Nevermind the affordable housing crisis that's been brewing in the state of Montana for decades that shifted into overdrive thanks to an influx of relocations fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic and "Yellowstone" binge-watchers.
Instead of addressing the lack of housing for normal wage earners, the state's lawmakers spent the 2023 legislative session cooking up a new way to invade residents' privacy.
Law and effect
The result of a new Montana law that went into effect Jan. 1, 2024, is that Pornhub has blocked access to its site for all 1.1 million residents of the state.
Senate Bill 544 requires adult websites to verify the age of visitors via “reasonable age verification methods.”
The catch is that SB544 defines “reasonable age verification methods” as a government-issued ID or "any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify the age of the person attempting to access the information is at least 18 years of age or older."
Privacy advocates immediately pointed out the potential risks and downsides of visitors being required to upload a driver's license or other similar document.
It's also been pointed out how ineffective the law will be in actually curbing minors' access to pornography, given the existence of VPNs, the costs to enforce and monitor compliance, and the sheer number of adult sites.
In addition, language in the bill opens the door for what would likely be a host of lawsuits of dubious merit.
"A commercial entity that is found to have violated this section must be liable to an individual for damages resulting from a minor accessing the material, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court."
It remains to be seen how damages would be measured, assigned and proven, meaning the sky is the limit for adult content purveyors' potential liability in the event of a lawsuit filed by a minor's parents.
North Carolina also saw similar legislation take effect with the start of the new year. Montana and North Carolina now join a list of states with strict age verification laws: Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia and Texas.
In a statement posted to X.com in June 2023, Pornhub explained that it had been one of the rare adult sites that had complied with age-verification laws in Louisiana and in response had seen its traffic there decline by some 80%.
As anyone might have guessed, Louisiana residents didn't stop visiting adult sites, they simply stopped visiting the ones that attempted to comply with the law.
Pornhub's response
Now, if visitors with an IP address in Montana or North Carolina try to access a website owned by Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, they are greeted by a message from an adult performer, Cherie DeVille.
"We believe that the best and most effective solution for protecting children and adults alike is to identify users by their device and allow access to age-restricted materials and websites based on that identification," DeVille said.
Other adult content providers in the restricted states have begun using third-party apps to meet age-verification requirements.
This week Montana and North Carolina surged into the top 5 states for Google searches related to "VPN," according to Google Trends.
