Ohio Lawmaker Wants To Criminally Charge Minors Who Watch Porn to Protect Minors. What?
from the that-logic-doesn’t-track dept
In the latest chapter of my laziness writing on the crazy escapades of anti-porn Republicans for Techdirt, I wish to introduce you to Ohio state Rep. Steve Demetriou, who represents Bainbridge Township.
Rep. Demetriou introduced the Innocence Act, or House Bill (HB) 295, on October 11, 2023.
I wrote about the bill over at AVN.com and for the Cleveland Scene. Gustavo Turner of XBIZ also covered House Bill 295. Cleveland.com provided us with some local coverage of the bill.
Rep. Demetriou’s bill is the latest proposal by an anti-porn lawmaker who intends to require age verification to access an adult entertainment website, including Pornhub, Xvideos, or xHamster.
HB 295 features the same elements of the other so-called “copycat” age verification proposals inspired by Louisiana, which became the first in the United States to have a law requiring the adoption of age verification for users from local IP addresses to see adult content. The copycat bills have escalated in severity with Utah and Texas as two of the more severe cases. But it is a safe bet to say that Demetriou’s version takes the cake for the most severe age-gating bill.
According to the introduced bill text, House Bill 295 makes it a crime — a felony — for websites that fail to deploy age verification measures to check the ages of users from Ohio IP addresses.
Demetriou also proposes to make it a crime — a misdemeanor — for anyone who manages to get around an age-gate on a website through, say, a VPN or proxy. He explicitly mentions minors.
A press release announcing the bill states:
If this legislation is enacted, pornography distributors would be charged with a third-degree felony for failing to verify the age of a person accessing the adult content. If a minor attempts to access sexually explicit material by falsifying their identity, they would be charged with a fourth-degree misdemeanor.
Language in House Bill 295 confirms this:
Whoever violates…this section is guilty of failure to verify age of person accessing materials that are obscene or harmful to juveniles, a felony of the third degree.
Whoever violates…this section is guilty of use of false identifying information to access materials that are obscene or harmful to juveniles, a misdemeanor of the fourth degree.
Demetriou told Cleveland.com, the official web platform for The Plain Dealer newspaper, that this is a “common sense” approach to ensuring minors don’t circumvent an age gate. “Obviously, we’re not trying to target children with regards to criminal enforcement… but we want to make sure they’re protected,” Rep. Demetriou told Cleveland.com reporter Jeremy Pelzer. Demetriou said that the proposed criminal penalty targeting minors is a “deterrent” other than being a law that could compel prosecutors to pursue criminal charges against teenagers for being teenagers.
House Bill 295 was referred to the House Criminal Justice Committee and is awaiting markup. Rep. Demetriou did tell Cleveland.com that he is open to cleaning up the “kinks in this bill.”
For the Cleveland Scene, criminal defense attorney Corey Silverstein told me the bill is, obviously, a bad idea.
“I can’t think of a worse idea than charging minors with criminal offenses for viewing adult content and potentially ruining their futures,” he told me in my Scene report. “Attempting to shame and embarrass minors for viewing adult-themed content goes so far beyond common sense that it begs the question of whether the supporters of this bill gave it any thought at all.”
Civil liberties organizations are already alarmed at the potential implications of age verification laws in other parts of the country. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union and others filed an amicus brief at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals supporting plaintiffs in Free Speech Coalition v. Colmenero. Texas adopted an age verification law requiring pseudoscientific public health labeling for adult websites.
404 Media’s Sam Cole pointed this out with Vixen Media, a premium network of paysites, sharing the so-called public health messaging for Texas users. The Free Speech Coalition, an advocacy group for the adult industry, sued Texas with companies that own some of the most popular adult entertainment websites in the world. The ACLU said that the law in Texas overwhelmingly violates the First Amendment rights of adult sites and adult site users.
Attorney General Ken Paxton, having survived his impeachment, has substituted then-interim Attorney General Angela Colemenro. That case is now Free Speech Coalition et al. v. Paxton.
