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
Comments on “Pornhub Says No More Porn For Folks In Utah (Unless They Know How To Use A VPN)”
When the actual porn monopoly has chosen to Coxblox an entire state in order to “comply” with the law.
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Websites not in the United States do not have to comply with this law.
The dark irony of this is that even if people in Utah are mad about this situation, they can’t really say so out loud without risking alienation from their “God-fearing” social circles. Admission of being a “pervert” doesn’t really fly in Mormon circles, last time I checked.
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Why should you take two Mormons on your camping trip?
Because if you only take one, he’ll drink all your beer and smoke all your cigarettes.
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(Same joke: Jews don’t recognize Jesus, Christians don’t recognize Muhammad, and Baptists don’t recognize other Baptists when they see them in the liquor store.)
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I was thinking something a lot darker, actually…
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Actually I have made about as much stink publicly as I can in Utah. If I can get more out, I’m happy too.
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… alienation for perceived socially-incorrect viewpoints ain’t unique to Utah, the rampant “Cancel Culture” infects the entire nation
self-appointed Inquisitors are quite trendy
the urge to control other people is a mental compulsion for many; most politicians have this affliction
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But I want to cancel Utah!
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Except their politicians are receiving phone call from frustrated Utah residents complaining about the lack of the means of relieving their frustrations.
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That’s not exactly a public outcry in the sense that you can put names to faces, tho’.
Re: Joe Smith, hallucinating founder of the mormon church, was a pedophile...
See the book above, at least look inside on Amazon. It was written by an old friend of mine, now deceased, who was raised Mormon and then became educated. I promised Deana that I’d do my best to keep her work out there.
Here is that book, under a different title that I gave it, still online should you be interested: https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Religion-Fractured-Wobbly-Exposed/dp/1492196266
Governor Cox, Eagerly awaiting your response. The Mormon Church is a huge tax write off, rip-off for its followers, and has corporate tentacles around the globe. Most people have no clue.
Here’s a well researched video on Senator Mitt Romney (who I would have run against if I had this info in 2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caxOhKPfy3E
I should add another small item or two, the Momos were responsible for the loss of the Challenger and also covering up 9/11. No time in a comment to lay it all out but if this interests you it’s not too hard to find more.
Adults trying to protect children by hiding everything to do with sex from them will actually do them harm via unwanted pregnancies and STDs.
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But it will make said adults feeeeeeeel better until one of those things happens to one of their own relatives. And that’s the only thing that really matters to them.
It's going to spread
Next, the Iowa and Nebraska legislatures are going to prohibit their farmers from watching CornHub all day.
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Naw, John Deere’s got that covered already.
If anything would light a fire to fix the issue, this might be it.
Time to make popcorn for the inevitable reversal/double-down.
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The “Salt Lake Tribune” article about PornHub’s blocking of Utah-based IP addresses linked in this article points out it’s already backfiring:
“State Sen. Todd Weiler picked up the phone Monday morning and received an angry, profanity-laced tirade from a Utah man upset that he could no longer access Pornhub, thanks to a bill the senator sponsored.”
Yes, legislators who supported the bill are getting the blowback they deserve. A lawsuit appealed to the Fifth Circuit—not sure if the Utah Supreme Court would strike it down—would end this law (same for the age verification law for social media platforms).
Crazy idea…
How about fining parents who allow their kids to view porn online?
Why is this a non-starter?
Everyone in Utah is being punished because parents refuse to parent.
If they managed to elect a bunch of vegetarians they can ban steak?
Your kids, your problem.
Maybe spend less time trying to blame porn for everything bad and maybe run off the bigamists & church leaders who are fscking kids. Pretty sure that is doing more harm to kids than seeing a tit on the internet.
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What do they have against tits on the internet?
… I’ll take my answer offline.
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Not to mention all the boobies 🙂
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What I love about England is what they name their birds.
Re: Re: "It's already wiped out the dodo, the cuckoo and the nene"
“And it has nasty plans for the booby, the titmouse, the woodcock and the titpecker.” — Principal Skinner
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Or, you know, not a problem. Kids have been finding porn since it was invented. Either by accident, and then they don’t care, or on purpose, in which case they’re nigh unstoppable. The law simply defines it as being “harmful to minors”; if anyone needed to show actual harm, that’d be quite a difficult burden of proof to overcome.
