adult content – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Anti-Porn Clusterfucks: Pornhub Blocks Texas, Indiana Adopts Age Verification

from the terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day dept

What a day. Texas is now the most populated U.S. state to be geo-blocked by Aylo, the parent company of the popular adult tube site Pornhub.com. With a population of barely over 29.5 million people, residents of the Lone Star State must use a VPN to view porn on Aylo’s network of free and premium websites.

The geo-block comes after the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas age verification law targeting pornography was constitutional. The federal case was brought by Aylo, the parent companies of other adult websites, and the Free Speech Coalition.

Despite the Fifth Circuit completely overlooking decades of Supreme Court precedent indicating that any sort of age verification measure infringes on First Amendment rights, the conservative judges, 2-1, powered through. As Mike Masnick noted in his column on the decision, Judge Patrick Higginbotham – in dissent from the two other judges of the panel – rightfully pointed out that First Amendment protections aren’t thrown out just because Texas tries to be the nanny state. Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra initially ruled the Texas age verification law, House Bill 1181, unconstitutional and issued a preliminary injunction to block the law. Texas won on appeal. Litigation is still ongoing. Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, also filed a lawsuit against Pornhub in Travis County courts alleging violations of House Bill 1181, and seeks millions in damages.

A few states away, Indiana just adopted an age verification law. Senate Bill 17, which was proposed by state Sen. Mike Bohacek of Michiana Shores and is set to enter force on July 1, 2024. I wrote for Techdirt about Senate Bill 17 because an early version of the bill carried with it criminal penalties for violators of the age verification requirement. Luckily, the bill was amended to drop those penalties. Still, SB 17 is a very slippery slope for Hoosiers and the United States in general. The Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called the bill an unconstitutional violation against adults.

The legal environment pertaining to age verification and free speech online is now more fraught than ever. Developments like these reveal an ongoing civil liberties clusterfuck instigated by the anti-pornography lobby in the name of “protecting” minors. In much of my previous work for Techdirt and for other publishers, I have highlighted how efforts to restrict or even ban legal pornography in the U.S. are steeped in the far-right Christian nationalism that has gripped the Republican Party. Don’t forget about Project 2025. This group openly wants to ban porn and imprison those whom they deem “pornographers.”

To hear some people talk about it, anyone having anything to do with adult content should be imprisoned. This is why, as a journalist and a commentator, I keep writing about anti-porn clusterfucks like Aylo bowing to Texas or any other state controlled by politicians declaring “victory” against porn.

The First Amendment still exists. Case law still exists. Hopefully, the likes of Texas and Indiana – really all of the states under the yoke of authoritarian anti-porn, pro-censorship laws – are finally reminded that this type of paternalistic meddling is un-American.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.

Filed Under: 5th circuit, adult content, age verification, indiana, porn, texas
Companies: aylo, pornhub

5th Circuit Is Gonna 5th Circus: Declares Age Verification Perfectly Fine Under The First Amendment

from the free-speech-is-weird-in-texas dept

Can the 5th Circuit ever do anything not crazy? You may recall that Texas, like so many states, passed a law, HB 1181, that required age verification for adult content sites. This law also required nonsense “health warnings” to be plastered on those sites, which did not come from any actual health experts. The Free Speech Coalition sued over the bill and won a quick injunction. The court deemed it to be obviously unconstitutional, siding with multiple other courts (including the Supreme Court) which have all found age verification requirements to access speech to be unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Soon after that, though, the 5th Circuit removed the injunction blocking the law with no explanation at all (which seems to be how the 5th Circuit rolls…). This allowed Paxton to sue Pornhub’s parent company Aylo for allegedly violating the law.

Now, we finally have the full 5th Circuit ruling and it is incredibly problematic. It could have been worse because it could have allowed the mandated fake health warnings, but (thankfully) it kept those enjoined. However, it went against a ton of other courts in saying that age verification is, like, totally constitutional. The majority opinion claimed that they could use the much lower “rational basis” test to determine the constitutionality of age verification restrictions, rather than strict scrutiny.

The proper standard of review is rational-basis, not strict scrutiny. Applying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography. Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment. Further, Section 230 does not preempt H.B. 1181. So, the district court erred by enjoining the age-verification requirement.

The court leans heavily on the 1968 case Ginsberg v. New York. This case allowed for the restrictions on the sale of “obscene” material to children. The court insists that more recent cases don’t apply here, including Ashcroft v. ACLU and Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. In Ashcroft v. ACLU, the court rejected a bill to restrict access to content “harmful to minors.” In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the court rejected a bill limiting kids’ access to violent video games. The court insists that these cases don’t apply here, since the material is “obscene.”

The Ashcroft case seems almost directly on point. COPA included age verification regarding harmful content to minors and the Supreme Court rejected it. Yet the 5th Circuit now says that the reason was because the Supreme Court only applied “strict scrutiny” in the Ashcroft case, because it was only asked about strict scrutiny, and not which test should apply. If only it had applied rational basis review, according to the majority, it would have found COPA fine.

Ashcroft II supplies plaintiffs’ best ammunition against H.B. 1181. After all, despite Texas’s protestations, H.B. 1181 is very similar to COPA. Sure, COPA was criminal, and H.B. 1181 is civil. And COPA allowed age-verification as an affirmative defense, yet H.B. 1181 requires it upfront. But those changes do not affect our analyses here. 24 Ashcroft II, finding that COPA probably failed the narrow tailoring component of strict scrutiny, sent the case back down for trial. 542 U.S. at 673. One might read Ashcroft II for the proposition that COPA (and consequently H.B. 1181) fail strict scrutiny. We can even assume that here.

But that assumption does not end our analysis. Though Ashcroft II concluded that COPA would fail strict scrutiny, it contains startling omissions. Why no discussion of rational-basis review under Ginsberg? And why no analysis of intermediate scrutiny under Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U.S. 41 (1986)? We find those omissions particularly surprising considering that the Court in Reno felt the need to distinguish those at length. See Reno, 521 U.S. at 865–68.

