Commentary

Over the decades I’ve been part of the online adult entertainment industry, the internet has gone from being essentially unregulated to an increasingly regulated space, particularly where sexually explicit content is concerned.

Thirty years ago, as a guy working for a company that operated both free and subscription adult sites, my primary legal concerns were the seemingly remote possibility of being prosecuted for obscenity law violations and the far more likely possibility of being sued in civil court for something like copyright infringement, should one of our designers ever get carried away and use content for which our company didn’t hold the rights.

Over the decades, I think it’s fair to say the prevailing sense among people in the online adult sector has been that Republican administrations present a greater risk of obscenity law enforcement, especially at the federal level.

That belief has largely been supported by the evidence over the years, as federal obscenity cases involving adult material (as opposed to child pornography cases, which every Justice Department rightfully prosecutes vigorously) were just about nonexistent under the Clinton Administration, after being commonplace under the George H.W. Bush Administration.

After George W. Bush took the White House in 2000, obscenity prosecutions were once again pursued, including cases that carried over beyond his term in office. During the Obama Administration, the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force (OPTF), created in 2005 and responsible for prosecuting adult obscenity cases under the George W. Bush administration, was dissolved.

These days, the possibility of being prosecuted for an obscenity crime probably doesn’t often enter the minds of adult site operators, in part because unlike his Republican predecessors, Donald Trump has shown little interest in prosecuting adult obscenity cases. I’m sure if James Comey ever launches a porn site, Trump will develop a sudden interest in prosecuting at least one obscenity case, but short of that, I don’t think a reestablishment of the OPTF is imminent – regardless of any pledge Trump once signed to the contrary.

While obscenity prosecutions might not be occupying much mental space for adult entrepreneurs these days, the online space is otherwise much more closely regulated than it once was. The proliferation of age verification laws across the U.S., fines doled out by Ofcom in the United Kingdom and similar developmentselsewhere in Europe show the extent to which governments have imposed their will on the once freewheeling internet.

Last week’s midterm elections in the United States could lead to sweeping policy changes in a variety of areas, especially those which newly elected Democrats believe are important to the voters who elected them. And while I’d like to think reasonable regulation of online spaces and a show of restraint with respect to laws that impact freedom of expression online is both important to the voters who created the “Blue Wave,” I certainly don’t have any polling data to back up that notion.

I’ve also been around long enough to come to grips with the realization that some things I think are bad ideas, or good ideas executed badly, also happen to be politically popular –or even enjoy bipartisan political popularity, a very rare thing in the deeply divided modern electorate.

Unfortunately for those who believe things like age verification laws offer more downside than upside (at least as they are currently structured and enforced), these laws have largely sailed through state legislatures, in part because they present legislators with an opportunity to vote for something that’s popular and relatively noncontroversial.

The bottom line, ever since I first became aware of how politics, law and the adult industry interact, has been this: Our industry has very few friends in Washington. Hell, we don’t even have enough friends in Phoenix to make a difference. And in the case of the Grand Canyon State’s capital, it hasn’t been for lack of trying

Back in May of 2025, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed HB 2112, bringing into force the state’s age verification law. During the debate and drafting process, the bill met with staunch opposition, led in part by the adult industry trade association, Free Speech Coalition.

As FSC noted in a statement released when Hobbs signed the bill, the organization “led the fight against the bill since it was introduced in January, testifying against it repeatedly in committee, meeting with Republican and Democratic legislators in Arizona and building a broad-based coalition.”  FSC Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile was “a constant figure in Phoenix” during the year running up to the vote on the bill, “securing near-universal Democratic opposition to the bill despite heavy political headwinds in the state,” FSC added.

Obviously, Hobbs then signed the bill anyway, a development that left FSC “disappointed,” as the organization put it, a term far more measured than those they probably wanted to use, given the lobbying effort FSC had put in.

I’m not suggesting all political lobbying is in vain, or that organizations like FSC should simply throw in the towel. I’m just saying, based on decades of experience, the disappointment the FSC felt at Gov. Hobbs isn’t a new sensation. It’s also one we’re not likely to avoid feeling again in response to many legislative sessions to come, whether the states involved are red, blue, or purple.

For as long as I’ve been thinking and writing about online age verification, something that goes back to the early days of the online adult industry and a once-numerous category of platforms called “AVS” sites (which stood for Adult Verification Sites, as I recall), I’ve been telling people that once the government gained a foothold in restricting access to adult content online, legislative bodies would then seek to expand that foothold to encompass a wide variety of content types – and to broad categories of technology used to either create or consume content.

This is one of those instances when I’m very unhappy to have been proven right.