Maybe parents don’t want to stop it. The government getting involved to issue a fine would be the government refusing to let them parent.
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Because these are the same idiots who claim that porn is what is destroying society so we must outlaw it.
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The government getting involved to issue a fine would be the government refusing to let them parent.
They’re not parenting anyways. That’s why their kids always seem to ‘find’ porn.
Re: you can fsck somebody to remove corruption?
How did I not know that? I thought it was for magnetic disks! Err.. maybe just filesystems in general.
Seriously though, they sure have some neat new friends[1]:
Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Bahrain, Bhutan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan,
etc… all SUPER conservative nations, many of which are friendly with female genital mutilation. (WHich they use to punish girls/women for Eve’s Original Sin, fight feminism, and prevent the possible future sin of female sexual pleasure. Its actually a cherished Christian and Muslim tradition that consists of cutting off a little girl’s clitoris. Really. 4 million victims / year, and growing.)
Good choice Utah.
[1] wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_laws_by_region#Summary_of_pornography_laws
Sure enuff… I dropped into Utah, via VPN (wouldn’t actually want to be physically in Utah ’cause there’s something nutty in the water or the churches). Alas, no PornHub. Not that I cared. Just wanted to witness that some of our elected representatives are even dumber than we thought. Used to be we institutionalized mental defectives; now we elect them to represent us. Says more about us than about them…
So whadda 'bout...
In Utah, Polygamyhub.com & Childbridehub.com are still business as usual
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But that’s marriage.
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Oof, I know I opened with a Mormon joke but I feel like that’s too far.
The LDS Church absolutely has its share of problems (whole lot of racism, homophobia, and general bigotry) but I feel like the polygamy thing, while historically true, is more of a lazy stereotype in this day and age. And while there are offshoot sects that have serious child abuse problems, I think it’s harmful to lump those folks in with Mormons as a whole.
Most noticeably, the same age verification will be required Next March in Utah for social media websites, and it will be just as unworkable for mainstream social media platforms as it is for adult websites now.
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While just focusing on just porn sites alone could create unworkable hoops like it is doing here, with the parallel focus on doing the same for mainstream social media the end result will either be all these laws fail in court, or some mainstream third party age verification scheme (probably ran by a big tech platform) will become a public norm.
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And implement total web tracking for advertisers by being a common resource for all web sites.
“Having tested it out myself…”
Purely for research purposes, I’m sure…
Can’t wait for the effects of IP geolocation isn’t accurate.
The irony is that Utah is (or at least was recently) the state with the highest rate of paid-up porn site subscriptions in the USA.
https://www.cnbc.com/2009/07/14/Top-US-States-For-Online-Pornography.html
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers/
I’m sure that if Utahans are willing to pay for porn subscriptions, they’re willing to subscribe to a VPN as well.
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Perhaps you’re misinterpreting this. Let me give you an alternate possibility: if people from Utah can’t figure out how to get porn for free, they’re probably not tech-savvy enough to use a VPN.
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The truth is that willingness to pay for pornography tends to indicate a lack of technical savvy. This probably precludes a large fraction of being able to navigate the technical challenges inherent in setting up and using a VPN.
The other part that no one seems to notice… this law acts as a de facto ban on internet pornography in Utah for the vast majority of people. If Pornhub is consistent, then Arkansas or Ohio or South Carolina could ban it just as easily by enacting similar legislation and waiting for the inevitable reaction.
Sometimes they call your bluff.
Pervert vs perverts
If it weren’t For perverts we wouldnt have that many people in the world.
This only give more reason not to live there.
NOW for the other 20000 sites to ban Utah.
Who needs pron when you have magic underwear?
'Oh we weren't ASKING for that information of yours...'
I’m sure driving any users(adults or otherwise) away from mainstream platforms and onto smaller and potentially less reputable sites will go great for all the children that the politicians in Utah and other states claim to be so very concerned about.
Imagine being such an addict to porn that you plan to pay to watch it
Vpn's and geolocation
Can someone point me to good, current information about vpns, geolocation and the law? Or suggest a good google search term? I’m not asking for information about how to use a vpn, but information about how the law covers vpns geolocation blocks and efforts/lawsuits to change the law. I can’t get google to cough it up.
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Probably because there are no laws about VPNs or geolocation blocks. Both are perfectly legal (at least in the US and similar countries).