We see only one answer and therefore only one way to read Ashcroft II consistently with Ginsberg: Ashcroft II did not rule on the appropriate tier of scrutiny for COPA. It merely ruled on the issue the parties presented: whether COPA would survive strict scrutiny….

… In other words, the petitioners did not challenge the applicable standard of review. Because that is not a jurisdictional argument, the Court did not have to correct them sua sponte.

And thus, because the 5th Circuit has decided rational basis is the proper standard, it can effectively ignore Ashcroft.

The 5th Circuit also has to bend over backwards to ignore the US v. Playboy case. The case involved another part of the Communications Decency Act, forcing adult TV channels to block access or scramble content during certain hours to protect kids from access, which was also found unconstitutional. But the 5th Circuit says that’s different because… scrambling video signals is not age verification.

H.B. 1181 is plainly more like the regulation in Ginsberg than like the regulation in Playboy. H.B. 1181 allows adults to access as much pornography as they want whenever they want. The law in Playboy did not. The burden in Playboy, although not a ban, is different in kind from whatever “burden” arises from the same type of age-verification required to enter a strip club, drink a beer, or buy cigarettes. The law in Ginsberg, like H.B. 1181, targeted distribution to minors; the law in Playboy targeted distribution to all. That is, once certain an individual is not a minor, H.B. 1181 does nothing further. The same cannot be said of the law in Playboy, which imposed substantial burdens even after an individual established his or her majority.

And thus, the court says it can ignore a whole series of Supreme Court rulings trying to block access to adult content and magically apply rational basis review, which, it says, “we do that easily.”

85-year-old Judge Patrick Higginbotham, who talks up the importance of the First Amendment, vigorously dissents on this part:

The years that followed vindicated Madison’s placement of the First Amendment with its rails for the paths of government, married to the individual’s right of identity and self-expression in their myriad forms. At its core, the right of free speech moves with and finds expression in changes of technology, with accompanying efforts by Congress and state legislatures to find accommodation. In this dynamic mix, Texas has the right—indeed, the obligation—to protect its children. And consistent with this task, it is a given that the State enjoys great latitude in identifying and addressing injury to persons and institutions. Yet implicit in this legal churn remains the core principle that state power must operate within the sinews of the First Amendment, ever a challenge to all of government, a challenge requiring government to attend to its defense, ever faithful to Madison’s gage of the reluctance of the States to relinquish their sovereign interests to the forming of the Union, a concern he further responded to with the assuring language that “Congress shall make no law.”

As Higginbotham rightly notes, contrary to the majority decision, the bill impacts not just “obscenity” (in which case Ginsberg could apply) but plenty of perfectly legal speech as well:

To these eyes, H.B. 1181 cannot be reasonably read to reach only obscene speech in the hands of minors. Although the statute incorporates Miller v. California’s definition of obscenity, H.B. 1181 limits access to materials that may be denied to minors but remain constitutionally protected speech for adults. It follows that the law must face strict scrutiny review because it limits adults’ access to protected speech using a content-based distinction—whether that speech is harmful to minors.

The majority says (in passing, without much explanation) that all adult content should be automatically considered “obscene” when viewed by a minor. The dissent points out that you can’t just say that.

Although obscene speech lies outside the First Amendment’s umbrella of protection, not all sexual expression is obscene.14 Indeed, “sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment.”15 What Plaintiffs refer to as “exclusively ʻsoft core’ nude modeling,” for example, constitutes non-obscene sexual expression, as would many romance novels, or—to use another example from the briefing— Marlon Brando movies. And protected sexual expression encompasses materials that are appropriate for adults but inappropriate for minors. For example, scenes from the popular show “Game of Thrones,” the 1985 film “The Color Purple,” or the 2011 film “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” all contain “depictions” of sexual intercourse that may be “patently offensive” to young minors and regulated under H.B. 1181, but still offer artistic or cinematic value for adults.

While I agree with the majority that H.B. 1181’s plain text applies only to “sexual material harmful to minors,”16 the statute cannot be reasonably read to regulate only obscene content. In the words of the district court, H.B. 1181 goes “beyond obscene materials” and “regulates all content that is prurient, offensive, and without value to minors.”17 In doing so, the law infringes upon adults’ protected sexually expressive speech.

And thus, he says, strict scrutiny must apply (and everyone admits the bill cannot pass strict scrutiny).

Content-based restrictions on protected speech are presumptively unconstitutional, valid only if the government proves they are narrowly tailored to further a compelling interest. By the statute’s plain language, H.B. 1181 applies only to websites with content “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors.” Because H.B. 1181 regulates only a particular type of speech, “[t]he speech in question is defined by its content; and the statute which seeks to restrict it is content based.” As such, H.B. 1181 is subject to strict scrutiny.

As the dissent notes, the idea that Ginsberg makes it okay to apply rational basis review in this case flies in the face of what Ginsberg itself said and what the Supreme Court has said over the past 50 years.

The district court found the State “largely concede[d]” that strict scrutiny should apply, but looking to Ginsberg, the State now asks this Court to find that this content-based restriction does not warrant strict scrutiny. While the majority credits this argument, I cannot—for Ginsberg does not here call for rational basis review, and the Supreme Court has unswervingly applied strict scrutiny to content-based regulations that limit adults’ access to protected speech.

In Ginsberg, the Supreme Court upheld a New York criminal obscenity statute prohibiting the knowing sale of obscene materials to minors. Ginsberg was convicted of violating the statute after he sold two “girlie magazines” to a sixteen-year-old. Ginsberg asserted that the New York statute violated the First Amendment because “the constitutional freedom of expression secured to a citizen to read or see material concerned with sex cannot be made to depend upon whether the citizen is an adult or a minor.” He went on to argue “that the denial to minors under 17 of access to material condemned by [the statute], insofar as that material is not obscene for persons 17 years of age or older, constitutes an unconstitutional deprivation of protected liberty,” which Ginsberg likened to the deprivations of liberty recognized in Meyer v. State of Nebraska, Pierce v. Society of Sisters, and West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.

