PornHub blocks self from Virginia over new law

PornHub, one of the largest aggregators, distributors, and resellers of online pornography, has blocked access to itself from Virginia. The company did this in response to a new law, effective today, that requires highly robust age verification of users.

PornHub cuts off nose to spite face

PornHub made its decision in response to Virginia Senate Bill 1515. That bill prescribes “civil liability for publishing or distributing material harmful to minors on the Internet.” Senator Bill Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin Co.) introduced the bill in January. It passed the Senate and House of Delegates with near-unanimous support.

The new law defines a raft of “material harmful to minors,” all of which is pornographic within the meaning of the landmark Supreme Court decision of the Seventies. Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973). It then provides that any site serving such material to Internet users must verify that said users are 18 years old or older. Web administrators must use either:

1. “A commercially available database” that businesses or government agencies use to verify age and identify, or
2. “Another commercially reasonable” means.

According to InsideNoVa, this could mean asking a user to upload a driver’s license.

Rather than implement any such change, PornHub elected to block access from Virginia entirely. Rachel Emmanuel, writing in The Western Journal, called the move by PornHub “a blatant attempt to blackmail the State.” Twitter user Jon Schweppe tweeted these photos of “the current landing page” for PornHub in Virginia.

As of this writing, that landing page remains.

In theory PornHub remains accessible through the use of Virtual Private Networks. But as this thread shows, that costs money. Porn users are an opportunistic lot and might not want to spend that kind of money.

What kind of alternatives?

PornHub’s landing page speaks of device-specific verification methods, but will not describe them. They maintain that users will simply go to other sites not willing to implement age-verification measures. But they do not address the obvious objection that Virginia prosecutors will now detect these other sites and prosecute them for violation of this law. Nor do they make clear what “before it’s too late” means in the last paragraph of the landing page.

Jon Schweppe used his tweet to call for activists to push other States to pass similar laws.