*Residents of Louisiana must now present proof of their age to visit and view pornographic websites like Pornhub, YouPorn, and Redtube. The rule came into effect on January 1, 2023. The documents required to ascertain proof of age include a government-issued ID or driver’s license.
The law is meant to protect minors from accessing porn sites. In many states, one only has to verify their age by typing their date of birth and clicking “Go” to visit a porn site. But the new Louisiana law, dubbed Act 440, now requires adult websites to use “reasonable age verification” to screen their visitors.
According to the bill signed last June, the controversial new law applies to any websites with at least 33.3% pornographic material that is “harmful to minors.”
The bill states that “Any commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material shall be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material.”
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Rep. Laurie Schlegel, who sponsored the bill, tweeted last week soon before the law took effect that age verification is “a must to protect children from the dangers of online pornography.”
“Online pornography is extreme and graphic and only one click away from our children. This is not your daddy’s Playboy,” he wrote in the tweet. He added that the law is “a first step” in holding pornography companies accountable. The law makes Louisiana the first U.S. state to implement age verification to view adult content online.
But people are raising concerns about the level of verification the law requires. How safe will the user information be required? Any form of online verification requiring sensitive data such as your driver’s license information, address, phone number, or Social Security number must demonstrate its level of security. Can there be security breaches, such as hacking, resulting in the user information getting into the wrong hands?
Experts now argue that Louisiana’s new law could expose many users to serious privacy risks.
“There is the explicit intention in the law that verifiers and websites that are using age verification should not retain [your information],” said Jason Kelle, the associate director of digital strategy at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He added that users have little guarantee that their private data will be removed or deleted and not shared or used in other ways.
He believes the consumers have reason to be concerned about their privacy when it comes to sharing private information with third parties — especially when there’s no guarantee that the data won’t be retained.
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