The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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Over on Forbes.com right now, there’s an article making the point that when you read somewhere that traffic from the UK to Pornhub is down 77%, you might want to take that figure with a grain of salt. Or maybe a pillar of the stuff.
Writing for Forbes, Zak Doffman goes further still, suggesting “you can completely ignore” such a claim because “it’s not true.”
“What’s actually happening is that U.K. adults are turning to VPNs to mask their locations,” Doffman writes. “Just as residents of U.S. states affecting bans now pretend to be someplace else. Pornhub makes this as easy as possible.”
The article goes on to cite (perhaps accurately – I’m certainly no expert on VPNs) a variety of reasons why this sudden expansion in VPN use may not be a good thing, including the eye-catching assertion that “VPNs are dangerous.”
“You are trusting all your content to a third-party provider who can see where you are and the websites you visit,” Duffman writes. “At a minimum. There are plenty of reports of rogue VPNs doing much worse than that. In particular, you must avoid free VPNs and Chinese VPNs. Stick to bluechip options.”
Duffman is probably right and his advice on sticking to the name brand VPNs probably makes good sense. But as a guy who misses the era of what people call the “open internet” my concern isn’t so much rogue VPN operators as it is rogue legislators.
As I read Duffman’s piece, I couldn’t help but imagine some elected official somewhere reading the same piece and saying to himself/herself: “OH. MY. GOD. This VPN thing MUST be stopped, whatever it is.” The manner of legislation that follows this sort of epiphany typically tries to solve one problem by creating another. Or maybe several others.
The thing is, it’s not Duffman’s warning about the potential dangers of VPN use that will drive the concern of my hypothetical legislator, not the potential security threat or the nefarious actors out there offering free VPNs.
No, what will get the legislators all fired up and ready to wield their pens again will be the part about the ease of using VPNs to get around their precious, legally mandated age verification walls.
I don’t expect too many legislators will seek to ban VPN use altogether, although doubtlessly there will be some bright bulb somewhere who proposes exactly that. More likely, what they’ll do is add something to an existing age verification statute that prohibits “facilitating the use of technology to circumvent state law” on the part of the adult site, or mandating that adult sites have to do what a lot of paywalled sites do for their own reasons, which is try to detect and defeat VPN use.
As Duffman notes, websites can “look at your browser settings or cellular settings or recognize you from previous visits…. That’s why it’s harder to watch live sports from your usual provider when you’re away from home, their market restrictions try to catch you out. Porn sites do not.”
For the sake of adults in the UK and elsewhere who would rather not hand over their sensitive personal information to a third party just to exercise their right to look at sexually explicit images, here’s hoping porn sites aren’t soon forced to do what they’re currently choosing not to do.