Michael McGrady covers the tech and legal sides of the online porn business, among other things. He is the legal and political contributing editor for AVN.com.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, age verification, criminalizing porn, hb 295, ohio, protect the children, steve demetriou, think of the children
Comments on “Ohio Lawmaker Wants To Criminally Charge Minors Who Watch Porn to Protect Minors. What?”
As a resident of Ohio, I apologize in advance for my state’s lack of foresight.
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Feels intentional to me. I’ve been watching the right wing bend over backwards to get kids trapped in the system for as long as I’ve been aware of the system. And there’s no shortage of evidence indicating it goes back longer than I’ve been alive.
Stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt. They know what they are doing. They want to torture kids and adults for “sexual impurity.” That’s it. Being gay, watching porn, it doesn’t matter. They want us to suffer.
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Same.
Protect children from Ohio Lawmakers.
Banning teenagers from doing anything is a sure recipe for encouraging what you are trying to ban. Just look at teenage pregnancies in states that make teach abstinence rather than birth control.
Is there something in the water? Were these crazy people there before and I just did not notice them? Is this the beginning of the zombie apocalypse?
Seriously it does seem to be getting worse.
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Well if there’s one thing that zombies and Ohio Republicans share are brain cells (or lack of thereof).
Republicans will be safe if there is ever a zombie apocalypse because even the living dead have standards and know bad brains when they smell them.
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Republicans will be the zombies because when an outbreak happens, the government will tell people to avoid the zombies, and Republicans will argue it’s a violation of their freedom to get bitten if they want to. Other conservatives will be on social media selling essential oils that supposedly prevent zombie infections. Donald Trump’s undead corpse will be decomposing in a corner somewhere with one hand reflexively hitting POST on the Truth Social app, except there’s a good chance his accidental thumbing of random letters will make more sense than his intentional posts when he was alive.
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A few thousand maybe. The idiots who didn’t get vaccinated. Many million of democrats too if it’s spread by air (eg the outbreak, viral, The plague, etc).
Remember the democrats were the ones pretending slapping a 5 cent piece of paper over your mouth was actually going to do something. Paper of which the points were fear larger than the virus.
Reality is the ones who survive a zombie outbreak are going to be the liberal gun owners. Smart enough to to not get cornered, prepared enough to have a rifle
Let’s be honest. Progressives will soil themselves as they die, and far right nutters will blow themselves up.
The rest of us, it’s more Sean of the dead and zombie land than anything.
Re: Re: Re:
While not perfect, a paper mask does significantly reduce the spread by catching the droplets that contain the virus as people breathe out. That is the moisture droplets carrying the viruses are huge compared to a virus, and are the main vector of spread of airborne diseases, and reducing the number of people infected by a sick person damps down a pandemic.
In other words, a simple mask will not stop free floating viruses, but those are most likely already dead, but is will stop the spray of virus loaded spit etc. coming out of the mouth and nose of an infected person
What?
I thought they did not want the government raising their kids but here they are insisting the government raises their kid.
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Simple mistake, they don’t want the government raising their kids they want their government raising every kid.
As soon as they’re the ones in power they go from ‘small government’ to ‘the government has a mandate to tell everyone what to do’ lightning fast.
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They want other people to raise their kids as they are raising their own, and such laws do not change how they try to raise their own kids. It is more a case of using the government to force others to do what they do voluntarily,
Re: Re: 'If it doesn't exist I don't have to talk to my kids about it, win-win!'
Bold of you to assume they’re actually raising their own kids rather than trying to get the state to do it for them.
any time someone says a law won’t be enforced, that is a lie. don’t pass the law, then.
looks like they just want more criminals.
sad.
It seems that misdemeanor of the fourth degree are just fines with no jail time (same goes for third degree) but still an (serious) offense. Still, it’s much more than a morality lesson in a classroom, or a little slap on the hand with a harsh “bad boy!”, for kids that have stolen few candies.
Maybe they want theses minors to grow up faster and force them to become adults (or criminals) this way. Talk about innocence preservation…
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Its the Fascist mind set, you do what those above you tell you to do, and they enforce that by the use of violence.
