rawTOP

There are no registrations for "BBTopUK", so sign up again. That said, the site software connects to an external service to determine if someone may cause problems and then denies them the ability to sign up. But typically there's an error message they did that you didn't mention, so I don't know what's happening in your case. (And for future reference - I never override the determination of the external service.) It may be your email provider - some won't deliver BZ emails. I know we've had problems with Microsoft in the past (they own Hotmail), not sure about if they're still a problem.

I’ll be blocking country code GB. The places you mention have their own country codes. Before July I’ll confirm that those country codes are being used.

Just a heads up that if the site changes it's look dramatically not to be concerned. The software that runs the site will be getting a major version update. I won't upgrade to the initial new version - I'll wait a couple, but it will happen at some point in the next few months. When that happens… The look of the site will change somewhat (not sure how much) You will no longer be able to login with your user name - you'll need to use your email address "Status updates" will no longer be supported (e.g. the twitter like messages that are in the sidebar of the home page) There will be changes to the tagging system. The "editor" you use to add messages to threads will change. You'll see "..." when someone is typing a new message, and then it will appear without needing to refresh. (and other changes) I'll post in this thread just before the upgrade. I will probably wait until late April to do the upgrade…

Cell networks are the most likely to juggle IP addresses around, so not surprising. Websites have to request lat/long AFTER the page loads. AND it doesn't really work on anything but mobile, AND the USER has to be OK with giving the website pretty much their precise location. That isn't a solution that will work in 90% of the cases. If I had more time/energy I'd write some code to let mobile users exempt their IP AFTER the initial redirect to Male Prime, but I don't have the time/energy at the moment.

A few updates… I started a separate thread about it, but the UK will be blocked come July. @viking8x6 is right - prostitution is defined so broadly in Florida that it includes porn production (except maybe content swaps between creators where no money is exchanged). Porn isn’t illegal, and distributing porn isn’t illegal - just paying the models is illegal. And @BootmanLA is correct - it’s unclear what SCOTUS will do. On the negative side even one of the liberal justices started with the assumption that kids need to be protected (not with the assumption that free speech needs to be protected). On the other hand it’s not clear that Texas will get an outright win. More likely is something in the middle which is still a loss for free speech. FSC is not happy that they only got a half hour to present. I may hit up one of the board members because they seem to now be looking for examples that aren’t traditional porn sites - and community sites like this are good examples of AV being unworkable. At the same time, I don’t want the attention that would come with a mention in a high profile court case.

Sadly what’s happening in red states is not isolated to red states. UK’s Ofcom has issued really strict guidelines for implementation of the child protection act. The cost to comply makes compliance impossible. And, while I have no business presence in the UK, the legal ties between the US and the UK are close and I’d rather not risk the rather hefty fines (£18M). Unlike what red states are doing it looks like this will affect social media like X and Telegram since it doesn’t have the exemption for less than 1/3rd adult content. So I expect this to be a major news story in the coming months. Oh, and the block should work better than the red state block since it’s an entire country (countries don’t exchange IP addresses like states do). Lastly… Voting matters! Don’t just sit there and complain.

Good News: A judge blocked the Tennessee law that would have also gone into effect yesterday. (A nice win thanks to FSC). Bad News: Florida has now been added to the block list. Related to that - even porn production is illegal in Florida (and has been for a while). And a reminder that we'll have a better idea of where all this is headed end of day on the 15th after the Supreme Court hears FSC v Paxton.

Look at your profile page

The Fediverse / ActivityPub / Mastodon won’t work because the content can be blocked by other instances and because the content will be on a server that can be shut down by unfriendly governments. Nostr would fix that. Its design is virtually censorship-proof. But adopting it for this community will take thought and energy.

IMPORTANT UPDATE! For starters… Oklahoma has been added to the block list (their law went into effect November 1st), and… If you're using Apple Private Relay you may need to turn it off since it doesn't route through a local IP when you tell it to. (I encounter problems from NYC.) But neither of those is as important as the update on the Free Speech Coalition lawsuit… Oral arguments in Free Speech Coalition v Paxton, the Texas age-verification case, have been scheduled to take place on January 15, 2025 before the U.S. Supreme Court. Free Speech Coalition and co-plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Quinn Emmanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP. What that means is that some time this spring (as late as June) SCOTUS will render a decision which could (best case) invalidate all the laws which are forcing me to implement these blocks. But they could also uphold the law - which is a worst case scenario. We'll know A LOT more end of day on January 15 - after the oral arguments are done. Hopefully the justices' questions and comments will hint which way they're leaning. While you may be expecting the worst - when it comes to free speech issues - conservatives can surprise you. The core argument is that age verification is highly intrusive and not particularly effective (given VPNs) and there are less intrusive ways that would achieve a result that's as good or better. So fingers crossed. Either way - I'm beginning to think about a Plan B. With yesterday's election results, communities like this will be under increasing attack.

Looks like the site was down for ~5 hrs. (oops!) Turns out I forgot to renew my (DDOS-protected) DNS hosting… I just renewed it for 2 years, so that won't happen again anytime soon.

If you want to read one of the amicus briefs for the Supreme Court case, here’s one… https://myadultattorney.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/23-1122-EFF-Amicus-Brief.pdf That one is a combo effort by EFF and Woodhull - both are great organizations!

This should be fixed as of yesterday. Sorry. It amounted to a dumb oversight.

Please try again. I think I may have fixed it, but not sure.

