More States Get Dumb, Introduce Laws Requiring ID Verification To Access Porn

There’s no reason anyone should look to Louisiana for legislative leadership. The state still has an oft-abused criminal defamation law on the books in 2023 — the sort of law that would have looked out of place a century ago.

I guess you can be on the cutting edge when your legislative moves appeal to backwards people. A new wave of moral panic is upon us, led by legislators who think they can cleanse the world by cleaning up the internet. Since the internet remains out of reach, a moral minority clad in legislative clothing has arisen, determined to limit everyone’s access to pornography by forcing sites to collect identifying information from site visitors.

The Louisiana law that took effect at the beginning of this year mandated ID verification by any site hosting “at least 33.3% pornography.” How this percentage would be determined was a problem left to the governed to sort out. The implementation of the law resulted in some compliance, with PornHub demanding info from visitors with Louisiana IP addresses. Other sites simply refused access. One-third-or-greater porn sites were steered towards using the state’s in-house ID verification app — LA Wallet — to verify users’ ages.

Copycat legislation is now popping up elsewhere in the country, as Ashley Belanger reports for Ars Technica.

Last month, Louisiana became the first state to require an ID from residents to access pornography online. Since then, seven states have rushed to follow in Louisiana’s footsteps. According to a tracker from Free Speech Coalition, Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced similar laws, and laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia are seemingly closest to passing. If passed, some of these laws could be enforced promptly, while some bills in states like Florida and Mississippi specify that they wouldn’t take effect until July.

Not great news for internet freedom. And, despite what legislators might say in support of these bills, these are designed to limit everyone’s access to pornography. The proposals may state concern for minors accessing sexual material, but the intent is to add friction to porn access with a nasty undercurrent of passive government surveillance running just below the surface.

Legislators may claim they have no access to identifying info gathered by porn sites, but claims like these are only as trustworthy as the people making them. Most people distrust lawmakers. Hence, most people will believe governments will know they’re accessing porn content, whether or not that’s actually the case.

Despite there being plenty of legislators deeply invested in passing performative laws, not every one of these legislative pitches will survive the less-than-close scrutiny of other representatives and other components of the legislative machinery. Belanger reports the South Dakota effort is currently stalled. And the law’s lead backer has offered up an absolutely hilarious explanation of her failure to shove this past a deeply conservative state legislature.

Republican Jessica Castleberry, seemingly failed to persuade the committee of the urgency of passing the law, saying at the hearing that “this is not your daddy’s Playboy. Extreme, degrading, and violent pornography is only one click away from our children.” She told Ars that the bill was not passed because some state lawmakers were too “easily swayed by powerful lobbyists.”

“It’s a travesty that unfettered access to pornography by minors online will continue in South Dakota because of lobbyists protecting the interests of their clients, versus legislators who should be protecting our children,” Castleberry told Ars. “The time to pass this bill was in the mid-1990s.”

There has never been a less likely to exist lobbying group than Big Porn. Castleberry appears to believe her fellow legislators were talked out of passing the bill by shadowy, suited men bearing black bags full of barely used Hustler back issues and handfuls of suspiciously sticky currency.

Equally as stupid as this scenario is the loaded language used by supporters of these laws. Some of this loaded language actually makes its way into the bills’ wording, resulting in dry legislative boilerplate occasionally punctuated by terms like “health crisis” or a peculiar insistence on referring to any and all sexual content (whether artistic or educational or of public interest) as “harmful content.”

This childish thinking isn’t actually going to protect any children. Limiting minors’ access to porn is a good idea, but the government isn’t the entity that’s most likely to succeed without causing a shit ton of collateral damage.