Something’s always shifting in the world of compliance — especially when it comes to how adult sites handle age verification. The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), the legal advocacy nonprofit that often ends up doing the industry’s heavy lifting, just rolled out an updated version of its Compliance With U.S. Age Verification Laws: A Toolkit for Adult Websites.

The group explained on its website that the updates were necessary, given how quickly the legal ground keeps moving. What used to be “best practices” a few months ago can suddenly look outdated once new state laws or attorney general actions land on the table.

“Today, we are releasing an updated edition reflecting new legal developments and feedback from stakeholders who’ve put the toolkit into practice,” the post read.

And it’s not a light revision, either. “The key updates in this version include the final language and analysis of the Missouri age verification regulation taking effect November 30th and inclusion of recently-filed attorney-general actions, regulatory notices, and litigation related to age-verification laws,” FSC added.

That sense of urgency runs through every line of the update. “FSC’s guidance to our members continues to develop as state requirements and enforcement actions evolve,” said Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition. “Staying up-to-date is vital as companies make decisions about compliance.”

For those who actually need to keep their sites out of trouble (and their users protected), the new version of Compliance With U.S. Age Verification Laws: A Toolkit for Adult Websites is available for download at FreeSpeechCoalition.com/toolkit

It’s one thing for a brand to go viral for its prices — it’s another to land under government investigation. France’s Finance Minister, Roland Lescure, just put fast-fashion giant Shein on notice after a watchdog found “child-like” sex dolls being sold on the site. Reuters broke the story, and Lescure didn’t mince words: he called the products “illegal.”

He went even further. “For terrorist acts, drug trafficking, and child pornography, the government has the right to request banning access to the French market,” he said. The threat hit just as Shein opened its first permanent retail store — a glitzy shop in central Paris inside the historic BHV department store. It’s the kind of irony that writes itself.

But this isn’t just about one brand. French regulators are now investigating whether Shein — along with Temu, AliExpress, and Wish — has allowed minors to access pornographic content through their platforms. That’s not just scandalous; it’s illegal. The country’s age-verification laws are strict, and these platforms may have crossed the line.

France’s consumer watchdog, the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, issued an advisory explaining that “the e-commerce site Shein was selling child-like sex dolls.” They didn’t sit on it — the listings were reported to a public prosecutor.

The agency added that “these activities have been reported to ARCOM, the competent regulatory body in this area, and, in agreement with the public prosecutor, a report has been filed with the platform, urging it to implement appropriate measures promptly.” In other words, this is no warning shot — it’s an official escalation.

Quentin Ruffat, Shein’s head of public affairs in France, tried to strike a cooperative tone when speaking to local radio, as reported by Reuters. He said the company was sharing information with investigators, including the names of vendors and buyers.

“We are in the process of sacking all the offending vendors from the platform,” Ruffat said. Meanwhile, Lescure confirmed he’d submitted a report to ARCOM, noting that Shein qualifies as a “very large online platform” under the European Union’s Digital Services Act — meaning, yes, it’s squarely in the regulators’ crosshairs.

AliExpress, another major e-commerce player, isn’t escaping scrutiny either. It’s being investigated for allegedly distributing pornographic images or depictions of minors — a charge that can lead to five years in prison.

It’s worth remembering that these platforms — Shein, AliExpress, Temu — are backed by massive Chinese corporations, while Wish belongs to a Singaporean parent company. They’ve built empires on accessibility and affordability. But as France is reminding them now, there’s a line between disruption and disregard — and crossing it can get very expensive.

As you’re likely aware, since you’re reading this site, in recent years there’s been a proliferation of new state laws across the United States that require adult websites to verify the age of users before displaying any content that may be deemed “harmful to minors” to those users.

After the recent Supreme Court decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, in which the court upheld the age verification mandate passed by the Texas legislature, similar laws in other states are now clearly enforceable. With Missouri’s law poised to take effect later this month, it’s a good time to remind ourselves of the states that have (and haven’t, yet) passed similar laws.

The states with active age verification mandates in place include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. And as mentioned earlier, Missouri will soon join this list.

Quite a few states have not yet passed age verification laws, at least to date. Those states include Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Several of the states on the list of those that haven’t passed age verification laws have considered such proposals in the past and may do so again in the future, of course. Doubtlessly, there are at least some legislators in every state who favor the measures and are likely to introduce new bills at some point in the future.