Late last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a measure that restricts the features AI chatbots can provide to minors – and to users whose adulthood has not been verified.

The new law specifies twelve varieties of “unsafe AI companion features,” a list which goes well beyond sexually explicit content – and well beyond the encouragement of self-harm, for that matter.

Under the law adopted by New York, AI chatbots are restricted from suggesting the chatbot is alive, human, capable of human emotions, or suggesting that there’s a personal or professional relationship between the user and the chatbot. The chatbots can’t suggest they have a role as an authority, cannot offer responses positioned as the chatbot’s own personal opinions or emotional appeals, nor can they offer flattery, or function as sycophants that might encourage or endorse awful lines of thought.

Some folks might read that and think it’s a reasonable list of restrictions. Hell, some might even wonder why the state would limit these protections to minors, given what we know about some truly terrible outcomes involving adult users of AI companions.

But the point here isn’t really whether this specific law is a good or bad idea; it’s that we all know this isn’t the end of the story. Considering the Supreme Court’s decision in FSC v. Paxton, courts across the country are already reconsidering past rulings that nixed other age verification measures, like those related to the SCOPE Act in Texas.

To be clear, I’m not against regulating AI. I’m not even against enacting specific restrictions pertaining to the use of AI by minors. What I’m against is the legislative version of “feature creep,” a phenomenon I believe we’re currently watching as it unfolds in real time.

The New York law has several rather expansive provisions, some of which might be well-intentioned, but are nonetheless problematic, both from a compliance perspective and as they relate to the First Amendment.

For example, the law restricts outputs “that constitute, describe, or facilitate sexually explicit conduct or child sexual abuse material,” as attorney Corey Silverstein noted in a recent newsletter alerting readers to the new law.

This too might sound reasonable at first glance. But suppose a minor asks an AI companion for advice on dealing with an abusive situation the minor is experiencing in the real world; will the chatbot be restricted to saying “Sorry, I can’t talk to you about that”? Can it direct the child to counselors, law enforcement and other resources which can help?

New York’s law was opposed by the Business Council of New York State – and the opposition wasn’t on the grounds that the BCNYS hates children or wants AI chatbots to be allowed to counsel minors to kill themselves. The Council opposed the legislation because “restrictions on ordinary conversational responses could affect educational tools, accessibility applications and general-purpose AI assistants.”

In May, the Council authored a memo arguing that the bill’s definitions are “overbroad and inconsistent with existing New York law.” The Council also asserted the prohibitions “would sweep in educational, research, and general-purpose tools that serve and benefit minors every day,” while its age-verification mandate “contradicts the bill’s own ‘actual knowledge’ standard and raises serious constitutional, privacy, and security concerns.” To top it off, the measure’s “liability framework imposes strict liability on non-deceptive conduct, and its enforcement mechanism — including a private right of action with punitive damages and disgorgement — creates unquantifiable litigation risk that would chill beneficial innovation.”

The Council also noted that an existing set of restrictions on AI chatbots, the New York AI Companions Act, has only been in effect since November 2025. There’s barely been time to measure the initial impact of that law, and already New York is adding layer upon layer over the top of it.

Again, none of this is to say I’m against regulating AI or restricting how minors use AI. My concern is that the more we regulate what minors can do with technologies like AI chatbots, the more we burden and complicate adults’ use of the same technologies. And while age verification measures generally are politically popular, how effective these measures will turn out to be is anyone’s guess. Thus far, regulations like the UK’s Online Safety Act don’t appear to be having much impact.

Right now, the government might be focused on AI chatbots, but what’s the next technology or form of expression to be crammed within the restrictive regulatory grasp of age verification? The possibilities are legion, because whether we like it or not, adults and children live in the same world.

While the rules of that shared world can’t be the same for minors and adults, maybe we ought to consider more deeply both what we’re giving up in the name of protecting minors – and whether those measures even work in the first place – before we go rushing adding to the list? Just a thought.

When it comes to enforcing the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, you can’t say that Ofcom, the organization charged with enforcing the OSA, is sitting back and doing nothing.

In recent months, Ofcom has opened an investigation into Pornhub’s reliance on Apple device-based age checks. They have fined the likes of XGroovy, FTVGirls and other site operators. They’ve also opened investigations into additional adult platforms.

What Ofcom hasn’t done, by its own admission, is make much of a dent in the problems the organization is purportedly trying to solve.

In the report linked above, Ofcom states that “most children in the UK say they have encountered at least one piece of harmful content online in a four-week period” and the evidence collected by the organization shows that “at a total level there was no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content over the first nine months after the children’s safety duties came into force in July 2025.” Ofcom says that last finding is “concerning and shows that further progress is needed to protect children online.”

