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Pornhub will soon be blocked in five more states as the adult site continues to fight what it considers privacy-infringing age-verification laws that require Internet users to provide an ID to access pornography.

On July 1, according to a blog post on the adult site announcing the impending block, Pornhub visitors in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska will be "greeted by a video featuring" adult entertainer Cherie Deville, "who explains why we had to make the difficult decision to block them from accessing Pornhub."

Pornhub explained that—similar to blocks in Texas, Utah, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, North Carolina, and Mississippi—the site refuses to comply with soon-to-be-enforceable age-verification laws in this new batch of states that allegedly put users at "substantial risk" of identity theft, phishing, and other harms.

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Sole source contracting is the sort of thing government agencies should seek to avoid. In some cases, it’s impossible, but most spending should be open to bidding to help ensure the government isn’t spending more than it has to — or worse, hooking up contractor buddies Mob-style.

There’s a whiff of impropriety in all of this, but it may be imaginary. However, it’s still worth examining more closely, as the Associated Press has done here. School shootings just aren’t going to go away here in the United States, so it’s understandable that legislators and educators are exploring their options. But what’s detailed in this article suggests several things, most of which aren’t exactly great.

Kansas could soon offer up to $5 million in grants for schools to outfit surveillance cameras with artificial intelligence systems that can spot people carrying guns. But the governor needs to approve the expenditures and the schools must meet some very specific criteria.

The AI software must be patented, “designated as qualified anti-terrorism technology,” in compliance with certain security industry standards, already in use in at least 30 states and capable of detecting “three broad firearm classifications with a minimum of 300 subclassifications” and “at least 2,000 permutations,” among other things.

Only one company currently meets all those criteria: the same organization that touted them to Kansas lawmakers crafting the state budget. That company, ZeroEyes, is a rapidly growing firm founded by military veterans after the fatal shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

The first thing worth closer observation is this part of the AP’s reporting: “Only one company currently meets all those criteria.” That company would be ZeroEyes, which has benefited from similar legislation and similar grants across the country.

Again, it’s understandable that if the goal is protecting children, legislators and schools are going to want the best product. At this point, that would appear to be ZeroEyes. It does have competitors but almost none of them are able to meet the very specific criteria that keep showing up in new gun detection tech grant legislation.

ZeroEyes also appears to be the only firm qualified for state firearms detection programs under laws enacted last year in Michigan and Utah, bills passed earlier this year in Florida and Iowa and legislation proposed in Colorado, Louisiana and Wisconsin.

On Friday, Missouri became the latest state to pass legislation geared toward ZeroEyes, offering $2.5 million in matching grants for schools to buy firearms detection software designated as “qualified anti-terrorism technology.”

This sort of thing would appear to be outside the boundary of normal coincidence. And yet, the co-founder of ZeroEyes told AP “We’re not paying legislators to write us into their bills.” That’s probably true. The days of garishly showing up at a lawmaker’s office with a briefcase full of money are (mostly) behind us. But the ability to influence not just the direction of legislation, but the creation of legislation is something industries and their lobbyists have been capable of accomplishing without having to actually “pay” anyone to do anything.

Now, it could be that ZeroEyes just got out in front of its competitors to meet a bunch of requirements that its competitors couldn’t. Or it could be that it chose to approach regulators, rather than legislators, to help ensure the specifications and requirements more closely matched its product than any of its rivals.

Or, it’s just a coincidence ZeroEyes is seemingly the sole beneficiary of recently crafted legislation that provides funding to schools to buy tech from a single source.

Given all of this, it would seem most likely ZeroEyes is persuading legislators these laws need to be written and these funds need to be available to protect children from school shootings. That only its product meets the requirements is a happy coincidence, rather than the result of loutishly dangling campaign contributions over malleable legislators’ heads.

America is a business more than it’s a country. These new laws are now forcing taxpayers to fund tech that hasn’t exactly shown it can handle the responsibilities expected of it. Given the numerous options available to legislators, law enforcement, and a small army of government agencies (including social services and mental health professionals), is it really the best idea to start throwing money at the shiniest option, especially when only a single provider meets the criteria… which means it doesn’t need to be all that shiny to begin with?

Here’s what the chairperson of the National Council of School Safety Directors (Jason Stoddard) had to say about ZeroEyes and its legislation-enabled takeover of the AI gun detection market:

The super-specific Kansas bill — particularly the requirement that a company have its product in at least 30 states — is “probably the most egregious thing that I have ever read” in legislation…

[…]

When states allot millions of dollars for certain products, it often leaves less money for other important school safety efforts, such as electronic door locks, shatter-resistant windows, communication systems and security staff, he said.