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Not so. Up to 30 days for a 4th degree in Ohio.
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It will be on their record forever and they will be severely barred from employment opportunities.
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school to prison pipeline
The fact that this proposed law has a punishment intended for minors says otherwise.
Be nice if the anti-porn perverts were at least honest...
Felony charges for platforms that have a user that turns out to be a minor, criminal charges for any minor that gets caught on any such platforms…
I’ll take ‘How to make adult content illegal in your state without having the guts to outright make adult content illegal in your state’ for $500.
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To be fair, they probably know that any attempt at the criminalization of all adult content would result in the law being found unconstitutional. This bill is an end run around the First Amendment, they know it, and they don’t care.
Re: Re: This is just CDA 2.0
It’s just CDA 2.0, same nonsense as back then. GOP just thinks “Uhhhh SCOTUS is red, SCOTUS will allow anything we want”.
Re: Re:
They don’t care because they have no reason to, politicians can push the most blatantly unconstitutional bills they want and the only ‘punishment’ they risk is not being voted back in come the next election, and if the entire reason they are pushing such bills is to garner support from voters that likewise loathe that the first amendment applies to content/people they don’t like…
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I don’t really know what kind of “punishment” would even be feasible for politicians who do that beyond getting kicked out of office. I mean, are you pushing for prison time, or a permanent inability to hold public office anywhere in the U.S., or what?
Re: Re: Re:2
If a doctor repeatedly showed that they didn’t know what the hell they were doing they’d have their license pulled and would no longer be allowed to practice so that would seem to be the simplest solution, if you are directly involved in X number of bills that are later struck as down as unconstitutional your ability to hold/run for public office is revoked.
Of course actually implementing such a system would be where the real problems would come into play as I’m sure there are a whole slew of ways to game/abuse the system such that it might end up replacing the current problems with worse ones.
Re: Re: Re:3
For starters, you’d have to actually convince lawmakers to pass such a law. They’re not going to pass anything that would threaten their ability to put forth bullshit bills for any reason (including as a protest against other bullshit bills).
Re: Re: Re:4
The fact that the people currently benefiting from the problem are the ones that would have veto power over any proposed solution would be the first and highest hurdle, yes.
Re: Re: Re:2
Give ’em the ol’ Benito, I say.
Re: How about adding a bounty
Since they’re trying to make porn illegal without saying it’s illegal, why not add a bounty on top? That way, the government can pay people to report each other without having to enforce the law themselves.
After all, this idea seems to be working on states where abortion is illegal.
Ah, you’re looking for boundhub and such, then.
always appropriate
People talking in movie shows
People smoking in bed!
People voting Republican
Give them a boot to the head!
Mechanics who can’t fix a car
Politicians who can’t think!
The salesman who won’t leave me alone
The waiter who forgot my drink!
Boot to the head!
— Frantics, “Boot to the head”
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Thanks to you, I bought this track and the previous skit from iTunes.
Thank you so much, Anonymous Coward, for the music discovery!
Considering local IP addresses (e.g. 192.168.0.0/16) are non-routable, it should be pretty easy to implement age-verification for addresses that should never reach them …
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Good old RFC 1918. How we love thee.
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Why does TechDirt oppose protecting children from the evils of pornography? That’s really what this comes down to. Is someone who writes for this site a kiddie diddler?
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hi good for nothing troll named hyman
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Oh look, another idiot fell off the stupid train.
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The fact that you think porn is evil is very telling.
“Is someone who writes for this site a kiddie diddler?” Project much?
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Nobody here opposes keeping children from being exposed to pornography. What a not-zero number of us here oppose is the idea that preventing such exposure requires some violation of either the privacy of adults who access pornography, the civil rights of pornography publishers, the censorship of pornography in general (which is almost always the start of a much broader censorship campaign), or the demonization of teenagers who access pornography of their own accord.