Of course, what Ofcom means by “further progress” is tighter restrictions on personal expression, more enforcement, more fines and more investigations. More of the same actions that have produced very little in terms of impact, thus far.

The gradual creep of laws like the OSA is on full display in the recent Ofcom statement, as well. As Ofcom noted, the UK Government “has announced its intention to introduce a social media ban for under 16s and additional protections for under 18s to create a safer online environment for children.” Ofcom says it will “shortly be publishing our rapid assessment of what highly effective age assurance could look like for determining whether someone is 16 or over and are working closely with the government on the implementation of the expected new restrictions” and “continue to drive compliance with the Online Safety Act for services that fall outside the social media ban and to improve the experience of 16–17-year-olds.”

I’m not sure what you were like when you were 16 or 17, but speaking strictly for myself, I was far from innocent – and I came of age well before the internet was a thing, let alone a thing filled to the brim with sexually explicit content.

I’d seen plenty of porn by the age of 16 too, most of it pilfered from a parental sock drawer or found laying about in the bedroom of some friend’s older sibling, who had turned 18 and was savoring the (more or less unfettered) right to view people without their clothes on that comes with reaching that apparently magical benchmark age.

By 16, I was sexually active, as well. Maybe not as sexually active as I wanted to be, but sexually active, nonetheless. Some folks might object to the fact that my girlfriend at the time had already turned 18, making our relationship technically illegal in our home state, which didn’t have a “Romeo and Juliet” clause in its age of consent laws at that time. But in our view (which I really think should count?) we were age peers and there was nothing at all unseemly about us dating. To be honest, the most concrete differences between the two of us were (a) she was much smarter than me and (b) she had a car of her own.

Looking back, do I feel like society failed to protect the teenage me? Not one bit. Do I have any regrets about hooking up with someone two years my senior when I was the apparently tender age of 16? Only that I didn’t get to do so many, many more times. Far from offering me traumatic memories, I look back on that time with a big, dopey smile on my face.

As fate would have it, I also didn’t turn out to be rapist, murderer, sociopath, or even a plain old mundane misogynist. And this has continued to be the case, even though I’ve now spent nearly 30 years toiling in the online adult entertainment space, which is the belly of the beast itself, to hear the likes of Ofcom tell it.

There’s no question the internet has a lot of content on it that isn’t made for children and shouldn’t be viewed by them. This content includes pornography, of course, but if I were making a list of the types of content I wouldn’t want kids to run across, porn would not be near the top of the list, let alone at its very summit. Not when there’s content from hate groups looking to recruit young people, videos of people doing unspeakably cruel things to animals (or to other people), political propaganda, recruitment materials from terrorist groups and literal bombmaking instruction manuals running around out there.

And here comes the really depressing part: Agencies like Ofcom likely won’t have much success reining in those other problematic content types, either, for all the same reasons they’re not having much impact on kids accessing online porn. They won’t fail for lack of trying, mind you; they’ll fail because the nature of the internet makes it a very, very difficult place to govern or tame.

So, what’s the answer? I know a lot of people probably don’t want to hear this, but the answer is parenting.

While it’s nice to think the government can serve as a big cyber nanny to your kids, the truth is the government simply isn’t up to the job. There are too many kids, too many websites and too many ways to circumvent even the most stringent of laws. It’s possible technological advances will come to the rescue in some meaningful way in the future, but for now, the best defense you have against the internet corrupting your kid is yourself.

Earlier I wrote about my lack of innocence at age 16. But what I did have at age 16 were parents that weren’t afraid to talk to me about things that might upset me. They were able to provide context, to explain the difference between sexual fantasies and sexual reality, to emphasize the importance of consent and above all else, to imbue in me a sense of personal responsibility and a need to view the world with both wonder and skepticism.

If the internet had existed when I was minor, would my parents have allowed me to surf it? Honestly, probably not. I wasn’t prohibited from watching TV, but I was limited to a one-hour daily allotment (with an exemption for news programs and televised sports) and encouraged to read, instead.

I’m sure it’s probably no easier for parents to keep their kids offline than it is for governments to keep those same kids off porn sites, but parents can – and should – be prepared to offer their kids guidance and context. If that, too, has become a government job, we’ve got much bigger problems than kids stumbling across online porn.

One night around 30 years ago, I went out to a bar with some friends to shoot pool and have a few beers. It was a neighborhood bar I’d been to several dozen times without ever showing my ID, a transaction probably deemed unnecessary by the bartenders, who took one look at my quite full beard and rightly concluded it wasn’t something a person under 21 years of age could grow.

