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Use of VPNs to bypass age checks on porn sites to be investigated by Australia’s eSafety watchdog
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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I wonder if someone can start a lawsuit by stating ID are a direct constitutional violation to view porn, as it's protected speech.
Someone has. Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Unfortunately, SCOTUS held 6–3 that they "only incidentally burdened the protected speech of adults", which meant that because they decided only intermediate scrutiny applied (as opposed to the more difficult burden of strict scrutiny, or the even weaker burden of rational basis), the law was ok.
???
Porn is protected speech?
I had a similar response at first, but I believe Zen is responding to Zahill's comparison to America. In America, yes. Their first amendment is very, very broad. Over time, various cases have held that "obscene" material can be banned, but they have increasingly narrowed the definition of obscene to the point that most of what we would call porn is now legally protected. Cases like Roth and Miller, earlier on. Leading up to, more recently, Ashcroft v ACLU which prohibited bans of online porn pretty much entirely.
(Disclaimer: this comment comes from some vaguely remembered YouTube videos from Legal Eagle, plus skimming the Wikipedia articles of the cases mentioned. I'm probably being overly broad...or overly narrow, in some way here.)
A bigger reason is that nobody should trust the government to define porn for the purpose of classifying porn as restricted speech, just because there are too many important edge cases, especially regarding health information.
In America, although I'm sure that's on the Republican shit-can list.
Well even back in 2004 when Ashcroft v ACLU was decided (and protected online porn as free speech), Justice Scalia said "no, porn should not in any way be protected", and three other justices said whatever restrictions on it were in the law being adjudicated were acceptable as a way to protect children. SCOTUS's more recent decisions regarding hard age-verification in cases like Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton has held that strict age-verification laws are allowed.