Teenagers have always found ways to access porn; that’s just a fact of life. How they access it is a bit less relevant than the fact that they will access it. (I speak from experience in that regard.) Laws that try to prevent them from accessing porn won’t actually stop them, especially in a day and age where teens are far more tech-savvy than the lawmakers who pass those laws. All those laws will do is offer some enterprising hacker a target for data that could be used to…oh, let’s say, blackmail users of a porn site who don’t want their watch histories—or even the fact that they use a porn site—to go public.
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To your credit, you responded in good faith (even if you do sound like someone who would probably support decriminalization of heroin possession – or at least marihuana).
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He seems intelligent and non-evil, so probably.
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I support the legalization of all drugs currently deemed “illicit”. Making them legal and affordable—in addition to making addiction treatment affordable and easy to access—would help make the black market a less enticing place for someone to get their fix. That would go a long way towards ending the so-called War on Drugs.
Re: Re: Re:2
It wouldn’t make the black market less enticing, it would just about end it.
Europe has a massive issue today in tobacco. And it’s a key study for countries that ban high-want items.
As countries faze in the EU ban on flavoured tobacco and flavoured additions, the black market has taken over. Hundreds of billions in black market tobacco is ceased yearly. The same or more probably goes unnoticed.
Follow me for a moment:
As a tobacco smoker, I understand. For years I screamed at the democrats that took away the rights of smokers AND the rights of businesses to cater to the crowd they wanted. Case in point—Baker’s Square. Before smoking bans the vast majority of their clientele was smokers. And they restaurants were known for their gigantic smoking sections and long stay patrons. It was the smoking equivalent of a Starbucks. Seniors spent hours sipping coffee. Business men and women spent hours on laptops.
The smoking bans gutted the company’s income. Most locations closed.
I hated the fact that I was pushed aside. That businesses that wanted my money weren’t allowed to keep one group or the other. The choice was forced.
Now… pot. I hate the smell. I hate the taste that lingers in the air. I can’t stand it. But I don’t judge others for their choice. And suddenly I understand the bans. No, I still don’t agree with them: a business should be allowed to choose its clients without any government mandate. If a bar wants a hookah lounge that’s their choice. If a Nazi doesn’t want to serve blacks that’s their choice. And if a pastry company wants to keep their 80% plus smoking customers and not cater to the rest of the public, so be it. Nobody has a right to service even if congress thinks it can force that.
But, there must be regulations. DUI, for starters. Be it alcohol or lsd. 3 strikes and you’re done forever with long sentences for breaking the law the first two times.
Consumption/sales limits. It’s a pain in the arse to scan my id for sinus medication. But it makes sense. And it should be extended to opioids and other less drastic addictive materials as well. The line between use and horror is a fine one. Otherwise you end up with 1890 Asia all over again. The opium crisis.
Use and disposal must be regulated. Not by fear but by reality. New York and California have a major dog poisoning issue right now. Hundreds per month. People drop a joint in the ground and the dogs eat them. So much a problem the NYT did a long format write up on it.
Legalising, regulating, taxing, and controlling, will always be the best choice. And the penalty should be high for illegal sales. Very high.
It ends the vast majority of the black market. It puts gangs out of business. It stops the value in the trade.
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This response is sensible, well-articulated, and in good faith. It’s easily heads and shoulders above the six or so commenters above who are just giving nonsense snippy responses. Thanks, Stephen.
Re: Re: Re:
Except the original comment to which they’re referring wasn’t in good faith and doesn’t deserve a sensible, well-articulated, good-faith response. Stephen’s response is a benefit to the audience who might want to see an articulation of why the original comment was bullshit, but it’ll do nothing for the disingenuous trolls to come here to be trolls.
Re: Re: Re:2
Then stop interacting with them. Wanna know why Hymen, Matthew N Bennett, and his derivatives keep commenting? Because Techdirt commenters literally cannot resist the urge to type up some moronic “witticism” like “hallucinated nobody competent EVER! LOLLOLOL PWND XDDDDD!!!!!!”
Maybe if Techdirt actually banned trolls who had long outstayed their welcome, this comments section wouldn’t have this issue.