There was a new guy tending bar on that night, however, one who was perhaps feeling pressure to do everything “by the book” due to his newness. Whatever his reason, he demanded to see my ID. I duly produced my driver’s license – which the bartender noted had recently expired. Thus, he said, I couldn’t shoot pool or drink beer in his bar.

The assertion was incorrect, as one of the patrons seated at the bar helpfully noted. Normally, I wouldn’t put much stock in the legal opinion of a random bar patron, but this regular customer also happened to be an attorney – who represented the bar’s owner, among other local clients.

“The purpose of the law is to assure you don’t serve anyone who is underage,” the attorney explained to the bartender. “The ID might be expired, but that doesn’t mean his date of birth has changed. It’s not valid as a license to operate a vehicle, but for the purpose of identification, it’s just fine.”

The bartender wasn’t having it. He shooed me off the premises despite the attorney’s assurance he didn’t need to. Fortunately, back at home I had a current, valid passport, so in the time it took me to make the round-trip drive home, I was back at the pool table, with a beer in my hand. If I hadn’t possessed that passport, though, I’d have been stuck at home, thirsty and thoroughly miffed.

I’ve been thinking about that night a lot lately, in the context of age verification laws, not just within the United States, but especially here, because the U.S. is where I live – and because the protection of the First Amendment is something we like to believe sets us apart from much of the rest of the world.

We all know about countries that have fined adult websites for allegedly failing to comply with their age verification laws and about how these laws continue to proliferate around the country. What gets discussed a lot less are the people these laws leave behind – namely, adults who don’t possess identification.

I think a lot of people underestimate how many adults around the country and globe lack government-issued identification, not to mention lack empathy for people who find themselves in that predicament. Estimates vary greatly, but some researchers peg the number of American adults without government issued identification as high as 34.5 million. There are also many Americans with forms of identification that might be acceptable for some purposes, but not others, like Native American tribal IDs.

As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “age verification systems foster unequal access to information and provide an asymmetric solution to find essential information, build community, and weigh in on public discourse,” and as governments and companies “increasingly require users to prove their age before accessing online services, these individuals risk being excluded from large parts of the internet altogether.”

I’m sure many proponents of age verification laws won’t lose any sleep over the notion of adults being denied access to online porn, because for many of the legislators who advanced these bills, discouraging everyone from watching porn is the whole point, not merely a side benefit.

For those Americans among us who do care about little, trifling things like equality under the law, the right to access expression protected by the First Amendment and basic fairness, however, the de facto paywall created by age verification laws isn’t something we should dismiss as a minor issue. To the contrary, that paywall ought to be front and center among our objections to the laws which created it.

The last time I thought about Pennsylvania in an adult industry context, the idea being batted around the state’s legislature was a proposal to levy a 10% tax on revenue generated by adult websites operating in the state.

This time around, Pennsylvania is considering something more in line with recent regulatory efforts by its fellow states: Requiring sites to verify the age of users, if those sites offer “a substantial portion of material that is harmful to minors.”

The bill, SB 603, defines “substantial portion” as “more than 33.3% of total material on the publicly accessible Internet website.” As such, I suppose the good news is if you run an adult site that currently offers 66.6% non-adult content, you could conceivably skirt the requirement by adding to your website a few thousand pictures of cats, or something.

Most likely, this bill is a legislative case of “follow the leader.” Dozens of states around the country have established age verification requirements for adult websites and the Supreme Court has given its constitutional stamp of approvalto such laws, so Pennsylvania certainly isn’t breaking any new ground here.

Still, part of me wonders if there isn’t another, less obvious inspiration for the new law. Perhaps, weary of constantly being confused with a product designed to lubricate the engines of motor vehicles, Pennsylvania is simply shooting for a new nickname.

Let’s face it, “The Keystone State” just never caught on. Poll a thousand Americans outside of Pennsylvania and I bet 667 of them wouldn’t even know that’s one of the state’s nicknames. And as for the “Quaker State,” well, today’s smaller, higher-revving engines… wait, sorry; that was Castrol, wasn’t it?

Anyway, regardless of which motor oil is best for small, high-revving engines, there’s no doubt the “Quaker State” branding is now more closely associated with motor oil than it is the state’s namesake – which isn’t BJ Penn, despite what my brain just thought would be funny to assert.

I know what you’re thinking: Why would the legislature pass a law mandating age verification to inspire a change in nicknames when they could just issue a resolution adopting a new nickname? Put bluntly, nicknaming yourself is just lame. Try that shit in your average fraternal organization and instead of being called “Razor” as you’d asked, your bros are liable to opt for something a bit less prosaic, like “Gilette” or “Sandy Crotch” or “Pathetic Douche Nozzle.”

