The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something.

It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.

What makes you think the statute is "unconstitutional?" The Supreme Court hasn't tackled the issue directly, but it upheld a law requiring libraries to install blocking software to restrict access to websites for children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Libr.... Remember that, prior to the reinterpretation of the First Amendment in the mid-20th century, the "obscenity" carve-out was broad enough to outright ban things like pornography, much less allowing access to children.

That said, I suspect that the law is probably unconstitutional, insofar as it's targets at a type of speech (social media) that doesn't fall within any of the traditional exceptions. I don't think the "under 18" rationale holds when you're talking about content that traditionally hasn't been prohibited to children.

Regardless, this isn't an instance of the state blatantly violating some clear Supreme Court precedent. (And even that's okay if you have a good-faith basis for challenging the precedent! That's how impact litigation often works.)

If anything, communications between Mississippi and California would be interstate commerce and would thus fall under federal legal jurisdiction.

At this point, I almost welcome all these laws. The more they restrict us, the more potential felons, but they can't fine and put us all in jail, no? Chronic over-legislation will crush from its own weight.

That said, like the saying of markets staying irrational longer than people can afford to, the realistic outcome is that bureaucracy will survive longer than a functioning society. Legislation will continue until morale improves.

Individuals are not meant to keep track, they're meant to leave the ecosystem. These types of bills are the end product of the process of regulatory capture by the corpos.

Corpos create centralized watering holes that are magnets for social problems, offering low effort service and very little accountability for early users. Corpos then nurture these uses because they drive engagement, and at the early stage any usage is good usage. When the wider public catches on and starts complaining, corpos then cast it as outside meddling and reject addressing the problems they're facilitating, as curation at scale would cost too much. Corpos then become a straightforwardly legible target for politicians to assert control over, demanding some kind of regulation of the problem. Corpos then lobby to make sure such laws are compatible with their business - like simply having to hire more bureaucrats to do compliance (which is the sine-qua-non of a corpo, in the first place). The last few steps can repeat a few cycles as legislation fails to work. But however long it takes, independent individual hosters/users are always left out of those discussions - being shunned by the politicians (individuals are hard to regulate at scale) and the corpos (individuals turn into startups, ie competition). Rinse and repeat.

As you say, IP geolocation is unreliable. Unfortunately that's the only option. If it is technologically impossible to comply with the law, you just gotta do the best you can. If someone in MI gets a weird IP, there's absolutely nothing any third party can do. That's on the ISP for not allocating an appropriate IP or the legislators for being morons.

The law in question requires "commercially reasonable efforts"

I run a geolocation service, and over the years we've seen more and more ISPs providing official geofeeds. The majority of medium-large ISPs in the US now provide a geofeed, for example. But there's still an ongoing problem in geofeeds being up-to-date, and users being assigned to a correct 'pool' etc.

Mobile IPs are similar but are still certainly the most difficult (relative lack of geofeeds or other accurate data across providers)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walker_Montgomery_Protecti...

In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh said it was likely unconstitutional (but apparently not obviously enough to enjoin it) [1]. So it's going into effect, then the lawsuit follows.

Similar laws in California, Arkansas and Ohio were all found unconstitutional, so I am hopeful. That said, these were all district court decisions, and all of them are being appealed. When they lose on appeal, they go to the Supreme Court for (hopefully) the final smack-down.

Interestingly, reading the summary MS HB1126 [2], this law is doing two things. It regulates companies and defines crimes.

States are allowed to set their own criminal codes. If Mississippi drops the mandate part and passes a new law that simply defines certain things as crimes with corresponding penalties, that law would probably be constitutional.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a97_5h25.pdf

[2] https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024

The threat of lawsuits.

> How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?

If you are intentionally doing business in a US state, and either you or your assets are within the reach of courts in the US, you can probably be sued under the state's laws, either in the state's courts or in federal courts, and there is a reasonable chance that if the law is valid at all, it will be applied to your provision of your service to people in that state. Likewise, you have a risk from criminal laws of the state if you are personally within reach of any US law enforcement, through intrastate extradition (which, while there is occasional high-profile resistance, is generally Constitutionally mandatory and can be compelled by the federal courts.)

That's why services taking reasonable steps to cut off customers accessing their service from the states whose laws they don't want to deal with is a common response.

