PornHub has now added Texas to its blocklist, preventing users in the state from accessing its site in protest of age verification laws.
Texas' age verification bill HB 1181, passed last year, went back into effect last week after the State won an appeal against an injunction that said it violated the First Amendment.
The bill requires adult sites showing sexual material to perform age verification to confirm a visitor from Texas is 18 years old. The bill also required pornography sites to display a health notice to Texas users, stating the following:
"TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function," reads the HB 1811 bill.
In February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Aylo Global Entertainment, the owner of PornHub, for not complying with the laws, seeking a $1.6 million penalty and $10,000 per day after that until the site performs the required age verification.
Last week, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the law to go into effect. However, they halted the requirement to display mental health notices on adult sites.
In response, Aylo has now now blocked access to its sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn, Brazzers, Men.com, and Nutaku, from visitors in Texas, displaying a message stating that the new age verification laws are ineffective and dangerous.
"As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website," states a message on PornHub to Texas visitors.
"Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas's stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors."
"Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators' ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it," continued PornHub's statement.
Source: BleepingComputer
PornHub instead calls on states to require device-based age verification through a device's operating system, such as iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows.
The adult content company says that requiring users to share their information with multiple age verification companies only puts visitors' data at increased risk of their sensitive information being leaked in data breaches.
Instead, PornHub says that operating system developers should be responsible for conducting age verification and passing that information to sites that require it.
"However, the best and most effective solution for protecting minors and adults alike is to identify users at the source: by their device, or account on the device, and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification," reads a blog post about age verification laws.
"This means users would only get verified once, through their operating system, not on each age-restricted site. This dramatically reduces privacy risks and creates a very simple process for regulators to enforce."
While centralizing age verification to a select few companies would reduce the risk to consumers, it would increase the risk for OS developers who now have a large bucket of sensitive information to protect.
Furthermore, these laws have been shown to push people to purchase VPNs to bypass geographic restrictions by adult sites.
However, according to a report by RStreet, some state laws require adult sites to prevent the bypassing of geo restrictions, potentially forcing them to block all VPN traffic.
PornHub has previously blocked access to its site over age verification laws to visitors in Virginia, North Carolina, Mississippi, Arkansas, Montana, and Utah.
Comments
ZeroYourHero - 3 months ago
Unless you like kids watching porn, why would you protest age verification laws? Also, everyone knows porn is not really "speech", except greedy lawyers.
EndangeredPootisBird - 3 months ago
I may not be American, but I thought Republicans valued freedom and a small state?
NoneRain - 3 months ago
You're not American but damn look like one. Why would you ask about a US political party take if the dude didn't even say he is American? Or his opinion somehow makes him a Republican?
h_b_s - 3 months ago
@NoneRain: The reason is because all of the states enacting these laws are controlled by Republican lawmakers. In the US, the expressed sentiment is generally associated with Republican moralists. That's no secret even abroad.
NoneRain - 3 months ago
h_b_s, yes, I understand that. But you don't need to be American or be a republican to have an opinion on the internet... There're a bunch of countries with porn restrictions.
Anyway, I agree with you.
h_b_s - 3 months ago
(I had a whole explanation written out but it was too long really) TL;DR: Republicans aren't a monolithic party. They have many factions including many far right moralists and Christian nationalists that are very well funded. Kids are smart and won't be stopped by age verification laws. These laws aren't designed to stop kids from from viewing porn. They're designed to stop *anyone* from viewing porn through inconvenience and distrust of the process by using the excuse "protect the children". The federal appeals courts and SCOTUS keep ruling these laws are effectively overbroad impermissible content based discrimination. This is why you'll generally see many US citizens get really irritated with any group that claims they're trying to protect children by doing XYZ... It's nearly always not the true objective.
GT500 - 3 months ago
@h_b_s well said. These laws are useless, the restrictions are easily bypassable, and even if they weren't you can always find porn on sites based in other countries where they don't have to adhere to U.S. laws (whether it's a state law or federal law).
Hell you can BitTorrent all the porn you could ever want, and what teenager hasn't BitTorrented a video game before?
Proxy websites, VPN's, TOR, etc. all make it super easy to get past restrictions on the Internet. Hell even in China they have ways of getting around the so-called "Great Firewall". Not only are children still going to run into porn on the Internet, but if they really wanted to see it they can bypass any age verification that's put in place.
Government shouldn't be passing laws requiring age verification, they should be telling parents to enable parental controls on devices they give to children.
Occasional - 3 months ago
Maybe just the health warning:
"TEXAS HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES WARNING: Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function,"
Would be enough - if they put in in front of EVERY clip AND they had a "continue watching" click-able -text link, as part of the warning.
If you're not old enough to read and comprehend - you can't go on this ride.
scubasteve128 - 3 months ago
That's the catch-22 of Republicans. They want a smaller government unless it breaks the 10 Commandments, suddenly it's an issue. The problem with age verification methods outlined in HB 118, they require verification via a government-issued ID. Honestly, with their required method of authentication, the last thing I would want a smut site to have is my driver's license PII. This is another stupid law brought on by our senior citizens running the government.
ZeroYourHero - 3 months ago
Judging by the numerous empty churches in red states, I would say would say that the old "Bible Thumping" Republicans stereotype is long dead. There is one demographic who still fills churches today, and they always vote Democrat.
ctigga - 3 months ago
Personally, I agree that porn is complete garbage and isn't doing any favors for those who view or become addicted to it. Having said that, the "we must do <insert controversial action> for the children" claims are nothing new and are usually ramped up as legislators attempt to foist freedom grabbing law upon citizenry. Don't like porn? Don't view it. Don't like guns? Don't buy one. Don't like fossil fuels? Ride your bike, etc.
In the case of porn, it is everywhere: Broadcast TV, cable TV, movies, Internet, etc. To avoid it will require parents to TEACH their children. A site blocker may help with some accidential exposure, but anyone who has even the least degree of interest in viewing it will have absolutely no problem in finding it. The solution is NOT to surrender all rights, freedoms and liberties to the government. The world has much good and much bad. Learn to embrace the good and avoid the bad.
Bravenewworldorder - 3 months ago
If you believe that Texas or any other state for that matter will stop with this then you are a very useful, deluded stooge for them and whatever little left of individual privacy rights and true freedom of expression once so cherished and fought for in this country will soon disappear just like in China.
wpontius - 3 months ago
Curious how PornHub plans to stay in business when one -by one they are blocking states and possibly even whole countries. As their traffic counts drop so does their ad revenue and their ability to get advertisers. I have no problem with age verification, but I believe this push for verification is more about data harvesting than protecting children or anybody really. Same with the push to back door or ban encryption, Pushed in order to catch child predators, terrorists or criminals is pure P.R hype, it only to get unfettered access and collect more information\data.
What is termed pornographic is very dependent on the person, my Mom finds underwear ads in women's magazines pornographic. But she is from a different era and has strict beliefs on modesty. Modest or Immodest, decent or indecent, moral or immoral all hinge on a persons beliefs, culture and background, it can't be universally imposed on all.
aaron00204 - 3 months ago
It's funny because you can easily bypass the block with a VPN. But regardless I think it makes sense to verify your age for content like this, why would you want a child to view adult content..? I can see how it'd technically be an invasion of privacy, however, IMO I think PH just doesnt want their traffic to get killed off from anyone being "forced" to verify age.