Protect Yourself From Sen. Mike Lee’s Anti-Porn PROTECT Act
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
Comments on “Protect Yourself From Sen. Mike Lee’s Anti-Porn PROTECT Act”
They don’t believe what they’re saying. There is an orchestrated right-wing plot in motion to exert fundamentalist minority control of the population’s autonomy. Mike Lee, along with the rest of the Republicans, are saying whatever they think will help progress their minority cultural capture.
These people are not saying these things in good faith.
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Of course there are. Republicans have faith, a lot of faith.
Let just ignore the word “good” since they’ve never really understood what it means.
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Good, b/c “sex work” is not work. It’s forced exploitation.
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I imagine there are a lot of choices other people make that you “won’t stand for”, so a little advice.
Have a coke and a smile and STFU.
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Are you, by chance, a lawyer?
I talked to my lawyer, and his advice was always “STFU”. It pretty much didn’t matter the context, but he was especially firm when it came to interactions with law enforcement…
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That’s not how the sex workers I know feel about it. But then again, you’ve made it painfully clear that actual human interaction is an alien concept to you.
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By that argument, then working physically and emotionally strenuous jobs for minimum wage is also forced exploitation. Are you advocating for universal basic income or just saying other workers are okay to abuse as long as it doesn’t involve sex?
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Rightoids will be damned if they have to pay the people they sexually abuse.
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The people saying this are the same type of people who force women to bear their rapists’ children.
Any time you ever see a rightoid expressing concern for someone marginalized, it’s nothing more than whatabboutism.
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Of course rape victims shouldn’t murder their innocent babies. They should carry them to term and give them up for adoption. But they should also get to blow their rapist’s brains out with the gun of their choice.
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Fetuses aren’t “babies,” twit.
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Life begins at conception, and even a baby conceived in Sin deserves the chance to be born and loved, even if not by her rapist-father and probably-a-loose-woman-mother.
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“life” != “baby”
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Life began millions of years ago. Your genes existed well before you were conceived. Fetuses don’t have sentience, cognition, or extra-womb viability at the point at which 90%+ of abortions are performed. It’s akin to digging up an acorn that hasn’t become a tree yet. And fetal personhood, if granted, still wouldn’t override the personhood and medical autonomy of the woman.
Victim-shaming rape survivors as “probably loose” clearly indicates you don’t actually care about them. Those rape survivors were once babies and fetuses. Why don’t you care about them after they’re born much less after they’re raped? If you care about fetuses, do you support providing free medical care via tax expenditures to expectant mothers and reducing maternal death rates through guaranteed universal health care?
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These people are saying whatever they need to say to progress an agenda of cruelty. They don’t care about fully grown, conscious women. Do you think they actually care about fetuses beyond seeing them as a way to keep women “in their place?”
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Agreed. I’m not commenting to convince them. I’m making sure their bullshit gets pointed out and doesn’t go unchallenged. When Nazis show up at your bar, you make them feel unwelcome.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Why do you want little defenceless unborn babies to be murdered just b/c they were conceived by violence?
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“fetus” != “baby”
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It’s not what I want. It’s not my choice. It’s the woman’s choice. It’s her body. Fetuses aren’t babies. Fetuses don’t have sentience, cognition, or extra-womb viability at the point at which 90%+ of abortions are performed.
It has nothing to do with how they were conceived. Women retain body autonomy regardless of why they get pregnant. But, if the woman chooses to not carry a fetus to term because of the trauma she experienced, I can’t blame her. There are women who have gone into deep depression and committed suicide after finding out they were going to be reminded of their traumatic experience every day for the rest of their life. You seem to assume everyone is capable of handling the same experiences. Women with pre-existing mental health issues are often more vulnerable to sexual abuse, so the trauma could compound an existing issue and make it much worse.
There’s also the fact that abortion has a significantly lower rate of mortality for the woman than giving birth, meaning that by forcing her to give birth, you are causing her to accept a greater risk to her life.
Why do you want born human beings to be retraumatized and risk their lives just because you errantly think a collection of cells is the same thing as a born person who already has recognized rights, sentience, cognition, and autonomy?
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It’s the most dangerous thing most women will go through in their lives. I shudder to imagine being forced to bear a pregnancy to term inside my body.
