[lesser23]

I understand the sentiment and agree but the practicality is a different story.

Not many people pay in cash (though, for now, it's still possible). 99.9% of people carry a tracking device in their pocket, and it's a junior engineer level task to correlate transaction data to an ID via any number of methods.

So while it's not "built in" at a movie theater it's child's play to figure out who's watching what, when. Effectively, it's the same thing as requiring an ID to watch porn in that light. Similarly Google has shown (repeatedly) it's absolutely trivial to figure out who a person is via tracking. Then, it's absolutely trivial to determine a person and their porn preferences.

I can see both sides. The parents are ultimately responsible for their child's media consumption. But, a company also has a duty to ensure they're not violating any rules. The "Are you over 18" pop ups are there for legal reasons. I think that this ruling simply codifies what has already existed and provides a way to make it harder to bypass (without a VPN).