And of course, the last thing Pennsylvania should do is open their state nickname rebranding campaign to suggestions from general internet users. That’s nothing but a recipe for ending up being called “Statey McStateface.”

Proceeding on the assumption this bill is being considered at least in part as a reputation and nickname reset, here are some things for the Pennsylvania legislature to consider:

• “The Age-Gate State” has a nice rhyme scheme and cadence to it, I think.
• “The Share Your Personally Identifying Information with Mysterious Third-Parties State” has the benefit of being highly accurate, but it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?
• “The Abscam State” would encourage a generation of young Pennsylvanians to learn a bit of political history about the state, but might face blowback from other states that are proud of their role in that story (especially New Jersey).
• I think we can rule out “The Kids for Cash State,” in part because the optics of that phrase just aren’t great.

I don’t think I’m alone here in thinking the first possibility on the list above is the one likely to get the most traction. That said, they’re all more interesting than “The Keystone State” and significantly less oily than “The Quaker State.”

Of course, none of this will matter if the state doesn’t pass SB 603. At that point, the legislature may well have no choice but to go down the route of re-nicknaming itself by legislative decree – unless, of course, they like the sound of Statey McStateface.

I went to a concert the other night and while I wasn’t thrilled to find myself paying $20 for a “large” beer sized somewhere between a reasonable drinking glass and a typical Dixie Cup, I was thrilled when the cashier asked me to produce my ID before selling me the beer.

For a 56-year-old man who sports a rather full, very white beard, it doesn’t get much better than being carded by a twenty or thirty-something (or even a forty-something) cashier, because it suggests the cashier believes you might be younger than they are.

Granted, the lighting inside the arena was dimmed for the performance and the strobing lights from the stage were all the cashiers had to work with, but it still gave me a momentary jolt of belief: Maybe I still look closer to the cradle than the grave, if you will.

Other nice things about this incident of IRL age verification included:

• When I returned to the counter later for another overpriced beer, the same cashier didn’t card me a second time
• The cashier didn’t make a copy of my ID, including sensitive personally identifiable information, to be stored indefinitely on a server somewhere
• I wasn’t issued a “Beer PIN” or “Secure Adult Beverage Password” to forget in between trips to the concession stand
• Neither the national, state nor local government seemed to give a shit whether I was there having a beer that night

I find myself contrasting this experience – which took place in the context of a physical space where old farts like myself were mixed in with minors (mostly accompanied by their parents, but not legally obliged to be), as alcohol was sold from behind the same counter as the popcorn – with the one many elected officials want you to have when consuming adult content on the internet.

For example, in the UK, apparently even if you are using an age verification method offered by a major manufacturer of digital devices like Apple, that might not be good enough to satisfy the government.

The folks from Ofcom, the UK’s regulatory body responsible for administering the country’s Online Safety Act, say they “expect tech firms to ensure age checks are highly effective before introducing them.”

Honestly, that seems reasonable enough an expectation. But are we allowed to have the same opinion concerning government regulations? Is it unreasonable to expect our legislators to demonstrate the laws they pass will be effective before those regulations get scrawled into enforceable form?

And therein lies the rub. Absent an ID check that is even more obtrusive than those required under UK law (or U.S. law, for that matter), age verification remains an uncertain proposition.

As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “most platforms offer age estimation options like face scans as a first line of age assurance.” While these options “vary in intrusiveness… their main problem is inaccuracy, particularly for marginalized users.” (Emphasis added)

Thus far, age verification mandates established by state and national governments have included a fair degree of wiggle room to those implementing age verification schemes. So long as you rely on a commercially available method that conforms to what the law requires, you’re likely in compliance with the law.

If, on the other hand, you are an adult user who gets denied access because one of these methods decides you’re a minor… oh well. Sucks to be you, I guess?

Here’s my concern: what happens the first time there’s a high-profile case involving a minor who circumvents age verification technology in some way to access restricted materials online? When that minors’ parents raise a stink, will the legislature behind the law in their jurisdiction shrug and say “Well, a few kids are bound to slip through the cracks,” or will there be a push to tighten the law and require substantially more intrusive age verification methods?

I have little confidence that our elected officials will err to the site of liberty on this one. Before you know it, we might be scanning our retinas and thumbprints simply for the privilege of accessing online smut.

Here’s hoping those scans don’t cost $20 a pop – or if they do, they at least come with a reasonably large beer.

As you might have noticed in recent months and years, there’s a growing number of regulations, both existent and proposed, being aimed at the online adult entertainment industry.

