A new Utah law went into effect last week which makes online companies liable if they allow minors to access porn. To avoid liability, companies are required to verify a user’s driver’s license instead of just asking users to click a button to verify that they are at least 18.
Even though Pornhub has been hacked in the past, it’s unimaginable that it could happen again (sarcasm) and that millions of people could be blackmailed with their porn viewing & search histories. It’s also best not to worry about the fact that millions of small offshore adult content sites will just ignore the law entirely and that there are too many of them continuously popping up for law enforcement to take them all down. Oh, and most of those sites are much more likely to have malware traps and sex trafficking bait, so one of the biggest consequences of the new bill will be to simply push porn seekers off of big, relatively safe platforms like Pornhub onto numerous smaller, less safe websites.
It’s as if the authors of this VPN stimulus bill don’t realize that Utah is the porn capital of the U.S. precisely because people will find a way to satisfy themselves whether or not they live in a sexually repressive society.
Nevertheless, multiple other states are considering similar legislation. Utah’s law is actually a copycat law modeled on Louisiana’s recent government ID-based age verification requirement for porn sites. And additional copycat bills have been introduced to the state legislatures in Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, South Dakota, West Virginia, Florida, and Virginia.
Such governmental meddling in bedroom affairs poses serious risks for blackmail, and in the words of one former divorce lawyer:
“There are gonna be hacks, there are gonna be blackmail… I used to be a divorce lawyer, believe me, I would be going ‘oh yeah, we’re going to find a way to get those records’.”
In response to Utah’s new law, Pornhub pulled out of the state entirely, blocking all Utah IP addresses including those used by adults. And for the time being, the unlikely winner of all this drama appears to be OnlyFans whose revenue model already relies on age-authenticated users.
However, while the current zeitgeist may support book bans, drag show bans, and porn restrictions in some states, I don’t think prohibition will last more than a decade or two.