Logo // PornHub
Illustration // Danielle Lingle
By: Emmalee Anglemyer
Staff-Writer
Effective Aug. 16, Indiana has passed into law a bill which requires that any website whose content contains at least one-third adult content must require age verification in order to protect minors from seeing harmful materials.
Senate Enrolled Act 17 was intended to take effect July 1, but was subject to an injunction by a federal judge; however, when a federal appeals court stayed the injunction, the law went into effect, if temporarily.
The law allows any parents whose children have been harmed by inappropriate content on a website violating the age verification law to take legal action. The law also prohibits the owners of these adult entertainment websites from collecting or retaining the age verification data of its users in order to protect sensitive information. The law is an almost exact copy of a Texas law which went into effect in April.
When attempting to visit these sites, Indiana residents may be required to click a button that says “I am over 18”, or they may see a message telling them that they cannot access the site at all without a preexisting account.
On the website PornHub in particular, users may see a message telling them that “until a real solution is offered, [they] have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to [their] website in Indiana.”
Other websites have followed suit, arguing that the new law will push users – both adults and minors – to websites with fewer safety measures in place, putting them at further risk.
Those in favor of the law argue that age verification is a simple, harmless way to ensure that minors are not exposed to harmful content, such as pornography.
However, detractors, such as the Free Speech Coalition, which represents the adult entertainment industry, argue that “laws like SB17 have effectively functioned as state censorship. These laws have been a failure on every front, and we must take action to protect both the consumers and producers of expressive works from this harmful government overreach”.