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She can also decide if she can afford it or not, without a father. Or do they make fathers pay? Even if only father by name.
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That’s because you’re a demonic progtard.
I hope you repent and beg God’s forgiveness for so blithely supporting feticide.
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i hope you realize killing the woman is also a sin
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Sure, I’ll repent. If he’s omniscient, he knows where I live and can send me a sign. I’ll settle for a burning bush that speaks ancient Hebrew as convincing evidence.
Then again, if he’s omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, he’d have prevented the rape in the first place. Heck, he could have made it so that rape doesn’t exist as a concept. Ask yourself why you blithely worship a deity who at best allows and is indifferent to rape, miscarriages, stillbirths, birth defects, cancer, war, etc. So maybe, just hear me out, he either doesn’t exist or he’s not that swell of a guy…
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or he’s worshiping satan disguised as god
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When that “forgiveness” means you vote for a shitty orange turd, worship white people, hate Jews so much that they “deserve” to “return” to Israel and generally use treason, violence and generally aligning yourself with fascism…
There’s one of two conclusions to be drawn. Either your religion is garbage (as well as your shitty storm god) or no one’s following the religion as stated.
Either way, you are a violent threat to the rest of us and I suggest you turn yourself in.
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demonic progtard Is the name of my iron maiden polka cover band.
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Adding onto to the person above, there’s a good chance the mother may come to resent the child. Which increases the chance of that child being abused or neglected.
The concept of generational trauma cycles is also a thing, meaning there is a chance of that child growing up and in turn abusing/neglect their own children.
Why would you want to support a law that greatly increases those odds?
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..hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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I’m trying to make sure to scatter seeds for the AI future as well.
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Never mind “fetal personhood”. Alabama has gone full “embryonic personhood”.
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Conservatives: “Embryos are people, but women, immigrants, atheists, Muslims, and LGBTQ folk aren’t.”
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Also not people, minorities of all stripes, and ESPECIALLY the Jews.
Re: Re: Re:6 Well, people until they're born anyway...
“The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; chy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn…
You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
— Dr. Dave Barnhart, Christian Minister
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Re: Re: Re:7
Death penalty
Shoot on sight
Aktion T4
Work camps
Re: Re: Re:8
Ouch, I just cut my finger from how edgy you are.
Re: Re: Re:7
You remind me of a conversation with a Christian Nationalist:
“Where the **** did you get that woke bull****?”
“Uhm, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6.”
“Liar! Jeezus would never say anything like that!”
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“But they should also get to ….. ”
Violence begets violence, your above reaction would be vengeance and is not something to be recommended nor condoned, it is certainly not an alternative to whatever the victim decides.
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Not too mention that most people would find blowing someone’s brains out to be a traumatic experience in itself. These bloodmouths really tell you a lot about themselves if you let them.
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The victim should be able to designate a gunman to carry out the execution of their rapist, should they so choose. And the State should even pay for this form of restorative justice.
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What you have described is in no way, shape, or form “restorative justice.”
It’s just taking a trauma victim and giving them the option of having a hand in a homicide.
Your solution to every problem is “add more trauma.”
You are vile.
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inb4 “abortion is the same!!”
An acorn is not an oak tree, and a fetus is not a self-aware human being.
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A zygote is a self-aware human being to these dipshits.
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Because they have similar amounts of awareness, and empathy and care for others.
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Do you know what kind of person would rip a germinating Hinkley’s Oak acorn from the ground and destroy it?
–A vile, disgusting, evil monster.
All Lives Matter.
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I love that you used the dash in front of the answer, which looks like you’re attributing the question to “a vile, disgusting evil monster.”
It’s not your business or mine whether a person uproots an acorn their own property and it’s not your business or mine whether a woman chooses to not carry a fetus to term.
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Of course it is. The right to privacy and control over one’s body does not in any way imply the right to destroy another person’s body, which is what abortion is. Murdering unborn babies is something that it’s right and just for every non-evil person (ie, non-Democrat) to concern themselves with and fight against.
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No person can be forced to support the life of another against their will. If you permit that, then the state can force you to donate a kidney or a lung to someone else. We have laws against desecration of a corpse or non-consensual donation of organs after death, so we already recognize body autonomy even in death.