States that haven’t passed age verification laws but have debated them at some point include Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and West Virginia.

For much more information on age verification laws around the country – and to keep track of new bills that would establish them in additional states – check out the Age Verification section of the Free Speech Coalition website.

Rome has always been a city of contradictions — history and chaos, beauty and bureaucracy — and now it’s adding another to the list: sex and regulation.

This week, Italy’s media regulator, AGCOM, dropped a quiet but seismic announcement. Starting November 12, every platform that hosts adult content will be required to implement age verification systems — a digital checkpoint meant to keep users under 18 out of explicit spaces. On paper, it sounds simple: protect minors. In reality, it’s a bureaucratic earthquake waiting to happen.

The penalties for noncompliance? Up to €250,000. That’s not a slap on the wrist; that’s a knockout punch for smaller operators who barely make that much in a year. For the giants, it’s more of a warning shot — but one they can’t afford to ignore, especially in a country where digital privacy and moral politics are always in a tug-of-war.

AGCOM didn’t stop there. It also released a preliminary list of 45 adult content providers required to comply — a who’s who of the internet’s most-visited destinations. The message was clear: this isn’t theoretical. It’s happening. The list, the regulator says, will evolve based on how quickly platforms adopt the new rules. Translation? The watchdog is watching — and waiting to see who blinks first.

But what does this actually look like for users? Italy, like many countries flirting with digital ID systems, hasn’t laid out a clear method. Will people have to upload documents? Link to government-issued IDs? Use third-party verification apps that track their age (and maybe more)? No one knows yet, and AGCOM isn’t saying.

And maybe that’s the most Italian part of all this — the gray area between rules and reality. The intention is noble, sure: protect the young. But every time regulators try to police the internet’s most intimate corners, there’s collateral damage — privacy risks, data collection nightmares, and the quiet exodus of users to VPNs and underground mirrors of the same sites they’re trying to block.

For now, everyone’s waiting — platforms scrambling, lawyers reading fine print, users rolling their eyes. Because in the eternal theater that is Rome, even adult sites have to play their part in the latest act of digital morality.

Come November 12, the curtain rises. And whether this new performance turns out to be a tragedy, a farce, or a step toward something better — well, that depends on who’s still watching.

Pennsylvania lawmakers want to slap a 10 percent tax on porn.

The proposal targets “subscriptions to and one-time purchases from online adult content platforms.” Add that to the state’s existing 6 percent sales tax, and you get what the Free Speech Coalition’s Mike Stabile called the “tiddy tariff.” It’s a catchy name for something that sounds like a moral statement wrapped in a fiscal policy.

Here’s the strange thing — almost nobody pays for porn anymore. The internet made sure of that. So taxing paid porn feels like setting up a toll booth on an abandoned road. You can’t collect money from traffic that’s already gone.

And if this plan actually discourages people from paying for porn, it could end up doing the opposite of what lawmakers claim to want. Paying for porn isn’t just about access — it’s about ethics. When viewers pay creators or production companies, they’re supporting people who work legally and consensually. They’re also helping make sure performers are paid and protected.

Platforms that allow direct payments to performers give sex workers something rare in this business — control. They decide what to shoot, how to do it, and where it goes. Reputable studios verify age and consent. All that takes structure and funding. Make it harder to earn money from ethical content, and you push people toward the shady, unregulated side of the web.

The bill comes from state senators Marty Flynn (D–Scranton) and Joe Picozzi (R–Philadelphia). “In the near future, we will be introducing legislation to impose an additional 10% tax on subscriptions to and one-time purchases from online adult content platforms,” they wrote in an October 15 memo. “This tax will be applied in addition to the Commonwealth’s existing 6% sales and use tax, ensuring that Pennsylvania captures revenue from this rapidly growing sector of the digital economy.”

What’s unclear is who would actually pay. Would it hit consumers directly, or the platforms and creators? Either way, the pain rolls downhill. Platforms pass costs to users. Users buy less. Creators — often independent and working without safety nets — earn less.

The money would go into the state’s general fund, supposedly to make these “platforms contribute their fair share.” That line always makes me raise an eyebrow. “Fair share” of what?