The Supreme Court disagreed, focusing on the fact that the prosecution concerned a single sale in Ginsberg’s store to a minor. Despite observing that the magazines were “not obscene for adults,” the Court held the New York regulation did not invade the “minors’ constitutionally protected freedoms.” Explaining that “the power of the state to control the conduct of children reaches beyond the scope of its authority over adults,” the Court found the law rationally related to the State’s interest in protecting minors, and upheld Ginsberg’s conviction.

Ginsberg’s force here is its recognition of a state’s power to regulate minors in ways it could not regulate adults. But this overriding power to protect children does not answer our essential question: whether H.B. 1181 imposes a content-based restriction or causes an “unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults.” If so, “the answer should be clear: The standard is strict scrutiny.”

Indeed, the dissent points out how there are no recent cases that suggest Ginsberg could possibly apply here.

It is no failure of advocacy that the State has cited to no case since Ginsberg in which the Supreme Court applied rational basis review to regulations impinging adults’ access to protected speech. No such case exists. Instead, since Ginsberg, the Supreme Court has consistently applied strict scrutiny to content-based regulations that infringe upon adults’ protected speech.

The dissent also points out how HB 1181 looks an awful lot like the section of the Communications Decency Act that was tossed out as unconstitutional in Reno v. ACLU.

H.B. 1181 is strikingly similar to the CDA and, in some ways, goes even further. Like the CDA, H.B. 1181 does not limit regulated speech to conduct proscribed by Texas law. Like the CDA, H.B. 1181 regulates more than just “sexual conduct.” The CDA prohibited speech regarding “excretory activities” as well as “organs” of both a sexual and excretory nature, and H.B. 1181 similarly restricts depictions of “pubic hair” and “the nipple of the female breast.” By its text, H.B. 1181 goes further than the CDA regarding the format of depictions it covers, as it applies to “descriptions of actual, simulated, or animated displays or depictions” of specified body parts, conduct, and undefined “exhibitions,” while the CDA applied, inter alia, to “image[s].” In essence, Texas’s contention that H.B. 1181 closely tracks Miller fails to persuade.

The majority opinion also rejected the idea that Section 230’s preemption section voids this law. Under Section 230, it says that no state law that seeks to hold service providers liable for third party speech is valid. And this law clearly does that. But the majority disagrees by creating the most convoluted explanation for how section (c)(1) of Section 230 works.

The whole point of (c)(1) is that you cannot hold a service provider liable as the publisher of third-party speech placed on their platform. But the 5th Circuit is reinterpreting that to say it only applies to defamatory content, and not “offensive material.” Yet that’s not what any other court has said.

The 5th Circuit even admits that in a previous case, Doe v. Myspace, the very same 5th Circuit already said that 230 broadly immunizes platforms against any laws that would hold them liable for 3rd party speech. Indeed, the majority opinion admits this “complicates the analysis.” But instead of following that precedent, this 5th Circuit panel says it’s different because… now (it claims) 230 only applies to harm from content directly, not harm from complying with the law.

The dissent again points out how fundamentally bonkers this reading is and is clearly at odds with the MySpace ruling where the court said directly that it protects against “all claims stemming from their publication of information created by third parties.”

The State’s first two arguments are foreclosed by Doe v. MySpace, wherein this Court noted that “Congress provided broad immunity under the CDA to Web-based service providers for all claims stemming from their publication of information created by third parties[.]” Although “[p]arties complaining that they were harmed by a Web site’s [sic] publication of user-generated content . . . may sue the third-party user who generated the content,” they may not sue “the interactive computer service that enabled them to publish the content online.”

The majority decision just ignores that.

Even more to the point, the dissent notes that in Doe, the court said that mandated age verification violates 230’s preemption clause.

But this Court held explicitly in Doe that requiring websites that only host third-party content to implement age-verification measures violates Section 230. The CDA immunizes platforms from all liability associated with hosting third-party content and it preempts all statutes inconsistent with this mandate. H.B. 1181 imposes severe civil liability, mandatory disclosures, and age verification requirements based on the presence of third-party content. That websites will be safe from H.B. 1181’s significant civil penalties if they implement the required age-verification system is no answer.

The majority gets one thing right: keeping the injunction on the mandatory health warnings, and rejecting the claims that the Zauderer case allows such mandatory disclosures. We’ve discussed the problems of how courts have been looking at Zauderer before, and at least here, the 5th Circuit seems to understand at least some of the limits of Zauderer.

As a reminder, Zauderer allows for mandatory disclosures over (1) commercial speech related to (2) advertising if and only if (3) the mandated speech is uncontroversial.

And thankfully, the panel recognizes that the mandatory warnings about “the harms” of porn are highly controversial and says Zauderer does not apply. It points out that both sides presented “credentialed and persuasive experts” that the mandated warnings are accurate, but also that they’re not. And given that:

We are not scientific journal editors, much less social scientists, behavioral experts, or neurologists. The courts generally are not the place to hash out scientific debate, particularly not on so contentious a topic as the impacts of engaging with pornography. Experts must do that in academic journals, studies, and presentations. Therefore, the record leaves us with no option but to declare that the health impacts of pornography are currently too contentious and controversial to receive Zauderer scrutiny.

And thus, the 5th Circuit actually gets this one bit right, but really messes up the age verification (and 230 parts). I would guess that the Free Speech Coalition is likely to ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal, but who knows. It could be yet another highly consequential internet regulation bill that the Supreme Court needs to strike down…

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th circuit, adult content, age verification, free speech, ken paxton, obscenity, rational basis review, strict scrutiny, texas
Companies: free speech coalition

Ken Paxton Sues Pornhub’s Parent Company Aylo For Alleged Violations Of Texas Anti-Porn Law

from the everything-is-stupider-in-Texas dept

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and some of the most popular adult film studios and premium porn websites. Based in Montreal, Quebec, Aylo (formerly MindGeek) maintains a global media empire of adult sites.

