Pornhub has restricted access in two more states in protest of continued efforts by states across the country to regulate online access to porn sites. 404Media reports that when residents of North Carolina and Montana visit Pornhub and other Aylo-owned sites like Redtube or Brazzers, they will see a video of performer Cherie DeVille and paragraphs telling them that their state is now blocked.
Aylo began blocking access in those states last week, according to multiple media reports, including The Fayetteville Observer and KRTV in Great Falls, Montana.
The move was aimed at protesting the law that came into effect in the two states on January 1. Montana passed a standalone ID law in May, while North Carolina's new law was tacked onto a bill regarding high school computer courses. These laws require websites to use third-party verification, or in Montana's case "digital authentication," to verify a visitor's age. Both states also make enforcement a civil matter, allowing individuals to sue if they believe a website is violating the law.
All of this greatly increases the difficulty of operating a website like Pornhub. Pornhub and other sites are not opposed to age-restricting content, and it currently uses device identifiers for age verification. But it opposes the approach required by these new laws.
Information displayed on the Aylo website claims that few adult websites can "match the strong trust and safety measures we currently have in place." The message says the "most effective solution" is to allow access based on device identifiers.
Despite the company's claims that it is safe, Aylo was recently fined $1.8 million by the federal government for allegedly knowingly hosting videos of sex trafficking victims.
Montana and North Carolina join the list of a handful of states that restrict access to Pornhub. Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia passed similar laws, prompting Pornhub to ban access in those states as well. Meanwhile, Texas passed its own ID law, now under appeal in the Fifth Circuit, that also requires adult film websites to display unsubstantiated warnings about the health dangers of watching pornographic movies.
As laws emerge from state to state across the U.S. and even overseas, Pornhub will have to figure out how to manage age verification. In the European Union, for example, the company has just been designated a "very large online platform" and must ensure it knows the age of its users. Otherwise, large swathes of the world's population may once again have to turn to the darkest corners of the internet to find porn, or start buying Blu-ray discs.