Last Friday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear signed a controversial I count require age verification for people seeking to use pornography websites in the state. While the bill aims to prevent minors from accessing explicit materials, the law will require a substantial invasion of adults’ privacy.
The newly signed law began as an unrelated bill aimed at toughening penalties for child sexual abuse and other crimes, with the bill’s age verification provision added as a floor amendment in March.
“Pornography is creating a public health crisis and has a corrosive influence on minors,” the final bill reads law. “Pornography can also impact brain development and functioning, contribute to emotional and medical illnesses, shape deviant sexual arousal, and lead to difficulties in forming or maintaining positive intimate relationships, as well as harmful sexual behaviors and addiction.”
The bill requires pornography websites to limit access to adults and to verify a user’s age by accessing their government-issued identification documents or using another “commercially reasonable method of identification that is based on data public or private transactions”. Under the law, sites that violate the law risk fines of $10,000 for each instance in which a minor accesses pornographic material.
As a result of this law, it is likely that major pornographic websites will cease operating in Kentucky rather than develop a complex and invasive age verification system. PornHub has so far Left seven states that have adopted similar laws.
However, it is possible that the Kentucky law could be overturned following a legal challenge. Last August, a federal court in Texas ruled that a similar law existed unconstitutional– even though the bill was allowed to come into force pending appeal.
While age verification laws have gained a lot of voice supporters To those who argue that these laws are necessary to prevent minors from accessing harmful explicit materials, these measures are ultimately short-sighted.
“There will always be websites willing to provide porn without carding viewers. These platforms are also less likely to take other measures to stay within regulatory or creator protection boundaries,” ReasonIt’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown he wrote in March. “By driving viewers away from platforms like Pornhub – sites that engage at least to some extent in content moderation, are relatively receptive and responsive to authorities, and are willing to form mutually beneficial partnerships with porn creators – verification laws of age could actually increase viewership of exploitative or otherwise unwanted content.”