Paxton makes clear in a press release that the lawsuit aims to enforce a controversial age verification and labeling law targeting pornography websites. House Bill (HB) 1181 was adopted by the Republican-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Adult industry groups, including Aylo, filed suit to block House Bill 1181, claiming it was unconstitutional.

A federal district court in Austin agreed with them and issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the law’s enforcement as litigation played out. Angela Colmenero, interim attorney general during Paxton’s impeachment trial for bribery and corruption, appealed to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court lifted the preliminary injunction after it placed an administrative stay on the case during the appeal. Now, the case continues in the federal district court with dispositive motions due in the summer.

What’s noteworthy about Paxton’s lawsuit is the lack of constitutional and scientific justification for HB 1181. It requires “reasonable” age verification measures on websites that are otherwise operating legally, but requires labels expressing supposed public health harms plastered prominently on adult websites.

In a Techdirt column I wrote last August, I refer to Senior U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra of the Western District of Texas correctly applied the Zauderer test of compelled commercial speech in the case brought by the regulated porn companies of the bill.

The Zauderer test determines whether government officials can compel certain commercial speech without violating the First Amendment rights of an advertiser or publisher. It requires no dispute in the scientific and medical communities regarding the truth and factuality of compelled health-related speech.

“It is unreasonable to warn adults about the dangers of legal pornography in order to protect minors,” Ezra wrote in the opinion granting the preliminary injunction. “But even assuming this was a cognizable interest, Zauderer would still not apply.” One of the more glaring elements of House Bill 1181 was that it requires that the owners of adult websites publish the phone number to a federal mental health and substance abuse helpline administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“It does not assert a fact, and instead requires companies to post the number of a mental health hotline,” Ezra continued in the August ruling. “The implication, when viewers see the notice, is that consumption of pornography (or any sexual material) is so associated with mental illness that those viewing it should consider seeking professional crisis help. The statement itself is not factual, and it necessarily places a severe stigma on both the websites and its visitors.”

The judge went on to indicate that health disclosures and labeling required by the bill are not accepted by scientific and medical communities. These disclosures include labels that feature the supposed endorsement of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission recognizing pornography as addictive or being linked to unlawful activities that are unrelated to lawful industry participation. The American Psychological Association doesn’t recognize pornography addiction as a mental disorder found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Most psychologists and sociologists say porn “addiction” is heavily tied to hyper-religious environments and ideological beliefs.

Gustavo Turner of Xbiz.com confirmed with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that the disclosures aren’t based on any input from their experts. This was confirmed to myself at AVN, Sam Cole of 404 Media, and many other journalists. It is worth noting that SAMHSA also doesn’t offer a clear definition of “porn addiction.” Judge Ezra even said that adding the age verification element with health disclosures and labels ostensibly targeting Texas minors who somehow bypass an age-gate without a VPN ultimately defeats the purpose. Adults will only see the warnings and that is also problematic. The First Amendment violations are quite clear.

Paxton knows all of this. But, his announcement to sue Aylo is based solely on ideology. According to the filing submitted to a Travis County court, Paxton believes he can hold Aylo accountable to pay up to about 3.2million(3.2 million (3.2million(1.6 million plus 10,000perdayofviolationsor10,000 per day of violations or 10,000perdayofviolationsor250,000 per day a minor is exposed to age-restricted material), maybe more, by starting the violation period right after the ink dried on the Fifth Circuit order allowing HB 1181 to enter into force.

It’s worth remembering that litigation in the federal case between the porn industry and Paxton is still ongoing. A pragmatic judge would order the attorneys representing Paxton’s office and counsel defending the Canadian porn giant to hold off until a federal district court rules on the ongoing viability of House Bill 1181.

But this seems unlikely to happen. It is Texas. And, one would think that an embattled attorney general facing securities fraud indictments and a trial on April 15 would address his personal matters before making a new attempt to infringe upon our basic civil liberties.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, age verification, hb 1181, ken paxton, texas
Companies: aylo, mindgeek, pornhub

Protect Yourself From Sen. Mike Lee’s Anti-Porn PROTECT Act

If you work for a living, do you feel coerced into doing your job? According to Senator Mike Lee, if you have anything to do with pornography, and need to earn money in the industry, it must be coercion at play.

While the world continues to be fooled by the Kids Online Safety Act’s false promises of a child-proof internet made entirely out of Roblox gift cards, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is pimping out his latest proposal: the Preventing Rampant Online Technological and Criminal Trafficking (PROTECT) Act.

According to Lee, the act is meant to hold large technology companies accountable for rampant cases of image-based sexual abuse on the internet. While the intentions may sound reasonable, the actual act is an unenforceable hodgepodge of bad ideas.

This isn’t surprising. Mike Lee is known for his idealistic, do-nothing internet safety bills. Lee has, for example, tried pushing his so-called Interstate Obscenity Definition Act, which would define a national standard for obscenity, without the Miller test, in the spirit of the antiquated, unconstitutional Comstock laws.

He also introduced the SCREEN Act, which is his attempt to implement national age verification requirements. He’s a bleeding heart for the “protect the kids” crowds that are essentially anti-porn, pro-censorship advocates.

The PROTECT Act takes some of the worst elements of Lee’s previous bills and wraps them in a new censorship package.

The bill requires web platforms to verify the ages of individuals who appear in sexually explicit imagery. This is presented as a measure to counter child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII) online.

The U.S. Department of Justice already enforces strict federal obscenity laws. In the adult entertainment industry, producers of consensual, legal pornography must verify the age of participants and retain those records through a custodian of records. That custodian is usually a lawyer, senior executive, or c-suite member, like a CEO. Not keeping or falsifying the records could lead to civil and criminal penalties, including violations of child sexual abuse laws.

If Sen. Lee gets his way with the PROTECT Act, this legal standard would apply to virtually every web platform.

This includes platforms owned by Meta, like Facebook and Instagram. A press release from Sen. Lee’s office on January 31 features an excerpt of a hearing between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and himself to illustrate big tech’s shortcomings.

