Pornhub has restricted access for users in response to an ongoing legal conflict with the Texas Attorney General over a law mandating user age verification. The law aims to ensure that only individuals aged 18 and older can access pornography sites.
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Last week, a federal appeals court upheld the Texas legislation requiring pornography websites to implement age-verification processes. However, the court also invalidated a portion of the law that necessitated such sites to exhibit “health warnings” concerning their content. This ruling followed a prior decision by a federal judge, who found the Texas law to violate the First Amendment, which guards against free speech restrictions. The Texas Attorney General’s Office quickly appealed this decision, and a message that began appearing on Thursday for Texas-based users on Pornhub and websites operated by its parent company, Aylo, communicates the decision to disable access in compliance with the law, Click2Houston reported.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. Not only does this impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech, it fails strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas’s stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors,” the adult film company wrote on their website.
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“Until a real solution is presented, we have taken the tough decision to block access to our site in Texas entirely. By doing so, we comply with the law but remain hopeful for enacting laws that genuinely safeguard user safety and security globally”
The announcement emphasizes that requesting identification each time someone visits an adult platform is not a practical solution for online safety. It could potentially endanger minors and user privacy. Pornhub describes the Texas age-verification requirement as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” suggesting it might inadvertently direct users towards less secure websites that do not adhere to the law.
The Texas legislation, signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott in June 2023 and set to be implemented from September 1, targets online publishers with content comprising over one-third of material deemed harmful to minors, requiring age verification through government-issued ID or transactional data. However, the enforcement of the law has been delayed due to legal challenges, resulting in a preliminary injunction.