japanimater said:
Wouldn't a state preventing access to obscene material be in violation of the Supreme Courts ruling in Stanley v. Georgia (1969)?

They'd likely argue they're not preventing access, you could still view it after verifying your age (like they aren't preventing you from smoking or drinking either, after you verify your age), that it's the given site's decision to block the state instead of instituting some kind of age verification. Of course you can counter that argument in a number of ways, ranging from privacy rights and being required to give a permanent record of identification data to a private third-party, but it will take time to fight that out in the courts (and given how conservative-leaning our higher courts have become, there's no guarantee they'll follow previous rulings like that).

watsit said:
They'd likely argue they're not preventing access, you could still view it after verifying your age (like they aren't preventing you from smoking or drinking either, after you verify your age), that it's the given site's decision to block the state instead of instituting some kind of age verification. Of course you can counter that argument in a number of ways, ranging from privacy rights and being required to give a permanent record of identification data to a private third-party, but it will take time to fight that out in the courts (and given how conservative-leaning our higher courts have become, there's no guarantee they'll follow previous rulings like that).

Hell, even just putting up barriers to getting an ID could be a problem for the states involved.

How enforceable is this concept even? I get the feeling it isn't, but I don't personally know what kind of implementation's around it.

mta_2_train said:
People managed to find workarounds that does not require you to use VPN, but idk if they work 100%

What workarounds are those? Other than using Tor, of course?

toradrow777 said:
What workarounds are those? Other than using Tor, of course?

Probably something stupid like using a different DNS entry(adding IP address to hosts or different DNS server). That doesn't actually hide that you're accessing it, though. Sounds like a bad idea, and it'll be fragile, obviously. An alternative was they were on a mobile ISP like Verizon that geographical lookups are very unreliable. Moving to another ISP is again, 'fragile'.

Sometimes the same service is used for multiple sites, like CDNs. There's flaws in (older versions) HTTPS that let you set what site was requested, regardless of encryption. SonicWall uses this trick, for example. So if you are using a version of SSL/TLS that doesn't have that problem...

I was going to hesitate to mention this in public, but since the only methods that'll work for sure are encrypted... Might as well.