The 6th Circuit has overturned the stay in Indiana, so in a moment I'll be blocking Indiana. The court's logic was "weird"… Yes, age verification is probably unconstitutional But because the Supreme Court allowed a similar law to be enforced pending appeal, we'll let the Indiana law to be enforced. Meanwhile the case is on hold until SCOTUS rules on the Texas case

There were a few weeks when my server got on one (of many) block lists. If your mail provider uses that block list you would have been affected. It looks like it started around July 19th and was resolved the first week of August. But it looks like the server got blacklisted again a couple days ago. I've submitted a request to get off, but need to look into how it's happening. Hopefully I can find some time the next day or so to pour over a mail log and look for things that are suspicious. Anyway, email sent during a block doesn't get resent. It just never gets to you. So in the case of registration, you'll need to re-register.

There are many geoIP data providers. There's no universal source for that data. You need to look at what MalePrime says your location is (see the screenshot a few messages up). The other thing is… I see you're on IPv6. This site only uses IPv4. So that's not even the IP we're using - we're using a different one. You've used 4 different IPv4s in the past 2 weeks… That's using BZ's internal geoIP lookup, which is NOT the same data source as what I use to do the redirects. But unless you've been traveling that's showing 4 different locations, 3 different states. But even Indiana wouldn't get you blocked since FSC got an injunction for that state. But the data provider I'm using may have put you somewhere else completely. This is common with mobile providers - they move IPs all over the place and sometimes let you hold onto one as you move around. So it's significant that you're connecting via AT&T. You'd probably have fewer issues on something like cable-based wifi in your house. A lot of you know that I had a stroke last year. That slowed me down a lot. Then in December I figured out I had mild to moderate case of Long Covid and that I had it for over a year (at that point - pushing 2 years now). It took me a while to be seen by specialists, get the diagnosis, and understand what I needed to do to get better. But that's happening now. The problem is (and why I'm mentioning it here) that sitting and working at my computer actually drains my energy reserves quite a bit, so I'm getting almost no programming done. I'm far better than I was 3 month ago, and starting to see signs that in the next few months computer work will be more possible. When that happens one of my first projects will be to upgrade that page on Male Prime that you see so that mobile users can basically say "your data is wrong, here let my device tell you my lat/long…" Then I'll figure out what state that is, and let you in and whitelist that Class C range for the following week. But first I need to get better… As far as IPv6… geoIP lookups are even more difficult and unreliable for IPv6 than they are for IPv4. It's pretty safe to say everyone in a class C range is near each other, so if I have the location for one IP in the Class C, I can (fairly) safely assume the others are close by. But IPv6 is far more complicated. Let me try to break it down for you… Your IPv6 is/was 2600:0387:000f:5b16:0:0:0:0002 The first 4 segments (2600:0387:000f:) are your "network address", the portion after that… well, it depends on how your ISP set things up. An entire company (or ISP) can all be on the same network address. From a legal compliance standpoint it's fairly safe to say that everyone at a particular network address is at least routed through a single location, but the laws don't specify how their routed, but rather the physical location of the user. AND there's no equivalent of a Class C. You have to know the location of each and every network address - and there are BILLIONS of them!

SCOTUS has just agreed to hear Free Speech Coalition’s challenge of the Texas AV law. So by this time next year we should have some sort of resolution to the legal questions. But given the make-up of the court, it may just lead to more AV laws. But at least things will be less up in the air. This is why who you vote for matters - they determine the make-up of the court…

It will be blocked when their law goes into effect on 1/1/25. VOTE!

Use a VPN… (I really should be promoting one…)

As of today I've added Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky and Nebraska to the list. As @BootmanLA mentioned, Indiana came very close to being added as well. Free Speech Coalition is the reason why that law is suspended (for now). Please give to them if you're able so legal challenges like that one can have more success. I've also updated the OP so you can see the full list of blocked states…

My reading of that is a conservative court making sure conservatives lose in November. Nothing will get people voting Democratic quite like going back to an 1864 law controlling women's bodies back in the era when they couldn't even vote. And in a purple state… Republicans / conservatives are their own worst enemy. (The same can be said of Democrats sometimes…)

I redirect traffic from blocked states to this page… https://maleprime.com/about/restricted-state That entire site is porn-related, minus the actual porn. The state doesn't know what sites you're viewing. The laws don't criminalize viewing porn, they criminalize publishing porn. Most of the laws don't even give the states jurisdiction over enforcement (because that lets the porn industry preemptively sue the state). Instead they let (MAGA, Christian Nationalist) parents sue porn sites for perceived "harm" the porn site did to their child when the child encountered porn because the parent failed to do their job of putting appropriate content filters on their kid's device. So basically the laws reward people for being bad parents. And no, websites are not exempt from laws just because they're located elsewhere. That's how it should work but everyone wants to pass laws that apply to people outside their jurisdiction, so websites have to follow the laws where their visitors are, not where they are. Technically that means I violate the laws where homosexuality is illegal and could be tried in those countries. But those countries going after people like me is pointless since the US would never extradite me to face trial, and I avoid those countries…

FYI… If you're in Indiana or Idaho - you'll be blocked come July 1. And if you're in Kansas now is the time to call the governor's office. A bill is on his desk which is the most extreme AV law yet. The threshold for adult content is reduced to 25% (down from 1/3rd in most of the laws), and pretty much all LGBT content is included - not just porn. Please make sure you and your friends are registered to vote and then actually get off your ass and go vote! These laws are happening because people vote for Republicans. I'm not saying Democrats are wonderful - but they're better than the Republicans at the moment.

I block them. As you can see from the comments above, the block is imperfect, but it shows my intent not to violate the law. Setting up the block is "non-trivial". Chances are your host won't know how to do it, or will balk at having to do it. For that reason I strongly recommend Mojohost - they are the host used by the vast majority of people in the porn biz (other than the really big players that do their own hosting). Mojohost does have a virtual private server option that is less than $30/month, but that price basically doubles when you add a support plan (which may be needed for things like the regional blocks). And I doubt your site is justifies a $70/month hosting bill.