Since Monday, Pornhub began blocking access to all visitors to Utah, taking a strong stance against the state’s recently passed age-verification law. In a video statement that now appears on Pornhub’s homepage when Utah users try to access the adult site, Pornhub spokesperson Sharita Bell said the law was not a “real solution.”
“As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before you can access our website,” Bell said in the video. “While security and compliance are paramount to our mission, giving your ID card when you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution to protect our users – and in fact it puts children and your privacy at risk danger. “
In its statement, Pornhub warned that “without proper enforcement,” the Utah law would put children and privacy at risk by driving Pornhub users to platforms that choose not to abide by the law, including pirate sites that host potentially illegal content.
“As we’ve seen in other states, this just directs traffic to sites with far fewer security measures,” Bell said. “Very few sites are able to compare to the robust trust and security measures we currently have in place.”
Until Utah can enforce the law on all platforms, Pornhub has warned that access will be restricted. Other MindGeek sites such as Brazzers, YouPorn and Redtube have also blocked access in Utah, Axios reported. To remedy the situation, the adult sites are urging Utah users to contact their representatives and ask the state to update its laws to a “real solution.”
The remedy that, according to Pornhub, “would be the best and most effective solution to protect both children and adults is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification.” “
In response to Pornhub’s protest, Utah state senator Todd Weiler, who sponsored the age-verification bill, told Ars that “Utah’s new law only requires adult sites to make reasonable efforts to confirm that the consumers of their content are adults.” are.” Weiler compared the policy of requiring age verification to access adult sites to requiring cashiers to check ID before selling alcohol and tobacco, saying, “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
Since Pornhub hadn’t protested Louisiana’s law, Weiler seemed surprised that Pornhub took the seemingly drastic step of blocking Utah users.
“When I enacted the legislation last February, I didn’t expect adult porn sites to be blocked in Utah,” Weiler told Ars. “Not at all.”
Utah’s age verification law goes into effect on May 3 for adult sites. It holds companies liable if minors sue after accessing adult content on their platforms.
According to Pornhub, Utah law requiring age verification differs from Louisiana law in at least one meaningful way. In Louisiana, the state government created a digital wallet that Pornhub could access to securely verify state IDs. Because Utah has no such technology, Axios reported, Pornhub said it had no choice but to “make the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website” in Utah.