From the Digital Age Assurance Act and SCREEN Act under consideration at the federal level, to a growing number of states that have enacted age verification mandates, it seems like owners of online adult businesses can’t walk into their offices without clearing another regulatory hurdle on the way in.

But where others might see reason to despair in this environment of increasing regulatory scrutiny, I see opportunity. What the porn industry needs isn’t a lack of regulatory scrutiny; what we need is to be scrutinized by the right regulators. And without a doubt, the right regulator for the online adult industry – or at least for a new segment of the online adult industry I’m about to propose – clearly is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

If you’ve been hearing about CFTC a lot lately, that’s because CFTC is the agency charged with oversight of prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket. Thus far though, CFTC’s primary regulatory activity has been asserting its primacy and exclusivity of authority over prediction markets, as opposed to truly overseeing them in any meaningful fashion.

Back in the summer of 2024, while under the Biden Administration, CFTC published proposed rulemaking that would have pegged sports and politics-related event contracts as “contrary to the public interest,” which likely would have meant they couldn’t operate as CFTC-regulated exchanges. That proposal was never finalized and was formally withdrawn by CFTC in February of this year.

With the changing of the guard in the White House in January 2025, CFTC’s perspective on these markets has shifted dramatically. In March of this year, CFTC published a predictions market advisory stating that prediction markets “are rapidly increasing in popularity with the American public” and that CFTC staff “believe it is important to encourage innovation and growth in these markets, within the federal oversight framework for Commission-registered derivatives exchanges set forth in the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission regulations.”

For the most part, CFTC’s involvement with prediction market regulation has thus far been limited to telling states to keep their mitts off platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. And this is where my sudden interest in being regulated by the CFTC comes in, naturally.

In early August, the CFTC sued Minnesota over the state’s prediction market ban. They’ve also pushed back on states with lawsuits targeting New York, Arizona, Illinois and Connecticut to block enforcement of state gambling laws against prediction market platforms.

If I can get my porn prediction market to be regulated by CFTC, can Mr. Selig do me a little favor with respect to various state-level age verification laws? While he’s at it, can he talk to Congress about all the innovation, expression and… uh… American greatness they’re stifling with all this talk of DAAA and SCREEN and SAVE and BLORT and whatever other legislative acronyms they might come up with on Capitol Hill?

How would a porn prediction market work, I can hear you asking? Honestly, that’s the easiest part in this whole scheme.

My forthcoming “Erotic Prediction Market Platform” (sounds much nicer and more official than “Filthy Porno Gambling Site,” don’t you think?)  would offer live feeds of sex shows, then permit gamblers users to wager betspurchase contracts on things that might happen during the live sex shows.

Contracts could include questions like “How long will the strip tease go on before true foreplay ensues?” and “At what point will heavy petting transition to oral sex?”  and “Will any performer involved say “Sleepy Joe?” Other contracts could explore whether or not the male talent(s) will be able to maintain their erections, whether and where ejaculate will be visible at the culmination of the encounter and assorted other important, meaningful questions that are best answered by the ‘wisdom of crowds’ – in this case, crowds of mostly young men who will put money down on literally anything.

I’m sure there will be some pushback to my Erotic Prediction Market Platform (tentatively branded “PrognASSticate”) from people who say it’s not really a legit prediction market, or that it’s too easily manipulated by people with insider information, or by people directly participating in the sex shows at its core – or by me, because frankly who is going to stop me, as the answer obviously isn’t Michael Selig.

Just in case even the CFTC can’t bring itself to look the other way with respect to PrognASSticate, I also plan to retain a member of the Trump family as a “strategic advisor,” whatever that term might mean in this context.

I hereby invite all members and stakeholders of the online adult entertainment industry to join me in the revolution that will be the Erotic Prediction Market space! And don’t just climb aboard the PrognASSticate train, launch EPMs of your own!

Among other things, that way I can offer contracts on my EPM about the exact date your EPMs will transition from beta to full launch.

When your nickname is “Hang ’em High Henry,” it’s a safe bet that you’re not a figure famous for demonstrating excessive compassion or forgiveness.

And when the best you can muster after finding out that you’ve prosecuted and convicted the wrong man for a murder is to say “I certainly wish him the best, and regret what happened. However, I offer no apologies,” chances are you’re an even bigger prick than your nickname implies.

Of course, what brings former prosecutor and current U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson to the pages of this website isn’t his general reputation as a “hard-on-crime” figure in the criminal justice system, but specifically his anti-porn activism, which reaches back to his early days as the Commonwealth Attorney of Arlington County, Virginia.