Maybe Flynn and Picozzi imagine this hitting only the big companies — the nameless giants raking in cash. But that’s not how the modern porn economy works. Much of it now comes from small creators: individuals or couples filming at home, uploading content, building communities, and surviving off direct sales. They’re entrepreneurs, not conglomerates.

So while the state gets a symbolic win and a few extra dollars, the people who actually make the content — the ones they’re claiming to regulate — will take the hit.

Taxing porn isn’t just about numbers. It’s about how we treat speech and labor we find uncomfortable. And no matter how you spin it, this tax looks less like fairness and more like judgment dressed up as revenue.

I was browsing the membership area of an adult site earlier this week, having “verified my age” during a previous visit, when I came across a curious scene. Halfway down the main page of the membership area was a row of banner ads for other sites, a row of ads I’ve scrolled past so many times the messages on them hardly register anymore.

But on this day, the look of this section was quite different than before. Instead of ads for other porn sites, two of the six ads were displaying messages telling me that they couldn’t show the content of the ads, due to the age-verification laws now in effect in my home state.

This was bizarre, frankly. It was a little like being asked to show my ID at the front door of a nightclub to gain entry, then having to show it again when I reached the bar, only instead of showing it to the bartender. I’d probably need to show it to the beer distributor.

Compliance by adult sites with the age verification law my home state has passed is very inconsistent, thus far. One thing I’ve noticed is the more prominent and high profile the brand, the more likely it is the company is either requiring its users to go through the age verification process or outright blocking traffic from the state.

The converse also appears to be true; the lesser known (and less likely to be legitimate) the adult site, the less likely it is to be complying with the state age verification laws proliferating around the United States.

Put another way, state governments are unintentionally (one hopes it’s unintentional, at least) funneling traffic to adult sites that are on the more questionable end of the legal spectrum, whether the laws being flaunted are age verification requirements, intellectual property laws, revenge porn laws or all the above.

Meanwhile, the adults among us who don’t find their porn by blind browsing of whatever free porn site crosses our path, the age verification requirements are repeatedly inconveniencing and irritating us as we merely try to make the most of subscriptions that were active before these laws were even cooked up.

Look, I’m not against age verification. I don’t mind the idea of making people show ID to access porn at all. That’s how things have worked in the offline world for ages, after all. What I’m against is the reality of how age verification is being handled.

What these age verification laws have handed us is a dumbed-down internet, one where in the interest of (ineffectively) “protecting children,” everyone is being treated like a child – at least where porn is concerned. If what you’re after is extreme violence or hate speech, there’s no age verification barrier to worry about, because apparently that sort of content doesn’t harm kids at all.

This special focus on porn might not last, though. And I wish the reason for the change was that legislatures around the country are going to come to their senses and stop trying to tame the internet on the sort of vain quest that even Don fucking Quixote would know to be utter folly.

Instead, what you can expect are more laws like the “Texas App Store Accountability Act,” which is currently being challenged in court by students who think maybe it’s not reasonable to require them to get permission from their parents before they download any app.

“Texas has passed a law presumptively banning teenagers – and restricting everyone else – from accessing vast online libraries of fully protected speech,” the complaint argues.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Even if you believe age verification laws for porn sites are a good idea, do you really want to see them spread out and cover everything online that might potentially be bad for kids to access?

Give that one some real thought before you answer. Unfortunately, that’s something our elected representatives are unlikely to do.

There’s a certain irony in watching a country famous for its secrets start talking about taking anonymity away.

Two Russian lawmakers are pushing for a new system that would force citizens to prove who they are before viewing adult content online. Yevgeny Masharov, a member of the Civic Chamber’s Commission for Public Review of Bills, says adult material “distorts behavior patterns” in young people — and that the only fix is to make everyone show ID before clicking “enter.” Passports, driver’s licenses, even bank data — all fair game, apparently — to prove you’re not a minor.

It’s a bold vision, if not a little unsettling. Because once a government starts asking for your personal documents just to browse the internet, where does that end?

Andrei Svintsov, another official from the State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy, predicts that online anonymity in Russia won’t last more than five years anyway. In his words, “Every internet user will register with some specialized identifier.” Translation: everyone’s digital life, tied neatly to their real identity. No masks, no aliases, no shadows left to hide in.