“The artificial-intelligence-driven weapons detection is absolutely wonderful,” Stoddard said. “But it’s probably not the priority that 95% of the schools in the United States need right now.”

That’s probably the most salient point, whether or not ZeroEyes’ hands are completely clean. Most AI in use today is still a bit wonky. Facial recognition tech has been around for years, but most products still suffer from the same issues, even though they’ve had plenty of time to address things like built-in bias or, you know, just assuming any images they find laying around the ‘net are free for the taking (and training).

And as for the co-founder’s claims it does not buy legislators or legislation, it hardly seems to matter. Purchased or not, legislators are willing to make ZeroEyes a sole source for in-school gun detection tech. As the AP reports, the company put on a presentation for state legislators earlier this year. Whatever else went on between ZeroEyes and Kansas legislators, this was (almost!) the end result:

Kansas state Rep. Adam Thomas, a Republican, initially proposed to specifically name ZeroEyes in the funding legislation. The final version removed the company’s name but kept the criteria that essentially limits it to ZeroEyes.

Yeah, that’s not a great look, even if ZeroEyes stayed out of the law-crafting process. Sadly, another Republican on the K-12 budget committee was even more voracious in the defense of ZeroEyes as a sole source provider, telling her fellow legislators the state “couldn’t afford the delays of a standard bidding process.” Whew.

All of this may just be coincidence. But given the reach of ZeroEyes and the number of states that have passed similar legislation that solely benefits the only company that (equally coincidentally!) can match specific criteria enumerated in these bills, there’s reason to doubt every bit of this is on the up-and-up.

Is a painting of a giant burger a sign or a mural? The answer to that question could determine whether Steve Howard can keep some half-finished burger art on the side of his restaurant or be forced to take it down.

Howard is the owner of The Cozy Inn in Salina, Kansas—a restaurant known for the sliders it serves with a generous helping of aromatic onions.

Back in November, Howard commissioned a local artist to decorate the side of The Cozy Inn with a large burger mural, some smaller slider-shaped UFOs, and a caption reading, "Don't fear the smell! The fun is inside!!"

Within a few days, a Salina official was telling Howard to halt the paint job. The city reasoned that because Howard's wall art would depict a product his restaurant also sold, it was not a mural (which the city doesn't regulate), but rather a sign (for which it has extensive rules).

Under Salina's sign code, Howard's business could only post signs totaling 62 square feet in size and he'd already used up 52 of those feet with existing signage. His planned burger wall art would take up 528 square feet. Downtown businesses' signs also need approval from the city's Design Review Board.

Since being told to stop work on his burger painting, Howard has been going back and forth with the city over whether he'll be able to complete the work. Earlier this month, the city sent him a letter telling him to hold off on the painting while it "reviewed" its signage regulations.

Rather than wait, Howard filed a federal lawsuit arguing that because the legality of his mural turns on the particular images it depicts, his free speech rights are being violated. If he had commissioned wall art of car parts or some other product his business didn't sell, he'd be well within his rights to proceed with the mural.

"In our view, this is a clear content-based restriction on speech," says Sam MacRoberts of the Kansas Justice Institute, which is representing Howard.

The U.S. Supreme Court theoretically put limits on this kind of sign regulation with its decision in the 2015 case Reed v. Gilbert, which struck down an Arizona town's regulations on temporary signs that applied stricter rules to nonpolitical signage.

"The town definitely was drawing lines based on what messages the signs conveyed," says Betsy Sanz, an attorney with the Institute for Justice (which is not affiliated with the Kansas Justice Institute). "The court said that was not allowed."

Nevertheless, cities post-Reed continue to enforce restrictions on business murals that include images of what the business sells.

The Institute for Justice has litigated multiple mural cases, pre- and post-Reed. It is currently representing business owner Sean Young in a First Amendment lawsuit against Conway, New Hampshire, which has told him a donut mural painted by local art students on his bakery violates the town's sign code.

Despite the likely unconstitutionality of many towns' sign restrictions, business owners are often reluctant to challenge them.

That means businesses will often just paint over their murals or change them so that they're no longer showing products the business sells.

In 2012, The Washington Post reported on a smoke shop in Arlington, Virginia (a hotspot of mural censorship), that changed its mural of a man smoking a cigar to a man holding a whale to comply with county regulations.

Sanz urges the Supreme Court to take up the issue of towns' regulation of business murals, saying, "There are still government bodies that wish to control speech. The Supreme Court is going to need to take signs up again to help clarify things for individuals."

The post Town Says Burger Joint's Mural Can't Show Any Burgers appeared first on Reason.com.