Back then, Hudson was leading the charge against adult bookstores and any other sort of establishment that might sell sexually explicit materials. His crusade not only resonated with his fellow social conservatives there in Arlington County, but it also earned him a seat at the table of the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, better known as the “Meese Commission.” In fact, Hudson didn’t just earn any seat on the Commission; he was placed in the captain’s chair, tapped to lead the Commission’s work.

Ultimately, even thought the Commission claimed pornography has a causal connection to sex crimes (something disputed by most mainstream social scientists and academics, both then and now) and made dozens of recommendations on ways to staunch the distribution of porn and the growth of the adult entertainment industry, Hudson felt their conclusions were too timid.

Among other things, Hudson griped that the report should have been “couched in more forceful language” and that its “recommendations for enhanced law enforcement, particularly with respect to violent and degrading materials,” also should have been more pronounced.

While Hudson certainly agreed with the Commissions’ conclusions with respect to visual pornography, he dissented from the panel’s recommendation that obscenity prosecutions should not be brought in connection with written works that included sexually explicit descriptions or descriptions of sexual conduct.

It’s worth noting that around 16 years before the Meese Commission concluded that porn was driving a wave of sex crimes, a different Commission empaneled by a different Commander in Chief, Lyndon B. Johnson, came to a very difficult conclusion. The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, which published its findings in 1970, recommended the repeal of legislation that prohibited the sale of sexually explicit material to adults.

If you follow the rhetoric surrounding the current wave of age verification mandates and other efforts to curb the distribution of porn, the reasoning offered by the Meese Commission as to how it came to a conclusion directly opposite its predecessor will sound hauntingly familiar: There had been “enormous technological changes” in the years between the two Commissions doing their respective work.

“These technological developments have themselves caused such significant changes in the practices relating to the distribution of pornography that the analysis of 16 years ago is starkly obsolete,” the Meese Commission wrote.

During oral argument in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a case which has fundamentally altered the framework of constitutional analysis for First Amendment claims involving statutes like those at play in state-level age verification mandates, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “it’s been 20 years since Ashcroft,” referencing the case Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft, then proceeded to detail how things have changed.

“The iPhone was introduced in 2007, and Ashcroft was decided in 2004,” Barrett said. “I mean, kids can get online porn through gaming systems, tablets, phones, computers. It’s – let me just say that content filtering for all those different devices, I can say from personal experience, is difficult to keep up with. So… I think that the explosion of addiction in – to online porn has shown that content filtering isn’t working.”

I’m sure Hang ‘em High Henry would agree! For that matter, Hudson would probably go one further and assert that even though it’s hard to argue books represent some form of emerging technology, now that we can read them on screens instead of off paper pages, this emphasizes the urgency of indicting some bookstore for its flagrant distribution of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

And if they prosecuted and convicted the wrong bookseller? Well, Henry would regret it, sure – but he’d certainly offer no apologies.

Any time someone says they favor “family values,” I wince a little – not because I am against families, of course, but because almost invariably, that person is talking about a specific kind of family, with a specific sort of ‘values.’

Generally, when people talk about family values, they mean a family with two heterosexual parents, at least a couple children and an inclination towards Bible-reading. (For the record, the family I grew up in was two for three on that family values matrix, as the Bible never made the family reading list, alas.)

Take anti-porn crusader and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, for example. Dobson wasn’t one to mince words when it came to what constituted a ‘real’ family. When then-President Jimmy Carter set up a Conference on Families that included a “diversity of families” Dobson lost his shit. Only the “traditional” family unit – with a male head of household who brings home the bacon and a female caregiver who then fries the bacon and dutifully feeds it to her husband and spawn – ought to be endorsed, or even recognized, by the government, as Dobson saw it.

Dobson’s presence on my list of people and organizations who deserve ‘credit’ for starting the modern War on Porn isn’t because he thought just about anything other than a conservative Christian value set to be anathema, however. He’s here because included in his ceaseless lobbying and activism in favor of a variety of socially conservative policy positions was his drive to convince people pornography was among the roots of all evil.

To establish just how Very Bad porn is, Dobson went straight to the most credible, respected expert he could find: Convicted serial killer Ted Bundy.

Now, some might say the statements of a guy like Ted Bundy shouldn’t be given a whole lot of weight, in part because at different times, he made contradicting claims when asked the same sort of questions. But all Dobson cared about was that Bundy was willing to go on record saying that violent pornography had played a big role in shaping and driving his fantasies. Acting out those fantasies is what made him a serial killer, ergo – in the world of Dobson logic, at least – watching porn turns people into rapists and killers!

As noted by one of his many critics, Dobson’s interview with Bundy was “widely discredited as little more than a Dobson being willingly and eagerly duped by Bundy’s pathological manipulation. But Bundy’s fabricated narrative fit perfectly with Dobson’s view that it was the unchecked liberal, un-Christian, feminist, sex-crazed, anything-goes social context that led to the breakdown of society and created serial killers.”

