem is finding politicians who are 1) smart enough to figure it out, and then 2) have the balls to do it.  

Most things that are "child proofed" usually require a child to open. lol

 
But both of you make a very valid point. I don't think most people want a paper trail proving that they watch porn. OTOH do we REALLY want children able to access this world of ours? Let me put it another way, I have been around hookers, pimps, porn, drugs etc since before I turned ten years old and look how I turned out. Is there ANYONE here who would want their child to turn out like me??? lmao

Devise tests based on the URL location or the user's selected location. In the UK, it might be:
"Put the following monarchs in their correct order: Alfred the Great ... Henry I John I Richard I Edward I George I ..."
If the quiz is answered correctly (or above a certain score, you know that the user must be a school aged kid 'cause no one else remembers that stuff for more than a year or so after their exams.  
.
In the US, quiz Qs might be to "Put the following presidents in their correct order" or  "Name the capitals of the following states." Forget it ... that won't work in the US. Most of the correct answers will come from around 20% of the school kids. The remaining 80% of US school kids are too stupid to have ever learned that stuff in the first place. Adults either never learned that stuff or forgot it after graduation from college.  
.
Other than "enter your personal ID info", are there other definitive non-IDable questions?

END OF MESSAGE

Baby Boomers will most likely answer between 1-10 channels depending on how big a city they lived in back in the fifties/sixties/early seventies

 
Gen X'rs will remember getting maybe a few dozen channels growing up when almost everybody had cable.

 
Millennials of course between cable and satellite have never known a time when they didn't have hundreds of channels to chose from and still couldn't find anything worth watching.

 
And lastly we have Generation Z, These kids of today are going to give a completely different answer than any of the rest of us. The most likely response from anyone "underage" will be "Television, WTF is that? only grandpa's watch television, I watch everything on my phone" lol

PayPal provided a trusted place for consumers to put their CC info rather than to give it out to hundreds of smaller, unknown entities. P411 provided a trusted place for consumers to put their personal info on account rather than have to give it directly to a variety of service providers.  
.
Is there now an opportunity for a PP + P411 business to come into existence? Would it be trusted and secure? Could it be used only for legal shopping, including porn, or could it be used for any transaction between certified, consenting adults?
.
Another criticism: how many kids know how to use their parent's or older siblings' or other adult's info to sign up for services or buy stuff?  How many adults with kids in the house will use that as an excuse to sign up for porn? "Me? Porn? I am shocked!! My kid must have signed up using my info but without my permission or knowledge. I am taking away their Xbox for 2 weeks!"  
.
What were some of the recent info / database external hacks? Seeking Arrangements or Ashley Madison or something-Benefits?  And what about some internal employee deciding to steal and release info (like Snowden and the NSA)?  I wouldn't trust a porn site with my info.  
.
Many of us deal with TER 100% anonymously. Pay with gift cards or money orders. No personal info on file. Use a VPN. TER doesn't know how old I am. I might even be a Nicolas Bourbaki project run by a pack of Cub Scouts (or Girl Scout Brownies).  That would explain some of my non sequitur posts.

END OF MESSAGE

I think kids can find how to do VPN to get around restrictive laws.  I  don't think there is a way to get the porn genie back in the bottle.  Kids will have to grow up in a world where it is freely available (at least impossible to completely stop for anyone who is motivated to find it.)

Gadzooks! Jumpin' Jehosaphat and fiddle-dee-dee! The kids don't know the good old curse words ... like dag-nab-it.

We knew our nation's kids weren't the brightest, that our educational system here in the US is in need of a serious over-haul, but it hurts to hear from someone else.  Our media doesn't leak global opinions of us... that would disrupt "the greatest nation on Earth" indoctrination.  I appreciate your candor and I apologize for the slight detour.