Even if we granted fetuses personhood, you still can’t violate the rights of the woman to her own body. You’re inherently asserting that the fetus (and even a dead body) has more rights than the born person. And the fetus has no guarantee of survival even with intent to carry it to term and medical support, so you might even be forcing people to bear dead children or forcing women to die over unviable fetuses or life-threatening pregnancies (like Texas wanted to do with Kate Cox). You don’t get to enslave women just because you want to dehumanize them and turn them into brood mares. You don’t get to risk their lives just because you pretend to value some life while making full-throated declarations that women aren’t people.
Re: Re: Re:10 All life is equal, but some life is more equal than others...
Such is possibly the greatest hypocrisy of the ‘pro-life'(in reality pro-birth more often than not) position: While the unborn are treated as precious and it’s interests and life vital to protect, the already born carrying it are treated as little more than livestock, with their wants, well-being and life causally dismissed and ignored.
While I wouldn’t want it to ultimately succeed it would be interesting to have a politician propose a ‘sanctity of life equality’ bill that mandated organ donation just to see how many pro-birthers flipped their lids over the revocation of bodily autonomy of the dead, which currently have more bodily autonomy than pregnant women in pro-birth states.
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…lied no human being, ever.
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Please do tell what the difference between sex work and regular work are.
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So is capitalism in general.
Everyone is “coerced” to work because life sucks and there are bills to pay.
Would you like to ask those who managed to escape the Soviet Union about YOUR definition of work I can’t speak for all of them, but I’m sure there are a few of them who would prefer you’d shut up forever.
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So what?
Just keep in mind, you’re the one arguing that evil, exploitative prostitution and the sex-trafficking that supplies its victims is consensual work. Depraved!
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As I recall, it wasn’t that long ago that the high-profile Neo-Nazi “StoneToss” suggested this as a response to criticisms of fascism in one of his cartoons.
Never an original thought with these fucks.
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It’s the opening quote on his rationalwiki entry lmao.
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If you have actual information that actual human trafficking, I’m sure the FBI and Interpol would be more than happy to have that info.
Otherwise, it’s the woman’s choice as to how she uses her body.
Don’t like that? You’re shit out of luck. Take the L and go elsewhere, unless you’d like to stay and harass us or worse.
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Eww. I don’t associate with women of ill repute or human traffickers, so why would I have information about them to share with the FBI?
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Since every accusation is a confession with you people.
How many prostitutes have you impregnated?
The more pressing question: How do we protect ourselves from turds like Mike Lee?
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We can’t. All we can do is protect future generations from turds like Mike Lee. Same as it was in 1861.
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When the conservative god-lovers tried to make their own country to preserve slavery.
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Easy. We enact the PRICC Act. Prevent Rabid Imbecile Congressional Cocksuckers Act. Done.
The definition is so loose that basically he’s saying all work is coerced unless someone is independently wealthy enough to not have to. Most people are “coerced” (using his definition) through needing to work to make money in order to live. Why does he consider it non-consensual when it involves sex work but not when it involves changing adult diapers, cleaning toilets, dealing with Karens in retail, taking verbal abuse from customers, etc.? I don’t know many/any people who would want to endure thousands of other jobs if they didn’t have to worry about paying bills.
That is why I am voted Joe Biden.
As bad as the democrats are in KOSA, senator Lee bill will not see the day of light and doubtful will be pushed by President Biden.
I know plenty of people hear are unhappy about KOSA but Republicans even in there own states push for bills that demand ID to go online and want to ban kids from using the internet as well as LGBTQ people
Look at the Republican states with Republican governors and most of these government ID bills to use the internet come from GOP states. Rare like in California is a democrat wanting to take away free speech online and require government ID and ban kids and LGBTQ people from using the internet
It’s called FASCISM and Republicans especially Trump like it
Why do you think Republicans today admire Russian President Putin. The Republicans want to be dictators.
Just speaking the truth
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not only that but they think if they support a Dictator the leopards won’t eat thier face
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Association of German National Jews calling from 1934.
They have to call from 1934 because they got rounded up in 1935.
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that’s what gonna happen to trumpers
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“In a real fourth Reich, you’ll be the first to go.”
— Jello motherfucking Biafra of Dead Kennedys fame
Diverse, liberal regions are responsible for ~70% of the country’s GDP. The GOP already runs their states into dirt-tier HDI and life expectancy.