A third voice, Deputy Anton Nemkin, doesn’t completely disagree but sounds more cautious — maybe even uneasy. He admits that protecting minors and creating a “safer digital environment” are important goals, but warns that the cure shouldn’t create new diseases. Leaking personal data, strangling online businesses, or making life miserable for ordinary users could easily be part of the fallout if this rushes ahead without strong safeguards.

He’s right to worry. Systems like these rarely arrive fully secure or transparent. And once a government has a database connecting citizens to what they watch online, the line between protection and surveillance gets awfully thin.

The idea might start as a shield for children. But if history’s any guide, shields have a way of turning into nets.

Something about this feels almost inevitable. You build walls, people find doors. You close the doors, they dig tunnels. The United Kingdom’s new Online Safety Act — the one meant to force adult sites to verify users’ ages — is supposed to keep minors out. But according to Aylo, the company behind Pornhub and a bunch of other major adult platforms, it’s working about as well as a “Do Not Enter” sign on a back alley at midnight.

They’re not just complaining for sport. Data tracked by Ofcom, the UK’s digital regulator, shows that roughly a third of all UK traffic to porn sites vanished in the months after the law kicked in. That sounds big — until you hear Aylo’s numbers. They’re claiming a 77 percent nosedive in visits from the UK alone. Think about that: nearly four out of five users gone, overnight.

“Since the Act came into effect, Pornhub and other compliant platforms have observed a significant shift in user behavior,” one Aylo document said. “This is not a surprise. This pattern is consistent with trends seen in other jurisdictions.”

Translation: they saw it coming. In places like Louisiana, which rolled out one of the first porn-specific age verification laws in the U.S., traffic didn’t disappear — it simply went elsewhere. “Similarly, since [the] implementation of the OSA, Pornhub has, again, lost nearly 80 percent of its U.K. traffic,” the document continues. “As always, people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to other non-compliant sites that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content.”

It’s a harsh point, but also a fair one: when enforcement is weak, rules just push users toward the shadows. Aylo even attached a graph — a visual punchline to the story — showing the drop like a cliff dive.

And here’s the kicker. Ofcom, which is supposed to be policing this digital frontier, has reportedly sent out notices of non-compliance to only 69 sites and apps. That’s less than 0.1 percent of the hundreds of thousands of adult destinations online. So much for cleaning up the web.

Aylo’s executives, it seems, have been making the rounds with government officials and Ofcom itself, though they wouldn’t say what was discussed. “That said, we remain committed to and available for meeting with governments everywhere to share our data and discuss the most effective solution for age verification,” their spokesperson wrote in an email. It’s the kind of diplomatic line you give when you’ve already said your piece behind closed doors.

Meanwhile, Ofcom’s list of investigations reads like a rogues’ gallery — from Motherless.com to sites accused of hosting illegal or AI-generated content. But to Aylo, that’s missing the forest for the trees. They’re sitting back, watching the numbers tumble, quietly thinking: we told you so.

First Amendment attorney Lawrence Walters didn’t mince words either. “It should be no surprise that the U.K. traffic to adult sites has dropped substantially, and now there is [official] statistical data to confirm that assumption,” he said. “Adult users are naturally hesitant to sacrifice their privacy rights and share sensitive personal information as a condition of accessing legal adult content.”

Then he added what feels like the line everyone will remember: “Leaving aside the constitutional concerns with burdening access to adult speech by requiring users to disclose age and identity data, this legislative approach was short-sighted and impractical.”

Short-sighted and impractical — two words that could describe half of internet regulation history. And yet, here we are again: another country, another crackdown, another surge in traffic to places no one can really control.

The question isn’t whether age verification “works.” It’s what we’re willing to trade — privacy, access, freedom — just to pretend it does.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Bangladesh has detained a married couple accused of producing and distributing pornographic material through a major international website. Authorities allege that the pair ran a well-organized online operation that generated significant income from explicit content filmed and edited within the country.

CID Special Superintendent of Police Jasim Uddin Khan confirmed the arrests on Monday morning, October 20. He said the couple had been “regularly uploading sexually explicit videos” to a foreign adult platform and had gained a sizable international following. Investigators later found that their channel ranked among the most popular accounts on the site, drawing viewers from around the world.

