Your ID, please

Not a minor problem

THE FIRST thing some Arkansans probably thought on hearing about the porn-ID proposal: This isn’t law already? Why not?

There are several “culture war” bills being passed around the Arkansas General Assembly now, and that’s nothing new. Some of these proposed laws are better than others, and We the People can debate several of them (and are). But the bill that would hold porn websites liable for displaying content to minors seems unassailable.

It’s Senate Bill 66, and according to the news side of this outfit, it would require “commercial entities displaying pornography” to use a “reasonable age verification method” to make sure that kids aren’t downloading what the Internet does so often. That is, throwing these images out for everybody to see.

Apparently there is something called a “digital ID” that can be used. Or the website(s) can demand a government ID. Or, as the proposal says, “any commercially reasonable age verification method.”

The bill gets specific about what minors are sometimes subjected to on the Internet. So do the news stories. We’re not going there this morning. Suffice to say, like Mr. Justice Potter Stewart once said about obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”

SB 66 provides exceptions for news sites (which might have to report on, say, Stormy Daniels again) and Internet service providers. And the verboten content as a whole would have to lack “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value for minors.” So the Statue of David by Michelangelo could still be shown in art class during AMI days.

State Sen. Tyler Dees (R-Siloam Springs), said, correctly: “Just about literally every other adult oriented business and industry we regulate with an age verification process. If you try to go and buy cigarettes over the counter, you show identification.”

The best part of this particular story came in the news article about it earlier this week. In fact, this was the entire last paragraph of the story:

“No one came before the committee to provide testimony against the bill.”

Yes, unassailable.