If we look at the things the GOP actually does, as well as the intent behind the things they say, we can actually see pretty clearly how the ducks are lined up.
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it’s sad that they don’t realize that trump will kill America if he becomes president if america doesn’t get captured by russia or china
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They don’t want to capture us. They want us to take ourselves out.
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and the trumpers will be the first to go
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But why male models?
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cuase they currently want trump that’s why
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Democrats are so close to the fascists that actual leftists struggle to organize and accomplish anything beyond eating their own in groups larger than 12.
I’m not saying that both sides are the same by a long shot. I’ve had to reject the all-or-nothing mentality of my peers on the left, just for the sake of my own mental health. That being said, I really do wish the bar were a bit higher than fighting over whether we should torture queers and pregnant women.
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Considering that the democrats helped pass FOSTA and are going to pass KOSA I’m lacking any faith that they’ll reject lee’s bullshit.
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and then net choice has to sue it
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Feinstein was like that too. Every once in a while Cali puts out some really fashy dems.
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Point of order, Mr. Plant.
Facism is defined as the merger of corporations and the State. If anything, Big Business would love nothing more than to see both kids and adults use the Internet, because there’s money to be made from such activity. A veritible fuck-ton of money
I’ll leave the rest of the ‘Republicans versus Reality’ debate to others more informed than I. .
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Wildly, wildly inaccurate.
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It’s funny that he uses a definition coming from a quote attributed to Benito Mussolini, a quote that is not historically documented anywhere and yet it started spreading on the internet in the early 2000’s. My guess it’s originally from someone who badly summarized something they didn’t understand from a treatise Mussolini wrote on fascism.
And it gets even funnier, it directly contradicts Mussolini’s view of fascism which he expressed in several of his treatises.
The problem with quotes on the Internet is that you can never tell if they’re genuine.
– Abraham Lincoln
'Those daft women, thinking they own their own bodies...'
If I was feeling generous I’d say Mike Lee is a grossly dishonest politician who knows that if he actually tried to outlaw porn he’d be slapped down since that’s unconstitutional, so instead he’s trying to make it legally impossible to work in the industry by changing definitions such that it’s legally impossible to consent to do so, and in the process showing just how much contempt he has for the idea of bodily autonomy.
I’m not feeling generous though so instead I’ll just note how horrifying it is that he is apparently so ignorant of the concept of consent as it relates to bodily autonomy that the idea that someone could willingly agree to have sex is apparently beyond his comprehension.
They don’t get to decide if they consent, I do!
If they really believed that defention of consent...
They’d apply it to all work. But that won’t happen. Because that’d make all of us slaves.
It is unenforceable in these done a dozen pirate iptv sites that offer porn as part of their packages
Since all of them are offshore and use Bitcoin fur payment American law enforcement cannot touch them.
If the copyright folks cannot bring them down you think laws like the screen act are going to have any effect?
I don’t think so
This, much like the rest of that loser’s bills, will not pass. Senator Lee is a joke.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this bill was written explicitly to be voted down or found unconstitutional. Then there’s a handy pre-made soundbite where Lee can bluster about how those damn liberals voted against a bill that would have made it illegal to sell pornography of children.
On the off chance it passes, sure, he gets to leverage the new law against groups he detests, but that’s likely not the primary goal behind this bill.
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At some point it’s a Poe’s Law issue of whether they believe what they’re spewing or not, but functionally I don’t know that it matters. It serves them either way whether they’re just constitutionally ignorant (seems likely) or intentionally fascist (also seems likely). Those aren’t mutually exclusive, so it could very well be both.
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Poe perhaps, but I think Rule of Goats is more apt in cases like this:
Whether a politician is proposing a terrible/monstrous law because they actually want it to be a law or they’re doing it just for attention and whether the bill they propose actually makes it into law or not is irrelevant, they’re still attempting to do something terrible.
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Nice. I hadn’t heard that one before. I’ve articulated the same concept before, often about the “it’s just a joke, bro!” trolls. It doesn’t matter if you actually believe in [insert type of bigotry here] or just pretending to, the result is functionally the same.
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The Rule of Goats gives rise, too often, to something that the ancient Greeks called a ‘goat song.’