But one issue in the bill that drew my attention is the section on “coerced consent.”

This term defines consent to engage in sexual activity due to coercion, but with a wildly broad definition of “coercion.” To put it simply, if the act becomes law, the act of paying a porn performer or adult content creator is a crime within certain parameters and conditions.

As worded, the bill would invalidate consensual sex work:

“[C]oerced consent” means purported consent obtained from a person— (A) through fraud, duress, misrepresentation, undue influence, or nondisclosure; (B) who lacks capacity; or (C) though exploiting or leveraging the person’s—(i) immigration status;(ii) pregnancy;(iii) disability;(iv) addiction;(v) juvenile status; or (vi) economic circumstances.

Under this language, “economic circumstances” could legally invalidate consent to appear in a legal porn scene. If a performer needed the money from an adult content production for paying for rent, groceries, health care coverage, or child care fees, under Lee’s law, that could mean they could not give consent. Any consent due to such “economic circumstances” could be deemed coercion.

This definition completely outlaws consensual and legal pornography production, which is otherwise protected under the First Amendment.

The bill also invalidates consent based on immigration status, pregnancy, disability, addiction, or juvenile status. Current law already bans those under 18 from appearing in commercial pornography. Depicting an underage individual is CSAM and considered a sex crime. Minors already cannot legally consent, especially in imagery.

Coerced consent doctrine complicates the already clear standard of coercion versus consent, including non-consensual imagery. This is clearly anti-pornography lawmaking, pretending to be about coercion.

This is obvious in just looking over who supports the PROTECT Act, including the socially conservative American Principles Project, affiliated with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 coalition and the far-right campaign to outlaw legal porn completely.

The other group that endorsed the bill is the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. The center sells itself as non-partisan and non-religious, but is notorious for backing Christian nationalists and anti-porn policies, labeling magazines like Cosmopolitan as “pornographic.” The PROTECT Act is a pipe dream.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics.

Filed Under: adult content, coerced consent, consent, mike lee, obscenity, pornography, protect act

Freshman State Lawmaker Wants To Ban Porn In Oklahoma

from the extremist-maga-lawmaker dept

A far-right state lawmaker in the Oklahoma state legislature has started his first term on the civil liberties shortbus. Sen. Dusty Deevers, a Republican lawmaker and Southern Baptist pastor, introduced a complete ban on consensual pornography despite its First Amendment protections.

Senate Bill 1976, sponsored by Deevers alone, features fascistic language looking to completely ban the viewing, production, and distribution of adult content that is otherwise legally produced.

Any violations of the bill, if it were to become law, would make it a felony or misdemeanor if an individual violates these criminal provisions. According to the bill’s language, legal pornography which features one or more consenting adults over the age of 18 years would be defined similarly to criminal penalties for the morally bankrupt asswipes who produce and distribute child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) or cases of non-consensual intimate imagery (e.g., revenge porn, etc.).

Sen. Deevers intends to create entirely new definitions that would ultimately outlaw porn. Deevers uses bogus public safety terminology to sell the bill, which is at the moment being circulated among far-right Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and extremist anti-pornography campaigners to push the bill.

Senate Bill 1976 provides a definition for “obscene material” that isn’t related to CSAM or NCII:

“Obscene material” means and includes any representation, performance, depiction, or description of sexual conduct, whether in any form or on any medium, including still photographs, undeveloped photographs, motion pictures, undeveloped film, videotape, optical, magnetic, or solid-state storage, CD or DVD, or a purely photographic product or a reproduction of such product in any book, pamphlet,[…]magazine, or other publication or electronic or photo-optical format, if said items contain the following elements: a. depictions or descriptions of sexual conduct which are patently offensive as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, b. taken as a whole, have as the dominant theme an appeal to prurient interest in sex as found by the average person applying contemporary community standards, and c. a reasonable person would find the material or performance taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, educational, political, or scientific purposes or value. The standard for obscenity applied in this section shall not apply to child pornography.…”

Federal statutes and case law indicate that obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment. By this, obscenity is typically content that depicts illegal material that violates the Miller test. U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled in Miller v. California that material that is obscene but is defined by a judge or jury through a three-pronged test. The Miller test asks whether “the average person, applying contemporary community standards,” would find that a work is taken as a whole that appeals to a criminal prurient interest. The test adds that if the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state or federal laws. Or that the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value to the national culture and conversation. Something is obscene only if the judge or jury defines these three conditions are satisfied. Only then is the material in question obscene.

Porn, as defined in Deevers’ bill, is not considered obscene given that pornography is protected speech.

Adult entertainment companies are regulated by the U.S. Department of Justice and are required by federal law to verify the age and consent of all performers and retain those records through a custodian of records. Any violation of these laws is punishable by federal criminal penalties. By no means does Deevers have a viable bill, given that it seeks to repress legitimate entertainment.

The Oklahoma bill also provides the following definition for “unlawful pornography”:

“[U]nlawful pornography” means any visual depiction or individual image stored or contained in any format on any medium including, but not limited to, film, motion picture, videotape, photograph, negative, undeveloped film, slide, photographic product, reproduction of a photographic product, play, or performance in which a person is engaged in any of the following acts with a person: a. sexual intercourse which is normal or perverted…b. anal sodomy, c. sexual activity with an animal, d. sadomasochistic abuse, e., flagellation or torture, f. physical restraint such as binding or fettering in the context of sexual conduct, g. fellatio or cunnilingus, h. excretion in the context of sexual conduct, i. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals in the context of masturbation or other sexual conduct, and j. lewd exhibition of the uncovered genitals, buttocks, or, if such person is female, the breast, for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer.”

