The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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INDIANAPOLIS—There’s something oddly familiar about this moment. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, stepped forward this week to announce that his office has sued Aylo, its affiliated companies, and ownership group Ethical Capital Partners. The accusation: that they violated the state’s age-verification laws by failing to fully block users who access sites through virtual private networks, or VPNs.
Aylo, the parent company behind Pornhub and several other free and premium adult platforms, has already shut the door on Indiana entirely. The company has blocked all Indiana IP addresses, choosing to withdraw from the state’s digital landscape rather than implement the sweeping age-verification requirements that took effect earlier this year.
“We know for a fact, from years of research, that adolescent exposure to pornography carries severe physical and psychological harms,” Rokita said in a statement released by his office.
“It makes boys more likely to perpetrate sexual violence and girls more likely to be sexually victimized. Yet, despite such realities, these defendants seem intent on peddling their pornographic perversions to Hoosier kids,” Rokita continued, explaining why his office brought the lawsuit. The framing is dramatic—but it also sidesteps the core issue quietly doing the real work here.
In the legal complaint filed in state court, Rokita advances a theory that places responsibility on Aylo not just for blocking Indiana users, but for failing to block access even when users disguise their location through VPNs or proxy servers that make them appear to be outside the state.
In other words, the argument treats the existence of VPNs themselves as a kind of open tunnel—one that, in the state’s view, leads minors straight to content that would otherwise be unavailable under Indiana’s age-verification rules.
Corey Silverstein, an attorney who represents adult-industry clients, said the lawsuit is unsurprising—and deeply troubling.
“It was just a matter of time before one of these state Attorneys General tested this theory,” Silverstein said. “We are going to monitor the case very carefully.”
He added, “I see substantial roadblocks for the government’s case, but, again, I’m not surprised because the states have been emboldened by the Supreme Court decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Going after a VPN service provider would be a stretch, and Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act of 1996] would stop it.
“That’s a dangerous concept, though, because what’s next? Power companies? Landlords that lease data center space?”
From a legal standpoint, the case itself feels thin—almost delicate in how much weight it tries to carry.
“As of the date of this filing, defendants’ websites (Aylo) identified above restrict access by users whose devices purport
