The actual point of these laws isn't to stop minors from viewing the material, it's to stop sites from hosting the material entirely. They're using "protect the kids from obscene content" as a wedge to get popular support. Acting like some technical solution to make authenticating as an adult more user-friendly would make the politicians who want this implemented happy is disingenuous. Let's take a look at how Tennessee has legislated their ID check should be implemented:
- ID must be verified either by matching a photo of the user to their photo ID, or by processing private transactional data (i.e. a credit card transaction).
- The user must verify their ID at the start of the session, and every hour the session is active.
- Historical anonymized ID verification data must be retained for at least 7 years.
- Anyone running a site that's viewable in Tennessee without the above ID verification rules is committing a class C felony, regardless of what state they reside in or host their site in.
This is clearly an attempt to stop any content they label as "obscene" (using a very broad definition of "obscenity") from being viewable at all in Tennessee. It's a completely unreasonable set of hoops to jump through that solely exists as a fig leaf because they know that making a law banning the content entirely would be ruled unconstitutional.
- ID must be verified either by matching a photo of the user to their photo ID, or by processing private transactional data (i.e. a credit card transaction).
- The user must verify their ID at the start of the session, and every hour the session is active.
- Historical anonymized ID verification data must be retained for at least 7 years.
- Anyone running a site that's viewable in Tennessee without the above ID verification rules is committing a class C felony, regardless of what state they reside in or host their site in.
This is clearly an attempt to stop any content they label as "obscene" (using a very broad definition of "obscenity") from being viewable at all in Tennessee. It's a completely unreasonable set of hoops to jump through that solely exists as a fig leaf because they know that making a law banning the content entirely would be ruled unconstitutional.