Legal Attacks

BERLIN — There’s something quietly fascinating about watching a digital giant inch toward compromise. After years of courtroom sparring and regulatory standoffs, Aylo — the parent company behind Pornhub — is preparing to take part in the European Commission’s pilot program for its new “white label” age-verification app, according to reports out of Germany.

An Aylo spokesperson confirmed the company is among the first group of participants testing the program, a notable shift for a business that has typically treated age-verification mandates with deep skepticism — and, often, outright resistance.

The European Commission rolled out the white-label AV app publicly in July, positioning it as a practical tool to help online platforms comply with child-safety guidelines mandated under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). During the pilot stage, the system is being tested across Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, and Spain — sort of a dress rehearsal for what could become a broader, standardized solution.

Italy has already moved to make the tool part of its compliance framework. As regulators have made clear, any age-verification system must accommodate the white-label app. Aylo’s sites — Pornhub, YouPorn, and Redtube — have been placed on a preliminary list of high-traffic platforms expected to comply under the country’s new rules. It’s the first tangible moment where “study phase” starts shading into real-world consequences.

Elsewhere in the EU, the pressure campaign hasn’t exactly been subtle. In France, after long legal back-and-forth, Aylo chose to block French users entirely instead of implementing the country’s age-verification mandates. Germany has delivered a partial reprieve: a court temporarily halted an order that would have required telecom providers to block access to Pornhub and YouPorn due to alleged AV noncompliance. 

Much of Aylo’s cross-border legal wrangling boils down to a simple but thorny question: who actually has the authority to enforce these rules — individual EU nations or the bloc as a whole? In September, an advocate general at the European Union’s Court of Justice offered a nonbinding opinion advising that France does, in fact, have the power to require age verification from adult websites operating elsewhere in the EU but accessible to French residents. Final judgment remains pending, but the tea leaves have started to tilt toward national enforcement power. At the same time, the European Commission announced plans earlier this year to conduct a broad study evaluating how well Pornhub and other major adult platforms are complying with DSA requirements.

Whether this rising regulatory drumbeat pushed Aylo closer to cooperation — or whether the design of the EU tool itself made compromise palatable — remains an open question. The Commission’s guidelines emphasize “non-intrusiveness” as a central principle, a far cry from the heavy-handed verification models surfacing in much of the United States. That approach seems to resonate. When Aylo announced in June it would comply with the United Kingdom’s age-assurance rules under the Online Safety Act, the company praised Ofcom’s framework as “the most robust in terms of actual and meaningful protection we’ve seen to date.”

For now, there’s still a big unanswered question hanging in the air: timing. Aylo hasn’t said when — or exactly how — Pornhub users across the EU might encounter the new app. As the spokesperson declined to clarify a rollout date, a request for comment remains outstanding. Until then, the industry is left with that familiar, uneasy pause — waiting to see whether this step marks a real turning point or just another cautious toe dipped into regulatory waters.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In Missouri’s capital, one lawmaker is trying once again to put a moral warning label on people’s browsing habits. A state representative has filed a bill that would force adult websites to post stark notices about supposed physical, mental and social harms tied to pornography — even though a federal court has already pushed back on this kind of requirement.

The measure, HB 1831, comes from Rep. Sherri Gallick, a Republican member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Her proposal is one of two fresh attempts to lock age verification for adult sites into state law, effectively turning what the attorney general tried to do unilaterally into a legislative mandate. That earlier move from the attorney general has already stirred controversy and could still end up in court. The second AV bill, HB 1878, was introduced by Rep. Renee Reuter.

While HB 1878 tracks closely with the wave of age verification laws already on the books in other states, Gallick’s HB 1831 goes further. It adds a requirement that adult sites display a prominent notice declaring, “Pornography is potentially biologically addictive, is proven to harm human brain development, desensitizes brain reward circuits, increases conditioned responses, and weakens brain function. Exposure to this content is associated with low self-esteem and body image, eating disorders, impaired brain development, and other emotional and mental illnesses. Pornography increases the demand for prostitution, child exploitation, and child pornography.” It reads less like a neutral disclosure and more like a manifesto, which is part of what makes it so legally fraught.