To enforce all this, states can sue companies and they can take steps to ensure companies can't do business in their state (so like maybe force ISPs to block Dreamwidth?).

It's a good question. Maybe something with interstate commerce laws?

Might as well be the slogan of the current era

But the law was signed over a year ago[1]? The recent development was that the injunction blocking the bill from being implemented got struck down. I'm not sure what you'd expected here, that the courts delay lifting the injunction because of the sites that didn't bother complying with the law, because they thought they'd prevail in court?

[1] https://legiscan.com/MS/bill/HB1126/2024

Tough for the neighbors, but nitpicking "resident" is not a good choice here.

The end game here is total control and awareness of who is saying what at any time, in order to allow those messages to be thwarted.

If they make an honest attempt to comply and a small number of people using VPNs slip through the cracks, if they're ever reported, they'll likely be given a slap on the wrist at most. If they ignore the law or do some obvious half assed attempt to comply and thousands of Mississippi users are still using their site and they get reported, it's far less likely that a judge will be lenient.

https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-45/chapter-38...

That's probably what the wikipedia author meant to say

My understanding is that this is similar to the law the UK passed recently except instead of verifying age of users for "adult" content, every platform needs to verify (and log) age of all users for all content?

It can't possibly be that ridiculous.

Pornhub and BlueSky have done similar in response to this legislation in Texas. Wikipedia and a few other sites blocked the UK to avoid being burdened by their Safety act. Pretty much every streaming platform implements regional geo blocking for licensing reasons.

I’ll be curious to see how things shake out in the long run given the current political climate.

Also, for the enforcement agency who is/will be tasked with checking things out here...do they know whether geo-blocking is valid method or not? Its a silly law, don't get me wrong...but if its enforcement validation mechanisms are not up to snuff, i wonder how things will play out - both here in dreamwidth's case and other folks in a similar boat?

It may not be, if the law can be applied to them.

OTOH, may be sufficient to make it illegal to apply the law to them in the first place. US states do not have unlimited jurisdiction to regulate conduct occurring outside of their borders, but they do have more ability to regulate conduct of entities intentionally doing business within their borders.

It is possible some US States and maybe the UK will end up like China.

This is just the start and the trial balloons. The enemy within is a bit nervous about this attack on the most fundamental freedom that the Constitution is protecting, free speech, but they’re also very confident in themselves.

The laws are written in a way where the responsibility for enforcement falls on the operator of the business. In both cases, the business doesn't actually have to verify anything if they don't want to, but if it's found that they're allowing violations to happen, they will be held legally responsible.

So, I'm genuinely curious about this. Does the US not require any kind of territorial nexus in order for a jurisdiction's laws to apply to an individual? Can Texas criminalise abortions in New York, by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers? This seems very unlikely to me.

Under private international law, very generally speaking, you tend to require a nexus of some kind (otherwise, we'd all be breaking Uzbekistani laws constantly). I assume there must exist some kind of nexus requirement in US federal constitutional law too.

Assuming you have no presence, staff, offices, or users in a state, and you expressly ban that state in your T&C, why would that state's laws apply to you at all? You're not providing any services from or to that state, and in as far they can open your landing page, that's sort of like saying they can call your phone number. And in the absence of that state's laws applying at all, would not any requirements about geoblocking etc that may exist in those laws be moot?

(Usual risk calculus would seem to apply re over-zealous state prosecutors, etc.)

That would allow you, perhaps, to sue people from MS that used your site for violating the ToS (though, "some idiotic courts have ruled" does not mean "the courts which actually create binding precedent over those that would adjudicate your case have ruled...", so, be careful even there.) But that doesn't actually mean that, if someone from MS used your site and you took no further steps to prevent it you would not be liable to the extent that you did not comply with the age verification law.

> There’s precedent for saying that’s unauthorized access, so the feds (not the state; “Interstate Commerce Clause” and all that) should prosecute the visitor for violating my ToS.

Most things in interstate commerce, except where the feds have specifically excluded the states, are both federal and state jurisdiction, but neither the feds nor the state are obligated, even if applicable law exists which allows them to, to prosecute anyone for violating your ToS. You can (civilly) attempt to do so if you are bothered by it.

Please don't comment like this on HN. We need everyone to avoid ideological flamebait and unkind swipes. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also "operate in or leave" doesn't make a lick of sense on THE INTERNET

very incurious/very unhacker