Dave, thanks for reading, as usual. Good to see you back. Indeed, you're absolutely correct here, these laws can be defeated with VPNs so people will access the illegal content on the black market and it will go underground. This is very bad for anyone who's concerned with its effects on our society. The rest of the people, unwilling or unable to circumvent the bans with a VPN, will have the government literally watching them through their phones and computers.
I replied to Cautious in a comment above and I think it's worth repeating an excerpt here as it clarifies a bit of the nightmare some states are walking themselves into:
...[These] bans don't mention the word "porn" anywhere in the law—any of them. They differ in what they attack, but the Kansas one includes anything that depicts LGBTQ relationships or, "homosexual relations," as the law in Kansas words it. So in Kentucky and Kansas, it's currently illegal to show a gay or lesbian couple kiss each other under these same "porn" bans. In Florida, the ban includes sites like Facebook and other social media, as well as anything with infinite scroll (ie, blogs like Medium). The laws also ban images of exposed buttocks or breasts, so, Netflix and HBO are going to have trouble. They're certainly not what people think they are. I've covered this extensively here. (1)
The problem with all of these laws is much bigger than porn. They shift the responsibility for who uses the site from the users and their parents, if minors, to the companies themselves. I covered the Texas law specifically here (2) and I gave this example. Let's say the law passes and people need to upload ID in order to access websites and the sites must verify those IDs through the state or a third party. Not only is that creepy, that you will now have to give the state your ID in order to access the internet, it places an impossible responsibility on the companies in question. YouTube can't possibly police the sheer volume of users, especially not from afar, and Facebook certainly can't with its billions of users. And if a child manages to hop on YouTube and see something taboo, the website is liable for breaking the law. That's why porn companies are pulling out and other companies may follow. Because it's basically going to turn into a lawsuit factory once we shift the burden of responsibility from the end user to the companies who have no real way to police us.
This brings me to the next problem. The only way it becomes feasible is if these companies track us across the Internet. Some states have already tried to mandate the installation of facial recognition technologies. That's seriously creepy. When I'm reading the news, I don't want strangers to be able to access my cameras to make sure that I'm me. (3)
Otherwise, how would they know who's really at the computer or behind the phone? The end result, judging from the laws that have been written, will be the government tracking us—including our children—wherever we go on the web and having our ID and addresses along with all the sites we're visiting. (3)
That's the excerpt, thought the full comment in response to Cautious' reply to Denis' comment is worth checking out in full. Thanks again for reading. It means the world to me.
1. https://medium.com/sexography/whats-wrong-with-porn-id-verification-laws-8ffcb5322c0d
2. https://medium.com/sexography/florida-and-texas-wage-war-on-porn-demand-identification-from-users-50ee6cc3e021
3. https://www.stopspying.org/child-surveillance