On top of that, the bill insists that every page of an adult site carry a footer pointing users to a helpline “for individuals and family members facing mental health or substance use disorders.” The message is clear: visiting an adult website is being framed as behavior that belongs in the same bucket as addiction and crisis.

If the language feels familiar, it’s because it is. The text is lifted directly from Texas’ HB 1181, the age verification law that eventually became the center of the U.S. Supreme Court case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. That case turned into a major turning point, opening the door for enforcement of age verification laws across the country after the Court upheld the Texas statute.

But there’s a twist that matters here. The version of the Texas law that survived at the Supreme Court did not include those “health warning” provisions. They were already stripped out by the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which upheld a lower court’s injunction and agreed that forcing websites to post such statements amounted to unconstitutional compelled speech.

With that precedent hanging in the air, it’s hard to see a clear path forward for HB 1831 in its current form. Any serious attempt to move it could be walking straight into a legal buzzsaw.

WASHINGTON—Somewhere between the fine print and the culture war headlines, tax officials at the Internal Revenue Service now find themselves staring down an oddly philosophical assignment: deciding what counts as online pornography—and who, exactly, qualifies as an adult content creator—while implementing the Trump administration’s so-called “no tax on tips” provision tucked into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The initial draft guidance for the deduction applies only to “qualified tips” earned by a limited list of approved professions, a list that notably includes “digital content creators.”

That sounds simple enough at first glance—until you realize the law never actually defines what a “digital content creator” is. The guidance carves out an exception, barring deductions tied to illegal activity, prostitution, escorting, and pornography. Tips connected to “pornographic activity are not qualified tips,” the IRS notes. Clear words, blurry boundaries.

Because what is pornography, anyway? The term doesn’t come with a neat statutory definition. Instead, IRS officials—auditors and law enforcement agents in the agency’s criminal investigations division among them—are reportedly expected to apply a looser, almost old-school standard of “obscenity,” meaning they’ll rely on something closer to “knowing it when they see it.”

The exemption itself didn’t come out of nowhere. It was pushed by a coalition of Christian nationalist and conservative advocacy groups who lobbied hard to ensure adult creators would be excluded.

In a joint letter sent in September—led by Advancing American Freedom, an organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence—the groups urged Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to block deductions for adult content creators or any tipped professionals engaged in what they labeled “pornographic activity.”

“Rather than distort Congress’ language, Treasury should stick to the statute: providing tax relief for the waiters, hairdressers, delivery drivers, and other workers who make up America’s proud service industries,” reads the letter dated Sept. 18, falsely framing adult content creation as a moral hazard standing outside legitimate work.

“We, the undersigned organizations, urge you to ensure pornographic content creators are not included under Treasury’s definition of eligible entities,” the groups wrote. “Our government should not give tax breaks to predatory industries that profit from exploiting young men and women, destroying marriages, families, and lives.”

The IRS guidance arrived just days after that letter went public. Among the groups involved were the Family Research Council and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Many of the signatories are classified as anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-government hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center and 

Other participating organizations have connections to Project 2025, the controversial Heritage Foundation initiative that has openly called for outlawing pornography altogether. Several of the same groups are also on record pushing for age-verification mandates across adult websites, mainstream social platforms, and mobile app stores.

Nate Mallory, a tax attorney who works extensively with adult industry clients, previously said the “no tax on tips” provision would almost certainly leave creators on platforms like OnlyFans, LoyalFans, Fansly, and others out in the cold. Mallory put it bluntly: “Tax policy should be based on economic principles, not moral judgments.”

SPRINGFIELD, Mo.—It almost felt like the lights went out overnight. One moment, Missouri users were browsing the same familiar adult sites people everywhere have known for years, and the next—gone. Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, cut off access to both its premium and free platforms from Missouri IP addresses as the state’s newly adopted age-verification regulation snapped into effect on November 30, leaving a digital dead zone in its wake.