Excluding the depiction of bestiality, Senate Bill 1976 defines pornography as unlawful when, in reality, it is otherwise consensual in virtually every other U.S. jurisdiction — including jurisdictions with unconstitutional age verification requirements. In fact, there are some lawmakers in other states who are realizing that broadly applied age verification requirements could limit the rights of free expression and privacy adult entertainment consumers, producers, and creators are given. Deevers is toeing the company line for the Heritage Foundation and the conservatives who openly called for the revocation of First Amendment rights covering legal porn, content that isn’t pornography that deals with sexuality, LGBTQ+ rights and health information, and more. It is safe to say that this legislation follows the fucked worldview of Project 2025, which seeks to strip civil liberties and set back women’s and LGBTQ+ rights back by over five or six decades.

Deevers introduced the bill on his own. It is unlikely that the bill would advance given the First Amendment concerns. But it speaks volumes that a man who knows nothing beyond far-right Christian nationalism ideology feels so emboldened to criminalize legally protected expression.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, dusty deevers, oklahoma, porn

Millions Of People Are Blocked By Pornhub Because Of Age Verification Laws

from the it’s-not-about-losing-access-to-pornhub dept

On January 1, 2024, the parent company of Pornhub.com geo-blocked adult users in the states of Montana and North Carolina. Aylo, the site’s corporate parent, said they did so in protest to laws these states adopted requiring adult platforms to verify their users’ ages through various age-check tools.

This isn’t the first time Aylo geo-blocked IP addresses from an entire U.S. state. Utah, Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas were the first states to be blocked. Despite an age verification statute, Texas isn’t geo-blocked because Aylo’s owned properties — among other adult firms — are currently locked in litigation with Attorney General Ken Paxton. Louisiana was the first state in the union to implement an age verification statute exactly one year ago, January 2023, after the legislature passed the law in 2022. 2024 will be just as aggressive, with more states proposing these bills.

About 63.8 million Americans live in jurisdictions where mandatory age-gating for pornography website access is the law. That is a little over 19 percent of the entire U.S. population. Six of the eight states — 29.61 million people — are geo-blocked by Pornhub. Louisiana isn’t geo-blocked, but the Aylo-owned sites have lost significant web traffic in that digital space since adopting an age verification tool that integrates with Louisiana’s digital wallet mobile application. 29.61 million is about 9 percent of the entire U.S. population. Nearly one in five Americans have to comply with an age verification law in order to access porn sites. Nearly one in ten Americans cannot access Pornhub, one of the world’s most popular adult entertainment platforms, without a VPN.

It’s important to note, that this has nothing to do with the fact that people can’t watch porn on a particular platform. Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that state legislatures that are predominantly controlled by authoritarian control freaks are forcing their worldview on people in violation of the First Amendment. That’s the issue here.

Despite ongoing litigation, the Free Speech Coalition, Aylo, and other parent companies of the largest pornography platforms in the world made a case that these one-sided age verification laws — referred to as “copycat” bills in the adult industry press — violate the civil liberties of adult users and companies producing or distributing consensual age-restricted materials online. In a report I produced for AVN.com, age verification is “an infringement on the First Amendment rights of adults who are consensually accessing online pornography.” When First Amendment rights for porn are stripped, First Amendment rights for everything else are stripped. Millions of people are having their rights trampled. It may seem trivial to some, but having the ability to see porn on the internet is just as important as looking up Bible verses or watching conservative TV.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, age verification, free speech, geo-blocking, montana, north carolina, porn
Companies: aylo, pornhub

Aylo’s Deferred Prosecution Agreement Will Make Pornhub A Much Safer Platform. Here’s Why.

from the corporate-responsibility dept

Aylo Holdings, the parent company of Pornhub and some of the largest free and premium porn sites in the world, agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) to help resolve a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the platform’s conduct related to a sex trafficking scheme.

According to documents provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Aylo and its affiliates will be subject to an independent monitor for a total of three years. Aylo is also required to pay the U.S. government over $1.8 million in fines and must pay restitution and settle with the victims of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme and any others.

After reviewing the 76-page deferred prosecution agreement, the compliance and independent monitoring provisions will augment the company’s already-overhauled trust and safety program that was implemented when ownership of Aylo changed hands to an ownership group of lawyers, former law enforcement executives, and criminal justice academics.

Consider the following, found throughout the deferred prosecution agreement:

The company (Aylo) represents that it has implemented and will continue to implement a compliance and ethics program throughout its operations, including those of its affiliates, agents and joint ventures, and those of its contractors and subcontractors. …

In order to address any deficiencies in its policies and procedures, the company represents that it has undertaken, and will continue to undertake in the future, in a manner consistent with all of its obligations under this agreement, a review of its existing policies and procedures regarding its compliance with federal criminal law relating to unlawful monetary transactions and other federal criminal offenses relating to content posted online. If necessary and appropriate, the company will adopt new or modify existing internal controls, policies, and procedures in order to ensure that the company maintains a system of internal controls and compliance codes, standards, and procedures designed to detect and deter violations of such laws.

The independent monitor must be approved by the Office of the Deputy Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice. Aylo has to retain the independent monitor for a period of three years from the execution of the deferred prosecution agreement. The company cannot be affiliated with the monitor or employ them for a period of two years after the DPA period ends. Basically, terms relating to the independent monitor are governed by regulations and guidance issued by the DOJ for companies and corporate entities charged with criminal activity, including unlawful financial enrichment. Aylo as an entity was charged with unlawful monetary transactions involving sex trafficking proceeds. The company admitted wrongdoing when it announced the DPA weeks ago.

Aylo published a press release on November 10 announcing the agreement between the company and U.S. federal prosecutors. Aylo explained, “We were troubled to learn that a production company used criminal means to produce its content and submitted consent documentation that we now know was obtained by fraud and coercion. … We are pleased that, after a thorough 30-month investigation, the government did not conclude that Aylo violated any federal criminal laws prohibiting sex trafficking. Aylo also did not engage in any illegal activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors or child pornography, and the government has not charged Aylo with doing so.” This is evidenced by the charge Aylo faces. However, the concept built into the DPA is meant to mitigate against the platform from intersecting with organized criminal activity in such a scope. In my own reporting on the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme, it was found GirlsDoPorn falsified records.

