Pornhub cuts off users in Utah to protest age-verification law

Pornhub cuts off Utah to protest age-verification law - The Washington Post

Utah residents who went to Pornhub this week got a message informing them that the company had blocked the entire state from accessing its website — a protest of a new law requiring users to prove their age with government-issued identification cards.

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Utah,” the message reads.

The new law, which goes into effect on Wednesday, holds companies that publish pornography liable if they don’t perform “reasonable” age verification to ensure users are adults. In a statement to The Washington Post, Gov. Spencer Cox (R), who signed the bill into law on March 14, said the vast majority of Utahns support companies being held responsible for “knowingly distributing pornography to minors.”

“The very least we can do as a society is to ask companies to verify the age of those viewing the pornography they produce and distribute,” Cox said in the statement.

Pornhub said age-verification without adequate enforcement will let pornography websites choose whether to comply. Similar laws in other states have driven users to sites that choose not to, which already have weaker safeguards, according to the company’s Utah-specific message.

A 1½-minute video of adult film actress Cherie DeVille reading the message also greets Utah’s Pornhub users.

“While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and, in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk,” DeVille says in the video.

Instead, Utah should use “device-based verification” to protect children, Pornhub said. Under such a system, users would verify that a particular computer, phone or tablet is operated by an adult, allowing people to view “age-restricted materials” on that device. The end of the message encourages users to demand device-based verification “before it’s too late.”

When introducing his bill to the state senate’s Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice Committee on Feb. 24, state Sen. Todd Weiler (R) said Utah residents already have to show identification to prove their age when they want to buy alcohol, cigarettes and vaping devices.

“You should be able to have to prove you’re an adult to view pornography, because it’s illegal for children to view it,” he said, while noting that he’d already received 20 emails lambasting the legislation as unconstitutional.

“I don’t think it is,” he said during the hearing, adding that “it’s not saying that you can’t view pornography as an adult. It’s just saying that you have to show you’re an adult.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah blasted the age-verification requirement as an “unconstitutional law … passed “under the guise of ‘protecting minors,’” a rationale that could be a slippery slope applied to other industries, such as therapy and even educational websites.

“Requiring adults to verify their ages — and expose their identities — before accessing certain websites will inevitably deter them from going to those sites,” ACLU spokesperson Aaron Welcher said. “As Pornhub’s response has shown, it will also impose potentially prohibitive costs on content providers.”

Last year, Louisiana enacted a similar law to the one taking effect in Utah. Although Pornhub complied with that law, the website saw traffic from Louisiana-based users plunge by about 80 percent, a company spokesperson said. It’s unlikely the users who fled stopped looking for adult content but opted for sites with fewer safeguards, the spokesperson added.

While both states allow residents to create digital ID wallets, only Louisiana lets them to use those wallets online, whereas Utah restricts their use to in-person retail sales, the spokesperson said, adding that the company thoroughly explored the use of such wallets in Utah.

Utah’s new law is one of several in recent years to target the pornography industry. In 2016, the state declared pornography a public health crisis, with one official describing it as “evil, degrading, addictive, harmful.”

One of the resolution’s fiercest champions was Weiler, the state senator and chief sponsor of this year’s legislation.

“This is a $7 billion industry,” Weiler said in 2016. “Help us protect children from your evil, degrading, addictive, harmful substances. If adults want to do that, that’s their choice, but we’re talking about developing adolescent minds of our nation’s future.”

And in 2020, Pornhub and other adult-content websites protested the state’s requirement to display warning labels with opt-in messages before letting users onto the site, KSTU reported.

But the websites eventually caved and added the labels, according to the station.

Utah’s governor said in the statement Tuesday that, while he disagreed with Pornhub’s arguments, he doesn’t object to the company blocking his constituents from viewing its website.

“I fully support PornHub’s decision to remove their content in Utah,” Cox said.