> 129B.002(b) A commercial entity that performs the age verification
required by Subsection (a) or a third party that performs the age
verification required by Subsection (a) may not retain any
identifying information of the individual.
So I suppose the court would take them at their word unless there were some evidence presented that they did not check ID or accepted an obvious fake (e.g. a sting operation), just like in person.
I don't understand why everyone gets so up in arms about this topic without ever reading the laws being written. Absent any information, you might guess that the system ought to work exactly the way it does in person too, which seems to be the case. This was true of the (Utah?) parental controls law discussed on HN a couple weeks ago too. People start asking all these what-ifs about things the law explicitly thought about, and handled in a reasonable way.
Generally, "prove you didn't break the law" isn't how the law works. If there's no evidence that they broke the law, then there's no issue. If the government gets a 16-year-old to participate in a sting operation to get evidence that they're not checking id... well then if they provide porn to a 16 year old, they broke the law. Lawyers can hash out where the line is on "reasonable" steps to check an ID/what is a reasonably convincing fake/whether appropriate steps were taken to check that the person presenting the ID is the person on the ID. Businesses checking ID for adult-restricted items is not new ground. Collecting and presenting evidence of people breaking this kind of law is not new either.
This doesn't cover the very real digging for extra charges that occurs when someone is subjected to the legal system. We see people all the time get caught for minor offenses and then upon further examination also are found guilty of loads of other things. The fact that parallel construction exists makes it even more egregious.
I even agree with you, violations of this won't be anyone's primary charge, but I might disagree that we should conclude that its existence won't affect people.
Besides, like a lot of these laws, the primary consequence is a chilling effect where porn sites aren't accessible and in that light it's an effective law.
> Suspecting the Washington-based hospital of providing gender-affirming care to Texas children, which is now banned in Texas, AG Ken Paxton issued investigative subpoenas demanding medical information.
Why wouldn’t they do the same sort of harrassing digging in this case?
Probably because there's nothing to dig because the law explicitly bans storing information. If they wanted to bury companies in legal work assembling records, they probably should've required them to keep records instead of requiring them not to.
If they were going to, why not do that kind of harassment digging with records they are required to keep about the performers?
https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB1181/id/2819916
> 129B.002(b) A commercial entity that performs the age verification required by Subsection (a) or a third party that performs the age verification required by Subsection (a) may not retain any identifying information of the individual.
So I suppose the court would take them at their word unless there were some evidence presented that they did not check ID or accepted an obvious fake (e.g. a sting operation), just like in person.
I don't understand why everyone gets so up in arms about this topic without ever reading the laws being written. Absent any information, you might guess that the system ought to work exactly the way it does in person too, which seems to be the case. This was true of the (Utah?) parental controls law discussed on HN a couple weeks ago too. People start asking all these what-ifs about things the law explicitly thought about, and handled in a reasonable way.