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The closest I got is China’s laws.
Which basically can be easily circumvented by either working for one of the various Chinese-run stock exchanges or… not being a fucking idiot about your internet activities.
After all, the damn Chinese still manage to harass Vtubers when they FEEL like it on Youtube…
that's an amazing feat!
some how Utah has managed to move the state to china!
I’m abruptly reminded of something one Malcolm Muggeridge said, about Senator Joe McCarthy, that he for all intents and purposes was a crypto-communist, intending to discredit anti-communism. Because that was the effect of his actions.
It seems that Utah politicos have had their irony circuits short-circuited. The effect of this will be to discredit them, like it or not.
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I could remember when crypto-communist and crypto-fascist meant something else before the last decade.
As someone who has a wandering IP address, what is my recourse if these dumbass state laws screw with my decisions to view or not view porn?
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Get a better ISP.
Or just get a VPN.
That'll teach them!
… to use a VPN.
I seem to recall what might be a slight issue with this
Now, I’m not an attorney, so I don’t know all that attorney stuff like Sheapardizing and things, but did anyone ever codify Justice Stewart’s Casablanca Test?
Speaking of the
idiotsright wing’s inability to understand non-binary answers.Utah
The thing ya gotta remember about Utah is…
Utah is what Elon Musk would be as a state.
Don’t really know what’s goin’ on. (with the population)
Vote the way the main religion tells ’em to. (repub.)(put a mark in “vote-by-party”)
Well trained to live the patriarchy way. (even when we vote for some the ‘rulers’ don’t want, the legislature takes it away as soon as possible)
Basicall living with a stern hide-bound “daddy” forever. (we’re not smart enough to know what we want even when we vote for it)
Please have -some- pity for us…
“material harmful to minors”
These people think it’s harmful for a child to see a woman breast feeding. That pretty much sums up everything you need to know about these folks.
You can also use Tor, which is even more secure when combined with a VPN
And there is no law in any of the 50 states that makes it illegal to bypass geo restrictions.
I agree that there’s no law directly forbidding bypassing geo restrictions but I keep wondering why no one has tried a DCMA anti circumvention lawsuit.
Maybe I should ask a youtube lawyer or two.
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The dmca dues not apply since the end user is not doing it fur financial gain.
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That is not a requirement for the DMCA to apply.
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The felony poovisions of the DMCA only apply if you are doing it for financial gain.
That means doing it for profit
Using a VPN like I do when I am in Mexico and want to listen to my iHeart or YouTube music playlists in my car when I am driving down there does not break any American or Mexican law.
Since I am not doing it to make any kind of money, I am not breaking any laws when I do that when I take any road trip to Mexico.
There is no law anywhere in Mexico that makes it illegal for me to use my private VPN on my home computer to listen to iHeart or YouTube playlists in my car while I am down there.
There are no laws in Alaska, Canada, or Mexico that make it illegal for me to that that while driving in those countries.
Another thing not illegal is when I am at Mickey D’s and want to watch the ball game on my phone when eating. Their new filter blocks a lot of streaming sites, so I use a VPN to bypass their filter, so I get the ball game.
I am not breaking any laws, including in the US, when I use my VPN to bypass their filters to get the ball game.
So don’t get me started on the CFAA. The CFAA does not apply to bypassing network filtering. If it did nearly every “office drone” would be a criminal and there not be enough jails to hold them all.
That is why the felony statues of the DMCA only apply to those doing for financial gain, otherwise there would so many criminals in this country there would not be enough jails to hold them all.
Limited to Adult Sites?
Does this law specifically say it’s limited to adult sites or sexually-oriented material? All I see is a prohibition on the distribution of “material harmful to minors”.
If that’s the standard, then theoretically, even major movie studios and record labels can be liable under this law for providing violent R-rated movies on their streaming apps and rap music that talks about killing cops or beating ho’s.
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One well known pirate streaming site, moviebox, operates out of China, so they would be subject to Utah law.
If they are not in the USA, they don’t have to comply
I know because I subscribe to their ad free vip service and my credit card statement says Hong Kong
Since the operators of movie box are in Hong Kong, they do not have to comply with Utah laws.
The Hong Kong operators are not subject to any USA laws
Montana
I’m in Montana and can’t watch…