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But laws against selling/giving alcohol to minors are moderately successful at curbing teen alcohol use because they carry with them a risk of punishment that grows with the scale of the operation. If all it took was one adult who thought "kids should be allowed to drink if they want" to provide all the kids in the country with free booze and that adult had no meaningful fear of repercussions, the laws would be nothing but sternly worded advice.

If the proof of adulthood scheme is truly anonymous, one adult with some technical chops who thinks "kids should be allowed to watch porn if they want" would be able to, say, run an adult-o-matic-9000 TOR hidden service that anyone can use to pinky promise that they are an adult without fear of repercussions. If such a service comes with a meaningful risk of being identified and punished, it is by definition not anonymous.

I suppose I'm just not convinced giving up some basic liberties for a law that converts into sternly worded advice if just one adult chooses to break it is a great idea.

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It's always fascinating when people put "tor hidden service" in a sentence that describes something that will reach millions.

I also don't think you'll find many ISPs terribly keen to fight for the neutral treatment of TOR connections when the reason for this fight is explicitly to serve porn to minors.

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In Europe it’s very frequently perfectly legal to give alcohol to minors, but not sell.

For example, in the UK it’s only illegal to give alcohol to a child younger than 5 years old.

France has no limitations, giving a toddler wine is not explicitly illegal. Getting a child drunk would be.

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That one adult could also just download and serve the content without an age gate. The security system on the original download seems irrelevant.
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Sure, the big sites could also serve the content without an age gate, both would just have to have to avoid being found as they would be breaking the law that proscribed the age gate.
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That would require all the infrastructure to serve the content, compared to just serving the file ”proving” you are an adult.
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