Pornhub Says No More Porn For Folks In Utah (Unless They Know How To Use A VPN)
from the cox-blocked dept
On May 3, a new law restricting porn access in Utah will go Into effect. The response is going to be epically controversial as angry porn consumers in the state will soon lose access to much more than a few household adult entertainment industry brand names like Pornhub.
In a move that was no surprise whatsoever, Pornhub has officially blocked all IP addresses registered in the state of Utah. Fellow adult industry journalist, Gustavo Turner of Xbiz, first reported the block for the adult industry business news media. Having tested it out myself through this handy little tool that Utah seems to forget that exists (a VPN), I was able to confirm this.
Though I’m based in Colorado, my socially conservative neighbors to the West are now victim to the incongruent beliefs of zealous politicians who have no understanding of the internet or online free speech.
Porn superstar and The Daily Beast contributor Cherie Deville appeared in a safe-for-work explanation video that Utah-based users will land on when visiting. In the video, Deville delivers a stern message to the fine people of Utah by telling them that one of the world’s most popular websites, in general, has blocked the entire state due to a controversial anti-porn law.
What’s more is that Deville’s video doesn’t mention Utah by name, and is clearly a broad-form video that Pornhub produced in anticipation for other U.S. states about to block legal adult entertainment websites for one reason or another. The foundation of the Holy and Great Firewall of Utah (I mean Zion) was established by Senate Bill (SB) 287. State Sen. Todd Weiler and Rep. Susan Pulsipher introduced SB 287 as a means to require age verification for users to view porn sites.
Similar to the controversial Louisiana age verification mandate that entered into force on Jan. 1, SB 287 would grant a new tort for any publisher or distributor of “material harmful to minors” that could force civil action by private citizens who claim a commercial entity dealing in this content caused harm to minors by not age-gating said content and requiring a digitized ID verification of the user. While Louisiana’s law integrated an existing digital wallet service developed by the state, the approach Utah took goes even further and brings to the forefront the debate on how to best deploy identity verification while minimizing data bloat and potential risks of catastrophic data breaches. Deville explains that there are more reasonable approaches, and that the Weiler-Pulsipher law is not the answer. Rather, Deville added, laws and regulations on age verification for adult-only content should include room for device-based verification measures instead of government-issued identification or credit card info.
“We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification,” a statement posted under Deville’s warning video reads.
The Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry, also issued a warning to its members about SB 287 entering force on May 3.
“Unfortunately, the Utah legislation does not provide a straightforward way to comply,” the coalition declared, pointing to how “the other compliance methods required by the legislation don’t align with the current offerings from most, if not all, AVS providers.”
The state legislatures in Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas were able to pass similar bills. Louisiana is trying to amend the law to enable the state attorney general to take even more action against adult sites that don’t have government mandated age verification in place and “do harm” to minors who visit such sites.
One of the key weaknesses to these types of laws are virtual private networks, or VPNs. A VPN shields an IP address by allowing the network to redirect it through a remote server managed by a VPN provider. This “changes” the location of the IP address and the VPN server becomes the de facto source of data. VPNs can help users in high-censorial jurisdictions get around geo blocks and other forms of censorship on the internet. VPNs aren’t banned in Utah, or really anywhere in the United States. Most people can download relatively effective, efficient, and affordable VPNs on their mobile devices, tablets, personal computers, smart TVs, and other devices.
That is besides the point. The regulatory environment in Utah has forced Pornhub’s corporate parent firm MindGeek, now owned by Ethical Capital Partners in Montréal, to go as far as cut ties with users who did nothing but want to watch consensual adult content.
Sites owned by MindGeek include Brazzers, YouPorn, PornMD, ModelHub, Nutaku, Men.com, Mofos, My Dirty Hobby, and several others. All of these sites are blocked and feature a message from Cherie Deville.
Disclosure: The author is a member of the Free Speech Coalition. He wrote this column without compensation from the coalition, its officers, or its member firms.
Michael McGrady is a journalist and commentator focusing on the tech side of the online porn business, among other things.
Filed Under: blocking, geofencing, ip blocking, spencer cox, splinternet, utah
Companies: mindgeek, pornhub