exposing how the website was repeatedly hosting videos of minors being raped, which inspired Visa and MasterCard to stop processing payments on the site. But the site does not verify the ages of theof people who use the site and with the exception of Louisiana, it doesn’t plan to start. Rather than ask users to upload their government-issued identification, Pornhub is simply choosing not to offer service at all, citing issues of unconstitutionality, ineffectiveness and privacy risks.
Whether or not there are legitimate First Amendment issues at play will be a matter for the courts, but there’s no arguing with the effectiveness of the laws. As Stabile explained, age-verification laws make traffic to porn sites drop precipitously. It turns out, unsurprisingly, that nobody wants to upload their driver’s license or passport before watching porn.
To state legislatures at least, Schlegel seems to have the more convincing argument. Not only have six states passed copycat legislation, butThe public is also on her side. “You poll this, it’s like an 85-15 issue,” explained Jon Schweppe, the policy director for the socially conservative think tank American Principles Project.
“The idea is that [these laws] will burden adults’ access to speech that is protected and they have every right to engage with and to access,” said Eidelman. Even laws that mandate age-verification at the device level , which Pornhub’s representatives told me they would be in favor of, would be clearly unconstitutional in Eidelman’s view.