Protect Yourself From Sen. Mike Lee’s Anti-Porn PROTECT Act

Policy

from the made-up-legal-doctrine dept

If you work for a living, do you feel coerced into doing your job? According to Senator Mike Lee, if you have anything to do with pornography, and need to earn money in the industry, it must be coercion at play.

While the world continues to be fooled by the Kids Online Safety Act’s false promises of a child-proof internet made entirely out of Roblox gift cards, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is pimping out his latest proposal: the Preventing Rampant Online Technological and Criminal Trafficking (PROTECT) Act.

According to Lee, the act is meant to hold large technology companies accountable for rampant cases of image-based sexual abuse on the internet. While the intentions may sound reasonable, the actual act is an unenforceable hodgepodge of bad ideas.

This isn’t surprising. Mike Lee is known for his idealistic, do-nothing internet safety bills. Lee has, for example, tried pushing his so-called Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, which would define a national standard for obscenity, without the Miller test, in the spirit of the antiquated, unconstitutional Comstock laws.

He also introduced the SCREEN Act, which is his attempt to implement national age verification requirements. He’s a bleeding heart for the “protect the kids” crowds that are essentially anti-porn, pro-censorship advocates.

The PROTECT Act takes some of the worst elements of Lee’s previous bills and wraps them in a new censorship package.

The bill requires web platforms to verify the ages of individuals who appear in sexually explicit imagery. This is presented as a measure to counter child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) online.

The U.S. Department of Justice already enforces strict federal obscenity laws. In the adult entertainment industry, producers of consensual, legal pornography must verify the age of participants and retain those records through a custodian of records. That custodian is usually a lawyer, senior executive, or c-suite member, like a CEO. Not keeping or falsifying the records could lead to civil and criminal penalties, including violations of child sexual abuse laws.

If Sen. Lee gets his way with the PROTECT Act, this legal standard would apply to virtually every web platform.

This includes platforms owned by Meta, like Facebook and Instagram. A press release from Sen. Lee’s office on January 31 features an excerpt of a hearing between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and himself to illustrate big tech’s shortcomings.

But one issue in the bill that drew my attention is the section on “coerced consent.”

This term defines consent to engage in sexual activity due to coercion, but with a wildly broad definition of “coercion.” To put it simply, if the act becomes law, the act of paying a porn performer or adult content creator is a crime within certain parameters and conditions.

As worded, the bill would invalidate consensual sex work:

“[C]oerced consent” means purported consent obtained from a person— (A) through fraud, duress, misrepresentation, undue influence, or nondisclosure; (B) who lacks capacity; or (C) though exploiting or leveraging the person’s—(i) immigration status;(ii) pregnancy;(iii) disability;(iv) addiction;(v) juvenile status; or (vi) economic circumstances.

Under this language, “economic circumstances” could legally invalidate consent to appear in a legal porn scene. If a performer needed the money from an adult content production for paying for rent, groceries, health care coverage, or child care fees, under Lee’s law, that could mean they could not give consent. Any consent due to such “economic circumstances” could be deemed coercion.

This definition completely outlaws consensual and legal pornography production, which is otherwise protected under the First Amendment.

The bill also invalidates consent based on immigration status, pregnancy, disability, addiction, or juvenile status. Current law already bans those under 18 from appearing in commercial pornography. Depicting an underage individual is CSAM and considered a sex crime. Minors already cannot legally consent, especially in imagery.

Coerced consent doctrine complicates the already clear standard of coercion versus consent, including non-consensual imagery. This is clearly anti-pornography lawmaking, pretending to be about coercion.

This is obvious in just looking over who supports the PROTECT Act, including the socially conservative American Principles Project, affiliated with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 coalition and the far-right campaign to outlaw legal porn completely.

The other group that endorsed the bill is the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The center sells itself as non-partisan and non-religious, but is notorious for backing Christian nationalists and anti-porn policies, labeling magazines like Cosmopolitan as “pornographic.” The PROTECT Act is a pipe dream.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.

Filed Under: adult content, coerced consent, consent, mike lee, obscenity, pornography, protect act