“Pornhub is welcome to leave Missouri,” said Catherine Hanaway, the attorney general who stepped into the role after predecessor Andrew Bailey resigned to take a senior post at the FBI.

“What is not welcome is any company that puts profit above the safety of our children,” Hanaway continued. “Protecting Missouri’s children is of the greatest importance. If companies choose to walk away instead of complying with the law, that is their decision, but it is absolutely a victory for Missouri families.”

Aylo’s reaction followed a familiar script. The company once again took aim at what it calls the fractured, state-by-state patchwork of age-verification rules across the U.S., arguing that forcing individual websites to police age verification is the wrong approach altogether.

Instead, Aylo has consistently pushed for age checks at the device or operating-system level rather than site by site. In line with that stance, the company confirmed last week that it is actively exploring partnerships with major tech platforms—names like Apple and Google—aimed at building age-identification signals and APIs that could support broader verification tools.

Meanwhile, the behavior of ordinary users tells its own small, telling story. Since November 30, searches for workarounds have climbed sharply. Google Trends data from December 1 and 2 shows noticeable spikes in queries such as “VPN” and “virtual private network”—the modern version of slipping out a side door when the front entrance is locked.

From the state’s perspective, Hanaway is leaning on consumer protection law to finally seal what many consider a loophole left behind by Bailey’s early attempts to regulate adult content access. His brief tenure was messy, marked by rushed proposals and heavy criticism.

Those early versions, according to prior reporting, were rooted in technical assumptions that simply didn’t match reality.

Back in April, Bailey formally issued a consumer protection regulation establishing “dual-level” age verification for any website hosting content deemed harmful to minors, a category broad enough to include sexually explicit material alongside other forms of restricted media.

Iain Corby, executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, was blunt about that requirement, confirming that true dual-level age verification isn’t actually feasible with today’s technology.

Missouri now stands as the first state to roll out age verification through a full regulatory rulemaking process—and in doing so, it’s become something of a testing ground, a place where ideology, technology, and human behavior keep bumping into one another in real time, with no clear ending yet in sight.

ROME — There’s that quiet moment every creator dreads — the one where your phone buzzes with news you didn’t even know you should be worried about yet. In Italy right now, that buzz is coming courtesy of the nation’s tax authority, which has ruled that the country’s 25% “ethical tax” on income from adult content applies not just to major studios or big websites, but also to smaller, independent creators working online.

The so-called “ethical tax” dates back to 2005 and targets any net income earned through the production, distribution, sale, or performance of pornographic material, along with content said to incite violence. When it was introduced, the idea of bedroom lighting setups, DIY ring lights, and subscription fan platforms wasn’t even part of the conversation, so the burden landed almost entirely on traditional adult companies.

A recent ruling from the Agenzia Entrate’s Taxpayers Division Central Directorate for Small and Medium Enterprises now makes it official: creators using premium social media and fan platforms fall under the same tax obligation — even if they operate under Italy’s flat-tax system for small businesses and freelancers.

That system, called the regime forfettario, covers freelancers reporting annual income of €85,000 or less. Which means tens of thousands of Italian creators who thought they were safely tucked into that bracket could suddenly see 25% of their earnings siphoned off if the revenue agency classifies their content as pornographic. A quarter of their income — gone. And you can almost hear the collective pause across the creator community as people do that math in their heads, wondering how something written two decades ago just reached straight into their modern, very personal livelihoods.

Citizens of Missouri who frequent adult websites will find the internet has changed for them when they wake up this Sunday morning, towards the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend.

Why will the internet be different for citizens of Missouri as of that morning? Because Sunday is November 30, the day the state’s new age-verification mandate begins for websites covered by the “Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.”

Under the law, websites on which a “substantial portion” of the content (33% or more) is deemed “pornographic for minors” must employ a “reasonable age verification method” to assure anyone accessing such content is an adult.

On its face, requiring adult sites to verify the age of their visitors may not seem like such an unreasonable proposition. But, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.”

For starters, making adults jump through hoops to enter a brick-and-mortar adult video store, or requiring people to show ID when purchasing a porn mag at a convenience store is one thing, storing and cross-referencing their personally identifying information is quite another.

