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> Even better would be for a trusted non-profit to run this, like the EFF or the ACLU.

You're seriously proposing that organizations along the same general lines as the EFF or ACLU would be okay with being the implementing partner of a "papers, please" identify verification regime? I highly doubt their leadership would entertain the idea for even the briefest moment.

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I'm proposing that organizations like that recognize that age verification is going to happen, and try to ensure that when that happens there will be at lease some age verification services that do it in a way that doesn't subject you to a "papers, please" situation every time you go to a website that has to check age.

It can be done with either 0 or 1 "papers, please" events per device rather than 1 per website or worse 1 per website visit, and without preventing anonymous access, but most of the laws do not require that it be done that. Most age verification services will do the minimum required, which usually will mean they are more intrusive and more leaky.

The best way they could ensure that, if they can't convince governments to write the age verification laws to require it, would be to operate such a service themselves.

I hate how quickly some people have just accepted age verification is inevitable.

Look at all the countries with it already or that are in the midst of implementing it [1]. It won't stop there.

Even if the tide turns it is going to be pretty widespread before it ebbs. Why not work to make sure before that happens it is done in a way that protects privacy?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_age_verification_laws_b...

You got an alternative proposal? You could run you and 537 of your best friends for Congress and make it illegal

I'm not American. Nor is Motherless. And yet...

.com is American.

But should it be? Verisign having control over it is a weird historical artifact of the early days of the internet.

all non-two-letter TLDs are American. I think we should ban them all and put them under .us, but it will never happen. You can't get there from here. Path dependence.

Also ICANN should have gotten the corporate death penalty when it announced gTLDs.