Come Friday, getting access to pictures of nudes and sexual activity online is going to be the same as buying cigarettes, liquor, and lottery tickets.

You're going to have to prove you're old enough.

That's when a new law takes effect that requires any publisher of material "harmful to minors'' to set up a system of either digital identification or use a commercial age-verification system before access can be gained. The measure has teeth, allowing parents to seek $10,000-a-day penalties from publishers that don't comply.

And that's just part of it. The new law says a court can impose a fine of up to $250,000 if the failure to use age verification actually results in one or more minors — defined in the bill as younger than 18 — actually getting access to the forbidden materials.

Lawmak

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