When a clerk at an adult shop or any store that sells age-restricted materials checks your ID, they look at it, they look at you, they check the date of birth listed on the ID document and then you both get on with your lives. Minutes later, that same clerk probably couldn’t tell you much about the customer they’d just served, other than “I checked his ID, it looked legit and he’s 55 freaking years old, dude.”

When I scan my ID on the behest of an age-verification provider…who the fuck knows what happens to that data? Sure, some of these state laws prohibit vendors from storing and sharing that data, but do you trust them to follow the law? How many times do we need to haul tech companies before Congress (or watch them get fined by the FCC) to admit they interpreted the law in some “nuanced” way that permits them to hold on to and use our personal data before we get wise to their sneaky ways?

The data collected by age-verification services is valuable to them. They aren’t going to abstain from using it in every profitable way possible, regardless of what the law says. They will find ways to interpret the law such that they can sell, rent out or permit third-party cross-referencing of the data, mark my words. Some of these companies won’t be domiciled in the United States – and they will give just about as big a shit about U.S. law as any other business located outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. does, accordingly.

Of course, none of this will bother the politicians who pass these laws, because this isn’t about protecting kids – and it sure as hell isn’t about protecting the privacy of adults who like to watch porn. This is about a larger antipathy towards adult entertainment and a desire to discourage anyone and everyone from looking at porn, not just minors.

Consider what Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway had to say in September about the new law in her state: “We are holding powerful corporations accountable, respecting women and victims of human trafficking, and helping ensure that minors are shielded from dangerous, sexually explicit material.”

Notice that the bit about “helping ensure that minors are shielded” comes last on the list? That’s not a coincidence.

Someone also needs to explain to me how making people show ID at the door when they watch porn is in any way helping “women and victims of human trafficking.” Let’s assume a person has been trafficked for the purpose of performing in porn (something that truly doesn’t happen often at all, despite a constant stream of political rhetoric to the contrary); how does making viewers confirm they’re old enough to watch legal porn help anyone who has been forced into making illegal porn?

The word “trafficking” doesn’t appear in the text of Missouri’s new law. What does appear there is the claim “nothing in this proposed rule limits the ability of adults to view sexually explicit material online,” which is technically true, so long as one doesn’t consider an age-verification requirement a “limit” to any of the adults who would prefer not to hand over the personally identifying information to God-knows-who.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas in the challenge to that state’s age-verification mandate, Cecillia Wang, the national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said something that strikes me as being just as true with respect to the Missouri law:

“The legislature claims to be protecting children from sexually explicit materials, but the law will do little to block their access and instead deters adults from viewing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content.”

She’s right – and the list of adults deterred by such laws is only going to get longer as these laws proliferate.

Welcome to the dumb-downed internet. Please be mindful of the language you use herein; some of your readers might be children!

OTTAWA—Canada’s broadcast regulator has confirmed that “adult programming” won’t be subject to the Canadian culture quota system required under the Online Streaming Act, effectively removing erotic and pornographic content from the law’s promotional framework rooted in national identity and cultural support.

A couple of years ago, testimony from Aylo’s ownership group, Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which advocated for this very exemption. The Ottawa-based private equity firm acquired Aylo — the company once known as MindGeek — in 2023 and now operates with headquarters in Montreal, Québec.

“Adult programming will not be certified as Canadian programs,” states the official regulation issued by the CRTC on Nov. 18. The commission explains that “adult programming is an element of the production industry that does not require regulatory support for its overall economic stability. […] Further, the certification or non-certification of this type of programming does not impact the Canadian production industry associated with the creation or availability of such content.”

Under the regulator’s interpretation, adult content simply doesn’t meet the criteria for official “Canadian content,” a designation based on the participation of Canadian performers and the use of domestic locations. In practice, most adult productions — including many produced within Aylo’s premium studio network — are filmed in the United States, particularly in California and Florida.

