Does Pornhub have essays like Playboy? How Supreme Court is wrestling with age-verification in the internet porn age
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Invoking older examples of accessing pornographic materials, justices grappled with the constitutionality of a law that requires adults to input their age into explicit websites. Comparing modern-day online pornographic material to “brick-and-mortar” pornographic stories and racy magazines, the Supreme Court justices questioned, on Wednesday, whether an age verification law intended to prevent minors from accessing explicit content in Texas impeded on adults.
![[Justice Samuel Alito raised a laugh by asking if sites like Pornhub have essays ‘by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/10/21/GettyImages-1431382186.jpg)
“What percentage of the material on [Pornhub] is not obscene?” Justice Samuel Alito asked. “Is it like the old Playboy – you have essays on there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?”. Vidal, a novelist, and Buckley, a conservative publisher and journalist, were among the public intellectuals who wrote for the magazine in the 1970s. Alito’s question – which raised a laugh in the courtroom– appeared designed to draw a contrast between an earlier age of “gentleman’s magazines” of the last century and the more explicit content of online pornography.
“Explain to me why the barrier online is different from a brick-and-mortar setting?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked inquiring about age verification online versus buying something in person. Justices invoked outdated examples of accessing pornography in trying to understand the constitutionality of the Texas law – in part because the major precedents they have to go off of are from 1968, 1989 and most recently 2004.