One doesn’t have to put much thought into the “porn makes men into serial killers” argument to know it’s utter hogwash, of course. While it’s not true that researchers have been unable to find any men who haven’t watched porn to serve as control group subjects, it is doubtlessly true that a lot of men (and women) watch porn. It’s also true, I think it safe to say, comparatively few men become murderers or rapists.

No question, our society has far too many of both murderers and rapists, but if it was true that prolonged exposure to porn makes people into killers and rapists, that sort of clear causal connection would mean we had a great many more rapists and killers in our midst, surely. Not only is Dobson’s claim one that can’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny, but it also can’t even stand up to momentary rumination.

I’m sure Dobson wasn’t troubled by the criticism of his interview with Bundy, or even particularly concerned with whether Bundy was telling the truth about anything covered in their conversation. The Bundy interview tapes reportedly generated over a million bucks in revenue for Focus on the Family, the bulk of which it donated to anti-porn and anti-abortion groups.

Dobson continued his activism through the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute (founded in 2010) through 2022, when he handed off the reins to the organization’s new president. He continued to record his radio show, Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, and his frequent appearances on Fox News, though, until shortly before his death in August 2025.

Dobson’s advocacy lives on, of course, through the various organizations he founded and a new generation of self-righteous, censorious social conservatives – each of whom I’m sure is just as certain as Dobson that their definition of “family values” is the only one that matters.

Over on WIRED right now, there’s an article about the unexpected role adult content creators are playing in identifying potential security breaches on government (.gov) and university (.edu) websites.

To make a long (and well worth reading) story short, phishers, scammers and other folks of their distasteful ilk have been downloading content from these adult creators, uploading it to .gov and .edu sites they’ve compromised (or otherwise have access to) and using it as clickbait to draw people in to click malicious links, download malware or otherwise expose themselves to risk of becoming a cybercrime victim.

Since many adult content creators use DMCA takedown services, or sent out takedown notices themselves, by reporting links to Google for removal, these creators have unwittingly contributed to the cyber security of both the sites themselves and users who might stumble across the links in Google’s search results.

Near the end of the article, content creator Laura Lux is asked what she made of the DMCA notices potentially notifying site administrators they’ve had a breach. Her response? “I guess sex workers save the world again.”

The story got me thinking about adult content piracy and a different kind of possibly unwitting role being played, this one related to the War on Porn.

I suspect a lot of people who download and “share” the pictures and videos made by adult content creators don’t think of what they’re doing as harmful. Those of them who aren’t trying to make a buck off the content in some way might even believe they’re doing the creators a service, promoting them via ‘word of mouth,’ in effect.

But when you download and distribute content that was made to be sold, you’re not only devaluing the product and undermining the creator’s business model. You’re often also encouraging the perception that adult content is being distributed without thought of complying with the law by the creators themselves, even though your distribution of the content is something they actively don’t want to occur.

Redistributing content without the consent of the rightsholders is bad enough, but pirated adult content is often uploaded to platforms that make no pretense of following any law or complying with any regulation. Platforms that turn a willfully blind eye to regulations then stoke the ire of people like legislators, anti-porn activists and self-righteous TV bloviators, who inevitably tar the entire adult industry with the brush of criminality. (They also sometimes inspire attorneys general to take unusual actions in court, but that’s another story.)

It’s worth remembering that outside of the people who make, sell, distribute or otherwise profit from porn, we don’t enjoy much support in the public sphere. It’s undoubtedly true a hefty percentage of voters enjoy watching porn. But for a variety of reasons, mostly tied up in shame and/or a desire to keep certain aspects of our lives private, we’re probably not going to see big pro-porn rallies in the streets at times when some overreaching new law targeting the adult industry is being debated.

Given that, this is my simple appeal to those outside the adult industry, but who are on “our side” when it comes to the War on Porn: If you can’t openly support us, please at least consider not fighting against us, accidentally or otherwise.

The guidelines here are quite simple, really. Pay for porn when its creators intend for it to be sold and buy it on the platforms its creators have authorized to distribute their work. Don’t ‘share’ their content with tens of millions of ‘friends.’ When you get opportunities to interact with adult content creators, be respectful. If you feel shame because you watch porn, don’t take that shame out on those who make it by denouncing us as whores and panderers; just hire a fucking therapist already and sort yourself out!

And for fuck’s sake, don’t go around hacking university or government websites and uploading porn to them. That’s not just working against “our side;” that’s declaring that the only side you’re on is one that should be in prison.