“By recognizing the contributions of a wider range of creators, we are supporting Canadians who help bring our stories to the screen,” said Vicky Eatrides, chairperson and chief executive officer of the CRTC, in a press release announcing the finalized rules governing Canadian content quotas.

“Our decision promotes Canadian talent, encourages new partnerships, and helps keep our creative industries strong for the future,” Eatrides added.

Sometimes a ruling hits the news and you can almost feel the collective exhale from people who’ve been waiting far too long to be treated like… well, workers. That’s what happened in Denver, where a district judge decided that strip club entertainers — dancers, performers, the people who carry the whole night on their shoulders — are employees. Real employees. Which means they’re covered by the city’s labor protections and the standard minimum hourly wage that everyone else in the consolidated city and county is supposed to receive.

The decision backs up what a Denver Auditor’s Office hearing officer had already determined while digging into wage theft claims at several strip clubs around town — including big names like the local Rick’s Cabaret branch, PT’s Showclub, PT’s Showclub Centerfold and the Diamond Cabaret. You know the places: neon lights, velvet corners, the kind of spots that thrive on performance yet somehow never wanted to acknowledge the performers as actual staff.

Attorneys for the clubs kept insisting that entertainers were exempt from Denver’s employment-law umbrella, as if the entire job existed in some hazy loophole. But the ruling cut through that fog. It confirmed what the Auditor’s Office has been saying for years: strippers and erotic performers deserve the same wage protections as anyone else clocking in across the city.

“Our office enforces wage theft laws for all industries and protects anyone performing work in Denver. Adult entertainment workers are no different, and we are pleased the courts agree,” said Timothy M. O’Brien, the elected city auditor who oversees Denver Labor. And honestly, hearing that felt like a long-overdue moment of someone naming the obvious.

Denver Labor, by the way, does its job through law enforcement, education and certified audits — the kind of behind-the-scenes work most people don’t think about until it hits the headlines or their paycheck.

“Entertainers are workers and, therefore, are entitled to the fundamental protections of Denver’s wage ordinances,” reads an informational page on O’Brien

There’s a certain kind of political announcement that feels like the temperature in the room suddenly drops — and next week’s hearing in the House does exactly that. A subcommittee is gearing up to review a stack of bills aimed at protecting minors online, including the SCREEN Act, which would make age verification for adult content a federal requirement. It’s the kind of proposal that sounds straightforward until you start asking the obvious questions lurking underneath: Who verifies? How? And at what cost to everyone else’s privacy?

On Tuesday, Congressman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Congressman Gus Bilirakis of Florida, who leads the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, revealed the Dec. 2 hearing, pointedly titled “Legislative Solutions to Protect Children and Teens Online.”

“One week from today, this Committee will begin advancing a suite of online safety bills to address the challenges facing our kids in the digital age,” Guthrie and Bilirakis said in a joint statement. “Parents and lawmakers both agree on the importance of enacting meaningful protections that can stand the test of time, so we look forward to this important first step.” You can hear the bipartisan weariness in that last part — everyone wants to “protect kids,” yet nobody can agree on the mechanics.

The hearing will cover 19 different bills circling everything from privacy protections to gaming, messaging, algorithms, bots, and artificial intelligence. It’s a wide net, the kind lawmakers cast when they’re trying to grab the whole digital universe at once. The Kids Online Safety Act — still carrying the scent of its earlier “duty of care” controversies — sits near the top of the list, freshly softened after years of pushback.

But the bill with the sharpest edge for the adult industry is the one with the dramatic, almost sci-fi name: the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (yes, really) — the SCREEN Act.

When Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah introduced it earlier this year, the proposal echoed the age-verification mandates spreading through various states like a chain reaction. Under this bill, failing to comply with AV requirements would count as a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s ban on unfair or deceptive practices — a move that opens the door to civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation. Just imagine the math on a busy website; it’s enough to make any operator dizzy.

Lee has long been one of Congress’ most outspoken anti-porn crusaders, consistently pushing measures to revive obscenity prosecutions and criminalize all forms of sex work. His SCREEN Act has drawn support from religious and conservative groups across the ideological map — and interestingly, from the Age Verification Provider’s Association, whose members would undeniably benefit from turning age checks into a global business model.