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Because they are using the wrong means, and their efforts will hurt everybody by removing anonymity and interesting content. There exists software that will control what a device will connect to, and it is possible to set up child safe DNS services and set up devices to use those.
Beside which, children find pornography yucky, and quickly move on to something that actually interests them. Also, when teens take an interest in pornography it is time to talk them seriously about sex and relationships. Much of this drive is driven by adults who dislike pornography, and has little to do with protecting the children, but more about protecting those adults from pornography and the though that children might come across it. Most children are more sensible and resilient than the adults pushing these laws.
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Re: Re:
You sound like someone who favors reducing the age of consent and probably supports rechristening pedophiles as minor-attracted persons.
Re: Re: Re:
Republicans are thin skinned bullies who throw tantrums constantly.
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You sound like someone who does not know what pedophilia is.
https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%3A%2F%2Fid.who.int%2Ficd%2Fentity%2F517058174
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Re: Re: Re:2
Only a deviant would have ready access to information on paedophilia. Please turn yourself in to the authorities immediately.
Re: Re: Re:3
Since we all have ready access to information on pretty much anything, I guess we’re all deviants, then.
Re: Re: Re:3
Dude, a simple Google search will give you access to information on pedophilia. You, too, have ready access to information on pedophilia. Anyone who has internet access has ready access to information on pedophilia. Is everyone who has internet—including you—a deviant, then? Or will you admit that this was a dumb argument?
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You must be a republican, as they are the ones who resort to pedophilia to attack anyone you disagree with. Such attacks do a lot to protect pedophiles by making the term an insult rather than an accurate label.
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No, because that’s not how that works. It’s noting that the proposed approach to handling the issue is incredibly flawed, and that the extent of the problem is often exaggerated.
With viewing porn without someone else telling you to do so, you don’t have the same power dynamic that is why we have an age of consent.
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Why do you keep beating your dead wife?
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That should be the parents’ responsibility. It should not be the government’s responsibility, and it certainly shouldn’t be any platform’s responsibility.
Also, I don’t think it’s fair to punish the child for it. They’re kids; why should we punish them for watching porn?
Oh, and pornography isn’t evil; it shouldn’t be viewed by little kids, but it’s not inherently immoral in itself, nor do I have a problem with older teens viewing it. Speaking of which, what is inappropriate for someone 15-17 (i.e. older teens) isn’t the same as what is inappropriate for someone 12-14 (i.e. younger teens), and neither are the same was what is inappropriate for someone 3-11 (i.e. prepubescent kids) or younger (i.e. toddlers and infants).
Frankly, I think it should largely be left up to the parents to decide whether or not their child is mature enough to deal with watching porn.
But all of this is ultimately ignoring the main point: accurate enforcement of age-restrictions online is currently impossible, and what we do have would do more to prevent adults from using these sites to view content than it would to stop children from doing so.
Me at 14
Haha Best of luck with that, whole channels on IRC are dedicated to enthusiastically sharing Cracked Paysite passwords and i’m behind 7 proxies.
i always love the extra claims: “And the adult entertainment industry has sex traffickers!”.
Age verification is not going to stop sex traffickers, jackass. Go get the sex traffickers then!
Put forward by the same people that love arresting sex trafficking victims and not sex traffickers.
Republicans, the Christian version of the tali an.
Once again these champions of the free market are demanding more from companies than from parents.
Re:
Indeed.
Companies can get in trouble if they allow kids onto their porn site.
Kids can get in trouble if they lie about their age to get onto a porn site.
Where is the law making it so parents get in trouble if they allow their kids to access porn?
Re: Re:
If your kid eats a Tide Pod, who is actually at fault.
Tide – They made them colorful, they didn’t secure the container!!
Parents – Innocent bystanders who bought the item, brought it into the home, left it where the kid could access it (or did put it up but you know how kids are), didn’t pay attention to where & what their children were doing.
Yep… all about the evil corporation making their product in a way that it would appeal to kids to eat.
Steve Demetriou, yet another of too many adults who are unable to be grown-ups about porn.