18 U.S. Code 2257 requires record-keeping for every single adult 18 years or older to be kept and maintained by studios through a custodian of records. Custodians of records are typically lawyers or experienced executives who’ve dealt with government compliance. It was revealed that the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme used fake identities for their custodians of records and retained records that were unlawfully amended or completely falsified. These actions carry significant criminal penalties.

Several years ago, Pornhub’s parent firm, known as MindGeek at the time, had what they call a content partnership with a now-defunct pornography studio called GirlsDoPorn and a network of premium related websites like GirlsDoToys and MomPOV. In 2019, it was revealed the company that owned these popular imprints was actually a front for an organized criminal enterprise that capitalized off of the heinous victimization and exploitation of dozens of women.

This revelation was a big deal in the industry, especially in the corners of the industry dealing with free and freemium content distribution. Michael Pratt, the ringleader of the GirlsDoPorn sex trafficking scheme, quickly fled and was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. In 2022, he was arrested while hiding out in Spain and is awaiting extradition to the US.

Anti-pornography campaigners saw this as a systemic issue across the entirety of the industry. The vast majority of the adult industry wants to show industry outsiders – including critics who want to censor and completely outlaw content that is overwhelmingly legal, consensual, and protected by the First Amendment – that a few criminals don’t define the whole sector. Tube sites, such as Pornhub, are extremely controversial in the adult entertainment industry. Until recently (a few years ago), Pornhub and its sister tube sites (RedTube, YouPorn, and the defunct Keezmovies) were rife with content uploaded by unverified users, copyright infringers, and the sites were full of content that was exploitative, criminal, and downright horrendous to human eyes.

In December 2020, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times published his “The Children of Pornhub” column. That Kristof column was used by many to justify claims that the entire industry was engaging in illegal behavior. The New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant published a few days later a column entitled “Nick Kristof and the Holy War on Pornhub.”

Grant explained that Kritof’s column failed to differentiate between unlawful activity and lawful activity, referring to another anti-porn activist named Laila Mickelwait. Mickelwait “has said porn is a root cause of sex trafficking, which it isn’t. For years, porn performers have tried to draw attention to the exploitation at the heart of the tube site business model—YouTube clones, which now dominate an online porn ecosystem that, not long ago and like much of online media, once offered independent creators more control over their work,” Grant writes.

There is a clear distinction between legal and consensually produced pornographic materials and the illegal material that a criminal enterprise like GirlsDoPorn produced and profited from. It is a very ugly truth that Pornhub, under previous ownership, turned a blind eye to the activity of Pratt and his associates. However, there has been a significant change that these anti-pornography campaigners continue to overlook and dismiss.

Even though the criminal elements in this case were excised like a malignant tumor, Pornhub and its affiliated properties are now setup to prevent a repeat of that activity. In fact, this has been a key focus ever since the Kristof fallout. Shortly after Kristof’s column, they removed unverified uploads on the platform – millions of photos and images. They started reporting to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the organization’s CyberTipline. With Aylo’s porn platforms in the past few years, they started reporting voluntarily to CyberTipline. Aylo supports the NCMEC’s TakeItDown program, which allows minors and adults who are the victims of image-based sexual abuse to work with the center and law enforcement anonymously to remove the non-consensual material. The site is also a sponsor of StopNCII.org, which is a similar tool that caters to removing non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). They also go as far as openly supporting sex workers’ rights and reform in porn.

Some evidence of Aylo’s reform efforts can be actually be seen in the filings of the New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez. He recently sued Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, for widespread child sexual abuse material and exploitation. In a filing with a federal district court, Torrez says that Pornhub and OnlyFans do more to curtail child sexual abuse material than the most popular social networks in the world. Detractors of the online pornography industry will not recognize this, though, because they are still obsessed with censoring legal material that is, in fact, protected by the First Amendment. What troubles me most is the fact that anti-pornography campaigners simply target a singular brand. There are platforms that are much worse than Pornhub and lack the overhauled trust and safety program that Aylo has instilled.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: adult content, deferred prosecution agreement, doj, porn, trafficking
Companies: aylo, girlsdoporn, mindgeek, pornhub

The EU Is Now Targeting Porn Sites

from the the-eu-is-horny-for-overseeing-porn-sites dept

Back in April we noted that the EU had designated 17 sites as “VLOPs” (Very Large Online Platforms), the “ROUSs” (Rodents of Unusual Size) of the internet. Some of those sites are still contesting the designation, but in the meantime, the EU Commission has dug deep into its porn viewing habits and designated three more sites, all adult content focused, as VLOPs. Pornhub, Stripchat, and XVideos (not to be confused with ExTwitter’s videos), are all designated as VLOPs, and needing to comply with the DSA’s VLOP obligations by February 17th of 2024.

Pornhub, generally recognized as the largest adult content site around, has suggested that it disagrees with the designation, telling the media that it only has 33 million users in the EU, which is below the VLOP threshold. So, it would not be surprising to see one or all of these sites challenging the designation.

Given some of the controversies around adult content sites and how well they handle certain content, the much more stringent requirements on these sites may represent a pretty big challenge.

Most specifically, the DSA’s requirements regarding “strong protection of minors” may represent a challenge, not because the sites don’t want to protect minors, but if you are required to protect minors, you first have to identify minors using your service, which means age verification. And most age verification tools actually put children at more risk, so if the only way to “protect minors” is to put them at risk, it’s a bit of a conundrum.

The adult content industry has been leading the pushback on age verification laws in the US, noting that they’re not against making sure kids don’t access their sites, but they want to make sure that it can be done in a way that isn’t a privacy/speech nightmare, which they feel is using device based identification, rather than site-based (there are tradeoffs with this approach as well, but that’s a separate issue).

Still, while the industry has used the 1st Amendment to fight these issues in the US, it obviously doesn’t have that weapon to use in the EU. So, at least from what’s been said so far, it sounds like they may just fight the designation based on thresholds first.

