If in France, the question of verifying the age of minors to access pornographic sites has been at the center of the beginning for several months, this is also the case in the United States. The state of Louisiana has passed a law that forces PornHub, YouPorn and others to verify the age of visitors by analyzing their driver’s license.
For several years now, ARCOM (the new entity resulting from the merger between Hadopi and the CSA) has gone to war against the main pornographic sites on the market. The institution accuses these platforms of not offering effective age verification system to prevent minors from accessing their content.
In September 2022, ARCOM and the representatives of the various X sites were brought together for mediation in order to find a solution to the problem. No compromise was found and as a result, the Council of State was seized to decide on the question. At the beginning of December 2022, we learned that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Arcom. So for now, the platforms are always obliged to set up a system to block access to minors.
The State of Louisiana finds a way to prevent minors from seeing porn
In the United States, this thorny question has also been on the table for ages. Gold, the State of Louisiana has decided to respond to it with a local measure. Indeed, Louisiana State House of Representatives Bill 142 requires adult sites to filter visitors by “reasonable verification of age”, under penalty of incurring legal sanctions.
This law, signed in June 2022, entered into force on January 1, 2023. According to it, X platforms can require visitors the presentation of a digital identity card, or a photo of their identity papers. A 3rd, slightly more vague option is to use “any commercially reasonable method that relies on public or private transactional data to verify a person’s age”.
In other words, porn sites can exploit information relating to bank cards, credit, insurance, employment, or other financial information that may indicate the age of users. And from what we see so far, PornHub and others have decided to settle for a driver’s license.
Also read: PornHub tackles the blocking of porn sites in France
Age is verified by a partner company
To do this, all visitors to PornHub, YouPorn, Brazzers or RedTube are first asked to log into a partner platform, namely AllpassTrust. After creating an account on the said platform, users can link their profile to it. LA Wallet, a government application offered by the State of Louisiana to obtain a digital copy of one’s driver’s license. Once in possession of the document, AllpastTrust can certify the age of the visitor and authorize him to access the pornographic sites previously mentioned.
Note that this law stipulates that the companies in charge of age verification, in this case AllpastTrust, “should not retain any information that identifies users…once access has been granted”. On PornHub, we can read that no data is collected and “your proof of age does not allow anyone to trace your online activity”. Despite everything, we understand that users have no choice but to trust these third parties to protect particularly sensitive data…
In other words, this system still represents a danger for user data, at a time when cyber threats are on the rise. Moreover, its usefulness should be questioned. In fact, it only takes one simple VPN to bypass this restrictiona practice already widely adopted by users in Louisiana according to Gizmodo.
