The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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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.
