The Online Porn Free-for-All Is Coming to an End

January 23, 2025

man sitting at a computer in the dark

(The Atlantic) – Three decades into the internet era, the Supreme Court finally appears ready to uphold age-verification laws.

For practical purposes, however, American children can access porn as soon as they can figure out how to navigate a web browser. That’s because, since the 1990s, America has had two sets of laws concerning underage access to pornography. In the physical world, the law generally requires young-looking customers to show ID proving they’re 18 before they can access adult materials. In the online world, the law has traditionally required, well, nothing. Under Supreme Court precedent established during the internet’s infancy, forcing websites to verify the age of their users is burdensome and ineffective, if not impossible, and thus incompatible with the First Amendment. (Read More)