Earlier this year, industry attorney Corey Silverstein wrote a detailed breakdown of the legislation, pointing out that similar laws have already collided with constitutional limits and lost. History has a funny way of whispering warnings if you’re willing to hear them.

“If it is deemed too broad or restrictive, courts may invalidate it as unconstitutional,” Silverstein noted. “However, if the law is perceived as narrowly tailored — e.g., focusing only on commercial porn sites and clear, workable verification methods — it might survive such challenges.”

And that’s the tension that keeps repeating itself: the desire to shield children, the fear of government overreach, and a legal system forever balancing on the thin edge between protection and intrusion. The coming hearing won’t settle that — but it might reveal just how far lawmakers are willing to push the boundary this time.

Sometimes the quietest rulings carry the loudest echoes. That’s what happened in Düsseldorf, where the Administrative Court stepped in and hit pause on an order that would’ve forced telecom giants to cut off access to Aylo-owned sites Pornhub and YouPorn.

The “network ban,” first floated back in July, was meant to push the platforms into complying with Germany’s strict age-verification demands — the kind that insist on IDs, facial scans, and other methods that feel more sci-fi than practical for most adults just trying to go about their digital lives.

But on Nov. 19, the Administrative Court said not so fast. The judges ruled that the regional media authority can’t pressure ISPs to block the sites while the appeals are still winding their way through the Higher Administrative Court. In other words: everyone needs to sit tight until the bigger legal questions get sorted.

And those questions are heavy. The court pointed to recent decisions from the European Court of Justice suggesting that Germany’s Youth Media Protection Interstate Treaty might clash with overarching EU law. Essentially, the EU’s rules around the free movement of digital services — especially for companies legally based in other member states, like Aylo in Cyprus — can’t be tossed aside unless strict conditions are met. And Germany’s framework may not pass that test anymore.

Jurisdictional Confusion

If you’ve followed the debate around protecting minors online in Europe this past year, you know it’s become a labyrinth of overlapping rules, clashing authorities, and awkward international finger-pointing.

Take Luxembourg, for example. Late in 2024, French officials tried to get their neighbors to help enforce France’s SREN law by going after webcam platform LiveJasmin. Luxembourg didn’t bite. “We cannot circumvent EU rules just because it is maybe a highly sensitive topic,” an Economy Ministry official said — a line that, honestly, deserves to be engraved somewhere in stone.

Around the same time, the European Commission wrapped up its official guidelines on protecting minors under the Digital Services Act. They even rolled out a “white label” age-verification app, something like a template that sites can adopt to meet DSA requirements. The idea sounds tidy on paper; the reality is… well, still unfolding.

France’s media regulator has also been tangled in debates over whether it can enforce its age-verification rules on companies based elsewhere in the EU. Arcom asked Czech regulators for support, but those agencies pushed back, saying they simply don’t have the legal room to apply French law on their home turf.

That particular dispute revolves around WebGroup Czech Republic, the company behind XVideos.com, and NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com. Both companies appealed to France’s Council of State, arguing that Arcom can’t compel foreign-based sites to comply with French rules without violating the EU’s “country of origin” principle — a core idea in the Directive on Electronic Commerce.

And then there’s the nonbinding opinion dropped in September by an advocate general at the EU’s Court of Justice, suggesting that France can require foreign-based porn sites to apply French age-verification rules. It was the legal equivalent of throwing gasoline on an already lively fire.

XVideos and XNXX aren’t alone. Several platforms have been called out for failing to meet France’s age-verification requirements under the SREN law. If they don’t comply, Arcom has made it clear it’s ready to follow the German playbook and move toward blocking and delisting.

All of this makes the Pornhub/YouPorn litigation in Germany more than just another case file. It’s shaping into a test of which rules will ultimately win out — national laws drafted in response to rising political pressure, or Europe-wide principles baked into the very idea of a digital single market. And whatever the courts decide, it’s going to ripple far beyond one country or a pair of websites.