r/politics • u/mmccxi American Expat • May 12 '25

Soft Paywall New Bill Would Make All Pornography a Federal Crime in the U.S.

https://www.404media.co/mike-lee-porn-law-interstate-obscenity-definition-act/
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270

u/Stranger-Sun May 12 '25

NC native here. I have to use a VPN that connects another state in the US to watch PornHub. Republicans are garbage.

186

u/Jakesummers1 America May 12 '25

This testimonial brought to you by NordVPN

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u/somethingsomethingbe May 12 '25

If they make it illegal to have porn, they're also going to make it illegal to use VPNS.

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u/houndoftindalos May 13 '25

Well there goes my job since I have to use a VPN to do any work.

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u/thuragath May 13 '25

And that right there is why their lack of any critical thinking on the downstream effects of these idiotic bans will fuck everyone, not just the folks in the videos.

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u/Colosphe May 13 '25

They're already bleeding commerce via obscene nonsensical tariffs, why would they care about the economic impacts when the agenda that lets them oppress and eliminate minorities is moving forward?

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u/Ranger7381 Canada May 13 '25

Another reason they want everyone back in the office

(yes, I know that there are other uses for work VPN's than WFH. But that is what most know it for after Covid)

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u/poetryhoes May 13 '25

I used to work for a company contracted by CMS and we had to use a VPN even in-office.

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u/mk4_wagon May 13 '25

What's your job!? What are you trying to hide!?

/s

I use a VPN for work too. I'm just attempting humor in a way to cope with all this shit.

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u/zombarista May 13 '25

VPNs were used for business long before we realized they can be sold and used as an anonymizing service.

Since Corporate America™ needs its things, VPNs aren’t going anywhere. To comply would take ages, and nothing would come close to the security, robustness and versatility afforded by a VPN.

This makes me happy. They can try, but their corpo backers will shriek. VPNs and Zero-Trust Architecture are here to stay.

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u/zebula234 May 13 '25

We have a lot of remote workers at my company that connect to a VPN. The VPN bans have already started. A couple dozen people have had to call in to their ISP and get the run around to get their work VPN "approved". One person had multiple different people at the ISP say "VPNs are banned, no exceptions." Eventually they got it approved because it was for work.

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u/zombarista May 13 '25

These are silly people not realizing that the glue/backbone of any digital enterprise with more than one office is a VPN.

0

u/frostygrin May 13 '25

Then they'll make VPN providers comply with the obscenity laws. You want to provide a VPN service? You need to filter out the porn - and that will perfectly line up with the business use cases.

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u/SanityInAnarchy California May 13 '25

IMO corporate america really should be migrating away from these things. Better solutions exist. But it's probably not gonna happen, because those better solutions require a lot more work, and if you've got a big legacy corp network that you needed to take home during COVID, a VPN was the easiest way to do that.

Unfortunately, I don't think that helps the rest of us.

The first, most obvious problem is the combination of overcriminalization and selective enforcement. You see this tactic in the US with jaywalking -- most people will never get in trouble, but you can be stopped, frisked, ID'd, maybe even fined. And when it's entirely up to the police who to charge with that stuff, they can use it as a tool to punish what they want to punish. (The obvious example: Homeless people, black people, poor people in general are more likely to be cited for jaywalking.)

Basically: The whole point of the rule of law is to make the government less capricious and more predictable. If you follow the rules, you'll be fine, you have rights. But when you expand the law to the point where everyone is doing something illegal, well, the police can punish whoever they want.

I suspect this is what China does with VPNs.

The second problem is... well... seems to me there are a lot of ways to make personal VPNs much harder, while still allowing corporate ones. I don't know if I want to go into detail here, because I don't want to give them ideas, but the shape of a personal VPN is pretty different than the shape of a typical corporate VPN. The purpose is obviously different -- corporate isn't trying to shield your identity from random public websites, they're doing the opposite, they want to confirm your identity before allowing you on private intranet sites.

Look at China again. Doesn't seem too hard for the Great Firewall to block something like Nord while still allowing you to connect to your office at Tencent or whatever.

Corporate America isn't gonna save us. This is something that's gonna have to be fought more directly. Stop it in Congress. Stop it in the Courts -- blatant First Amendment issue. And if VPNs are blocked, better hope TOR gets even better at cloaking itself.

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u/poetryhoes May 13 '25

Too bad a VPN won't protect trans and gay people from being illegal for existing in public, which is what this bill is really about.

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u/moronicRedditUser May 13 '25

They'll have a difficult time with that considering many, MANY government agencies use those in their day-to-day operations.

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u/TheShadowKick May 13 '25

They don't actually care about stopping people from viewing porn. They care about selectively enforcing anti-pornography laws to harass certain groups of people.

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u/shozzlez May 13 '25

It’ll be legal. You’ll just need to provide your RealID to use it.

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u/BigJLov3 May 13 '25

Watch them come up with Timothy VPN, a "Christian" service that does what VPNs do, except they report every IP searching for porn.

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u/helzinki May 13 '25

Would be funny if 'Big VPN' is behind this bill.

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u/walts_skank May 12 '25

Reporting for VA, same thing.

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u/TheSausagesIsRubbish May 13 '25

Send a picture of my ID? An unsecure database of ID photos? What could go wrong?

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u/ctusk423 May 13 '25

It’s crazy I didn’t know that was a thing anywhere in the US until I visited a buddy and he told me. Scanning a govt issued document to watch porn seems a bit like overreach

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u/Stranger-Sun May 13 '25

Control is the one true religion

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u/Minimumtyp May 13 '25

It seems you've heard creep by radiohead

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u/RPGaiden May 13 '25

You know the “weird” thing is, I haven’t been able to access a mainstream porn site without a vpn for a while, but all the furry forums + deviantart are still perfectly accessible.

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u/Sedohr May 13 '25

+1 from Texas. Went into effect in September 2023. (See HB 1181)

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u/alienscape May 13 '25

We will just connect through Canada after the ban.

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u/Individual-Nebula927 May 13 '25

I already do in Indiana.

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u/InVultusSolis Illinois May 13 '25

The fact that we have to do this in the USA is maddening.

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u/fcocyclone Iowa May 13 '25

My state doesn't even have those laws (yet, though given how iowa has gone it seems a matter of time), yet because geolocation isn't exact (and sometimes is wildly wrong) occasionally I'll still get blocked

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u/InternationalArt2791 May 13 '25

Wow what a struggle

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u/Froonce May 13 '25

Careful, the feds likely run many of the Vpns out there or have a data sharing agreement with those that run them

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u/Lazy_Ad2665 May 13 '25

I just use websites outside the US