According to the CID, the couple independently managed every stage of the production process — including filming, editing, and uploading content — while residing in Bangladesh. Police believe that their activities violated national laws governing the creation and dissemination of obscene material.

Under the Pornography Control Act of 2012, the creation, storage, and distribution of pornographic content are criminal offenses in Bangladesh. Authorities stated that, beyond producing videos themselves, the couple had also encouraged others to participate, forming a broader informal network of local contributors who helped create or share adult content for online audiences.

The case gained public attention after The Descent, an investigative media outlet, published a report linking the couple to a series of explicit videos circulating online. The report traced the origin of the uploads to Bangladesh-based IP addresses and highlighted the growing role of local content producers in global adult platforms.

Following the media exposure, the CID launched an official investigation, collecting digital evidence from various online platforms and reviewing the couple’s financial transactions. Authorities say they are now analyzing seized electronic devices to determine the full extent of the operation and to identify any additional individuals involved.

“This investigation demonstrates that activities conducted online are not beyond the reach of national law,” said one CID official familiar with the case. “We are committed to ensuring compliance with the country’s legal and moral standards, even in digital spaces.”

The arrests have sparked renewed discussion about the enforcement of Bangladesh’s anti-pornography laws and the challenges of regulating online behavior in an increasingly globalized internet environment. Officials say the couple remains in custody and may face multiple charges under the Pornography Control Act once the investigation concludes.

Under a fresh Senate review, Canada’s privacy chief has thrown his weight behind a renewed push for nationwide age checks on adult platforms, while leading legal voices warn the plan could open the door to intrusive data practices and site blocking.

Philippe Dufresne, the privacy commissioner of Canada, told the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that Bill S-209 — “The Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act” — answers key concerns he raised about earlier proposals like S-210.

“In my appearance in May 2024, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on a previous iteration of this Bill, I provided two primary recommendations,” Dufresne told the committee. “To limit the scope of application of the Bill; and to make certain enhancements to the criteria for prescribed age-verification and age-estimation methods to ensure that privacy is protected. I am very pleased to see that they have been incorporated in S-209. The added requirement to limit the collection of personal information to that which is strictly necessary for age verification or age estimation has also enhanced the Bill from a privacy perspective.

“I believe that it is possible to implement age-assurance mechanisms in a privacy-protective manner,” Dufresne added. “My Office is developing guidance on how this can be done.”

S-209 would introduce penalties of up to $500,000 for adult sites that fail to verify Canadian users’ ages. While Dufresne now views the bill’s safeguards more favorably than the previous iteration, the Canadian Bar Association (CBA) urged senators to proceed with caution.

In a letter to committee chair David M. Arnot, CBA Privacy and Access Section chair Christiane Saad argued that the statute leaves too much to future regulations and not enough in the legislative text itself. “This Bill addresses government data collection and retention only in broad, principle-based terms,” Saad wrote. “However, it lacks key specifics: no defined retention timeline, no clarity on the speed of destruction, no auditing or enforcement mechanisms, no requirements for storage location, and no remedies for users if data is mishandled. As a result, the Bill leaves many critical safeguards to future regulations, making enforcement and technical protections highly dependent on implementation rather than the statute itself.”

The CBA also highlighted the privacy risks inherent in any verification model that ties identity to content consumption. “An obvious by-product of such age-verification or age-estimation measures is the creation of a data set that links personal identifying data to data revealing that an individual accessed internet pornography as well as the specific sexual proclivities and interests of that individual,” the letter cautions.

Beyond data issues, the association flagged potential impacts on lawful speech. The letter notes that S-209 would grant Canada’s Federal Court “sweeping authority” to order internet service providers to block access to noncompliant sites. “Such measures risk over-blocking — removing lawful, non-pornographic content alongside the targeted material — and may inadvertently restrict adults’ access as well, resulting in collateral censorship, restricting freedom of expression and access to information,” the letter states.

Both S-209 and its predecessor S-210 were introduced by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, who has championed national age-verification requirements in multiple previous attempts. Asked in a 2024 “Law Bytes” podcast interview about the possibility that adults could be prevented from accessing legal material, she replied, “I’m not worrying. Adults will continue to be able to watch porn.”