Filed Under: adult content, dsa, eu, eu commission, porn, vlop, vlops
Companies: pornhub, stripchat, xvideos

Another State Lawmaker Wants To Criminalize Porn Through Age Verification

from the the-first-amendment-does-still-exist dept

Here we go again, everyone. Another far-right state lawmaker has introduced a bill requiring age verification in order to access porn sites from within state limits. This time it is Tennessee state Rep. Patsy Hazlewood who introduced yet another extreme age verification proposal that essentially makes it a crime to own a legally operating porn website protected by the First Amendment – regardless of whether the material protects certain regional regulations.

Referred to as the Protect Tennessee Minors Act, her bill takes a few notes from other far-right lawmakers in Ohio and Indiana. Both state legislatures have bills that levy misdemeanors and felonies on companies that own adult entertainment websites that fail or choose not to follow age verification requirements. The proposal in Ohio makes it a crime for users to circumvent an age gate through legally available means, like a VPN. The act, or House Bill 1614, is a pre-filing for 2024’s legislative session, and it adopts a new Class C felony for failure to comply with the law.

While the official bill language has yet to be published, House Bill 1614 is what we in the adult entertainment industry press call a “copycat” of mandatory age verification first adopted in the state of Louisiana. Throughout this year, proposals targeting adult entertainment websites with age-gating rules have grown exponentially extreme. Rep. Hazlewood’s bill fits this clear mold.

In a statement to a local news station, Rep. Hazlewood said, “I think we all have a responsibility as a society to protect our children.” A grandparent herself, Hazlewood told the news station that she’s received input from parents in her legislative district that inspired her to propose this bill – nowhere else. It is hard to believe when every conservative lawmaker with a savior complex is buying into fascistic lawmaking trends set forth by select groups, such as Project 2025, Heritage Foundation, National Center on Sexual Exploitation, and the even crazier American Principles Project, among others. Minors shouldn’t view porn by any means. But we have to be realistic.

Rep. Hazlewood’s bill — and virtually every age verification proposal in state legislatures and Congress — certainly lack input from adult entertainment industry members, consumers, law enforcement, and actual anti-trafficking groups. Why are the Patsy Hazlewoods of the world so focused on digital content that is already heavily age-restricted? I’m well aware of the lawsuits against Meta Platforms and their social networks, Facebook and Instagram. I am also aware of the anti-LGBTQ+ Kids Online Safety Act and parents begging the government to do their jobs.

However, a significant volume of sexual abuse imagery isn’t tied to the online adult industry, and mandatory age verification for end users isn’t the answer to fighting against these heinous acts.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez argued in a new lawsuit that platforms like Pornhub and OnlyFans do more to counter CSAM and non-consensual intimate imagery (revenge porn) than platforms like Facebook and Instagram. National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline data overwhelmingly confirms this fact. Age gates on porn sites – or even social media networks – will not curtail CSAM online. Admittedly, the parent companies that own the mentioned platforms are involved in programs that locate, remove, and report cases of CSAM and non-consensual intimate imagery (e.g., NCMEC’s TakeItDown program). The age verification hypothesis certainly doesn’t solve this problem, and it shouldn’t come at the expense of the First Amendment rights of adults who are not breaking laws or imposing harm on others.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other topics. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: adult content, age verification, csam, patsy hazlewood, tennessee

from the what-the-hell-is-happening-in-the-midwest dept

Another state lawmaker has introduced an age verification bill looking to block minors’ access to porn websites.

This time, Indiana state Sen. Mike Bohacek of the community of Michiana Shores has introduced a preliminary draft that proposes copycat age verification policies similar to other states, including Louisiana, Texas, Utah, and others.

The Indiana bill would establish a criminal penalty for websites that “knowingly or intentionally” produce adult content online and don’t verify users’ ages from Indiana-based IP addresses. It also establishes a right to civil action.

According to the draft text of the bill, transnational pornography websites and their parent firms – especially adult companies based in Canada and Cyprus – would be subject to a misdemeanor if they do not meet the age verification requirements laid out by the bill.

However, the bill allows for a violator of the crime to be charged with a felony if the violators have a criminal history or if the individual is found liable for violating the civil aspects of the bill that allow for civil actions.

This is the bill’s current language (currently referred to as Preliminary Draft 3021):

An adult-oriented website operator who knowingly or intentionally publishes an adult-oriented website without using a reasonable age verification method to prevent a minor from accessing the adult-oriented website commits allowing a child to access Internet pornography, a Class A misdemeanor.

However, the offense is a level 6 felony if the adult-oriented website operator has: (1) a prior unrelated conviction under this section; or (2) been found liable in a prior unrelated civil action brought under section 9 or 10 of this [bill].

Bohacek told the local NBC affiliate in Indianapolis South Bend that his proposal is not intended to limit the rights of adults who choose to view consensual pornography protected by the First Amendment.

“These verification methods aren’t restricting the rights of legal adults, just tightening the law to ensure kids don’t access harmful material,” Bohacek explained to the outlet. He further pushed the anti-porn sentiment that age verification is constitutional and “reasonable.” Case law shows a different reality.

In my last post for Techdirt, we meet Ohio state Rep. Steve Demetriou, who has introduced an age verification proposal that makes it a felony for adult website owners who fail to meet the bill’s standards if it becomes statute. Demetriou’s proposal also charges a crime for those who circumvent the age-gate requirements through a VPN or proxy. While the Ohio bill is much more extreme, Bohacek’s proposal is clearly unconstitutional. U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union that it violates the First Amendment of adult users for the government to require age verification or a similar measure that segregates age-restricted content across the internet.

A federal judge in Austin also found that a similar bill adopted by the Texas state legislature violated the First Amendment and the privacy rights of adult site users.

I don’t know what is happening in the Midwest, but these age verification bills are getting weird.

Michael McGrady covers the legal and tech side of the online porn business, among other things. He is the politics and legal contributing editor for AVN.com.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, adult content, age verification, indiana, mike bohacek, porn sites