 

 

Nonetheless, you don't think they have our info now?  Regardless of our location and its applicable laws?  That they don't already know who everyone is and what we're doing at all times?  IP addresses, keystroke logging, Internet history, flagged websites, free public WiFi, deleted file recovery, password access, Email text, phone text, phone calls, device and surveillance microphones / cameras, smart TVs / appliances, fingerprint identity, photo recognition, retina scanning, RFID chips, GPS, phone pinging... and likely a grip of other techniques none of us are familiar with.  And that's just our digital fingerprint...

 

Seems Americans aren't the only ones mesmerized by ingested political propaganda.  It appears the global majority thinks the US is the only gov spying on its citizens.  Though practically every member state of the UN involves collecting and storing data on each of us.

 

Incidentally, the UN has a high-level panel orchestrating Digital Cooperation.  It's border-less and includes members from the US, the UK, Australia, China, Russia, the UAE, Korea, Brazil, Norway, Switzerland, France, Chile, among others.  Certainly all first world nations monitor, collect, and store data on its citizens in profile format... the US just happened to get caught and the heroic Snow den is still running for his life.  The NSA is not the only data mining agency in the world... and certainly all the nations listed above have their own version of this administration, whether UN oriented or otherwise.

 
So I see no direct impact.  The only change involved is the cutting of labor costs for determining who's who, lol.  This just takes them directly to the source vs following a digital trail and "saving the children" is just a smoke screen, as usual.  Plus going public with it, further eases embedding public-acceptance regarding their negated privacy rights.  It's easier to govern a conformed society, than it is a dissident one.  }  

I was in NY. TV tuners were analog. The VHF (2-13) dial had "click" stops for each station (and a separate "fine tune" dial). The dial for the UHF band (14-83) just scrolled on our TV; no clicks.  NY had all 7 FCC available VHF broadcast stations.  We had really poor UHF signal where I was, so I could watch snow on most of the actual broadcast stations (and the ones in between).

You could clear up some of the snow if you left your hand touching the antenna while adjusting. I was the designated "antenna adjuster" for my household. And don't forget the importance of the vertical and horizontal scrolling controls. Reminds me of the opening sequence of the old show "The Outer Limits."

5, and one was PBS.  I recall their call signs WCCO KSTP, KMSP, WTCN, KTCA.  When UHF came along only another PBS station arrived, at least for many years. About the time cable started growing we also got a few more commercial UHF stations.

One thing about VHF is that with just 12 channels, they didn't really want to put them next to each other due to cross channel interference, do you really only could have about six stations max in your area.

In NYC, the VHF stations were 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. From just outside of NYC, you could sometimes pick up fuzzy signals on 3, 6, 8, 10, and 12 from Philly or Bridgeport-Hartford-NewHaven. There used to be a big band gap between (2-6) and (7-13).  FM radio stations were in that gap.  
.
When the FCC changed around the allocations for cordless phones, cell phones, etc. and broadcast TV became all digital in 2009, I think that ALL broadcast TV stations ended up somewhere in the UHF. However, for historical purposes, many still refer to 2-13 as the VHF stations and 14+ as the UHF stations.  
.
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2009/the-switch-from-analog-to-digital-tv.html

If you lived in a fancy (and huge) apartment building, there might be one common TV antenna on the roof that was wired down to all the apartments. In smaller, older buildings, every tenant would put their own VHF TV antenna on the roof and run antenna wire (flat, with two separated strands) down the side of the building to their apartment. For UHF, we only had the 10-12 inch round loop attached directly to the TV. And I tried tuning tricks, too: running an extra wire from the loop to a radiator or even to me so that I became part of the antenna.

-- Modified on 3/16/2019 8:14:53 PM

END OF MESSAGE

: walks into room :

Nobody's here! :P  

(lol...j/k)

Can't you just use a VPN... like how I got here from the US (ZPN Connect for Windows... it's free - see link)?  Wouldn't tunneling through another country that doesn't apply to UK laws, clear you from having to submit your info?  Idk...

 
OTHER FREE VPNs:
Tor Browser............Mac
Psiphon...................Win, Andr, iOS
Tunnel Bear............Win, Mac
Open VPN...............Win
ZenMate.................Win
Hotspot Shield.......Win, Mac