WI: 80s War on Pornography succeeds?

drugs are illegal and you can still get them at every corner.

But, possession and distribution gets you harsh punishment, use is publicly campaigned against and taught to be wicked and evil, and its all underground meaning no Marijuana et al industry. Illegality also means no ability to regulate nor tax.
 
We already had those types of people, which is why you had the Moralistic Right to begin with.

True, but I meant in a more prominent position, like back in the old days where the Legion of Decency could basically convince people not to watch a particular movie because it got condemned by the Legion, such as these. (Along with a potential revival of the Hays Code, presumably.) Yes, the USCCB's Office for Film and Broadcasting is still around, but it's not really influential. (At least in the USCCB's case, if I remember from the reviews they had in the local diocesan newspaper The Anchor, in addition to Catholic theology they also took into account artistic quality.)
 
The USA would be a sad, horny place.:D

But seriously, you thought the defiance of prohibition was impressive? Just try this, and porn use will actually rise, as people will automatically panic and get whatever they can. Porn will no longer be looked at as a luxury, and dudes will now struggle to get their hands on it, because it is no longer one of those things you can get anytime you want. When you ban something, people tend to want it more, and no longer take it for granted. You get an underground porn industry worth tens of billions of dollars.
 
Prohibition all over again, hopefully with all the humiliation it implies for those who try it. Just like you can't hope to ban alcohol, porn is the same, especially as the latter is easier to mass produce, and has become much easier with time.


Or far more VPN proxies than there are now. VPN traffic cannot be sniffed, so people would hide their activities with heavy crypto.
 
Laws would be passed, or at least called for, to restrict internet access for non-research or non-military uses.

However, the rich, those that could afford the high cost of international phone calls, could simply make a dial-up connection to a foreign ISP, and get their internet that way. As long as landline phones existed, there would be no way to stop someone from picking up the phone and making an international long distance call to a foreign ISP.
 
outlaw VHS,
bring back Betamax:p

The problem with Betamax is that VHS had longer playing tapes. Betamax did not have 6 hour tapes like VHS did. And when blank videotapes were $7 apiece back in the 1980s, it made economic sense to stuff as much onto one tape as you could. So it was the economics that did in Betamax.
 
Unless VPNs and proxies like Tor are also banned as well - at least for non-military use.

However, with the servers outside the United States, that would have been difficult to enforce. A VPN operator in, say, Sweden would only be subject to Swedish laws regarding VPNs.

And remember, too, VPN is also used by businesses for secure remote access to their networks. If a foreigner in the USA on business could not connect securely to his office network back home, he would not come.

Big business would still have a lot of sway in Congress, and any attempt to ban VPNs would be met by huge opposition. Corporate America contributes a lot to Congressional campaign funds, and that would not be lost on our Congresscritters. This one one reason several attempts to ban or restrict encryption have failed since the 1990s. Big business is not going to allow such laws to be passed without a fight.
 
One thing that mght have also happened would have been broadcast TV stations set up in Canada or Mexico near the US border to beam porn into the United States. A TV station in Canada or Mexico is not subject to any American laws.

Much like "border blaster" radio, TV stations would certainly have been set up just over the Mexican and Canadian borders, to beam porn, or anything else, ibanned under these laws, nto the United States. A directional antenna array could have also been erected to beam most of the signal into the United States. There is no way the the American government could have ever stopped something like that.
 
One thing that mght have also happened would have been broadcast TV stations set up in Canada or Mexico near the US border to beam porn into the United States. A TV station in Canada or Mexico is not subject to any American laws.

I don't know about Mexico, but I know that given the way the Canadian TV market operates, the laws (even the ones in place at the time) would prevent any new licenced TV station from broadcasting porn, particularly if it's hard-core and if it's before 9:00 pm. Soft-core porn after 9:00 pm is OK, but definitely not hard-core. In some ways, the laws on that front are more restrictive in Canada than in the US.
 
I don't know about Mexico, but I know that given the way the Canadian TV market operates, the laws (even the ones in place at the time) would prevent any new licenced TV station from broadcasting porn, particularly if it's hard-core and if it's before 9:00 pm. Soft-core porn after 9:00 pm is OK, but definitely not hard-core. In some ways, the laws on that front are more restrictive in Canada than in the US.

I think if the antenna array had been placed with all the transmission being beamined towards the border, and made where virtually nobody in Canada could receive the transmission that might have been differnt. Just put the transmitter right on the border, with directional antennae that beam all the energy towards the USA. I think the Canadian government might have allowed that.

And given the the propensity of Pierre Tredeau to thumb his nose at American authrority, he just might well have allowed that.
 
I still think this whole thread is a non-starter. Using the Traci Lords incident or Linda Lovelace's claims of being forced to perform in "Deep Throat" in order to justify increasing scrutiny and regulation of the porn industry is the much more likely outcome, not a "War on Porn" in the vein of the "War on Drugs."
 
I think if the antenna array had been placed with all the transmission being beamined towards the border, and made where virtually nobody in Canada could receive the transmission that might have been differnt. Just put the transmitter right on the border, with directional antennae that beam all the energy towards the USA. I think the Canadian government might have allowed that.

Umm, no they wouldn't. Even if you did all that, you still need a licence from the CRTC, and the CRTC would deny it.

And given the the propensity of Pierre Tredeau to thumb his nose at American authrority, he just might well have allowed that.

Umm, no he wouldn't.
 
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