A new age-verification law in Virginia has turned the porn industry in the Commonwealth on its head — disrupting tens of thousands of users from their adult content and causing PornHub to retaliate by ending its services in the state.
Virginia State Sen. Bill Stanley wrote the legislation that became law on July 1. He knew the bill requiring porn websites to verify a user’s age with an ID would ruffle some feathers, but, he said, didn’t expect threats against his family.
“It’s like, dude, why am I getting threats?” Stanley said while mocking the enraged callers on his answering machine. “Because you now have to put in your name and address or an ID to access the internet, bro? I mean, seriously. Your porn — it’s that important to you?”
Threats of violence aren’t the only thing looming over Stanley. Virginia’s new law is also facing significant legal criticism from the Free Speech Coalition — an adult industry trade group that’s long argued adult content is protected by the First Amendment, oftentimes successfully.
“It’s unconstitutional,” Free Speech Coalition spokesman Mike Stabile said. “This is legal speech. You may not like pornography. You may be personally opposed to it, but I think that everybody should be concerned about the government coming in and saying certain legal speech is subjected to greater restriction than other types of speech.”
In May, the adult entertainment trade group sued Utah for a similar age-verification requirement for porn websites. And while the group hasn’t filed a lawsuit in Virginia, they are “looking closely at challenging” it, according to Stabile.
Despite this, the state senator said he’s not too worried, in part because there’s substantial bipartisan support for the concept behind the law.
“Hopefully, it won’t be challenged,” Stanley said. “But if it is, I hope that it passes constitutional muster. If it doesn’t, for some small reason in the bill, then I’ll be back next year to change it to put it back where it is.”
‘We have to catch up to the Internet.’
For Stanley, this all started when he and his wife tried to protect their kids from the ills of the internet. Ultimately, they felt “powerless” against a changing world.
“Before, someone who would want to do harm to your child couldn’t get through your front door, but now they come right through the phone,” Stanley said. “So what we have to do is, we have to catch up to the Internet. The Internet has gotten so far in front of us.”
For Stanley, a child’s easy access to online porn stood out as the biggest threat.
“You’re looking at 30% of 10-year-olds have that access, and by the age of 13, that number jumps to 85% that have accessed pornography at least once on the internet,” Stanley said. “It’s harming them in the sense of body shaming issues, developing proper relationships, what is normal — because what [is] on these websites [is] not normal. (Porn websites) will always want to push the envelope on their content and their pornographic content in particular.”
Earlier this year, Stanley looked to states like Louisiana and Utah for legal inspiration but determined those laws were too complicated and, therefore, too susceptible to legal challenge.
“As a lawyer, I decided for myself, ‘wait a minute, we can make this narrowly tailored for the compelling state interest,'” Stanley said.
On the last day for bill submission, he dropped off SB1515 — a law that allows parents of children harmed by pornographic websites to civilly sue sites for not checking their age. It then sailed through the committee and state chambers.
“It really touched on a subject that was bipartisan,” Stanley said. “Liberal or Democrat, Republican or Conservative. We all come to the same conclusion.”
‘It’s ineffective.’
In the wake of the new law, more people are searching for Virtual Private Networks (VPN) in Virginia than in any other state in the country, according to Google Trends. If a user has a VPN, they can easily skirt the new ID law because a VPN hides their location.
To Stabile with the Free Speech Coalition, this fact alone proves the Virginia law is “ineffective.” Yet, this didn’t surprise Stabile because, he said, legislators don’t know what they are doing, and the porn industry was left out of the legislation process.
“If you want to protect children, let’s talk about it. Because we can really help you with this,” Stabile said. “We know what’s effective and what’s not effective, and the fact that we were left outside of these discussions signals that this is less about protecting kids, and it’s more about punishing a certain community.”
Stabile said a stigma against the sex industry and an ongoing culture war over sex in politics is hampering good legislation that would protect kids from adult content.
“We’ve talked to a lot of legislators privately who are supportive, who understand this as an issue and are interested but are concerned about being public-facing,” Stabile said. “They understand that the cultural mood around sex and technology is very fevered right now. There’s a hesitancy to vote with things or to proceed in a more nuanced area when, in fact, that’s going to be what’s most effective.”
State Sen. Stanley rejected this and questioned the motives of the sex industry and PornHub, specifically — a company no longer allowing people with Virginia IP addresses to watch their content.
“They’re the ones pitching the fit when they could do something very simple,” the Virginia state senator said. “But, I think they’re most afraid of losing that audience, and their target audience is minors. And that concerns me.”
The parent company of PornHub, MindGeek, said Stanley’s claim was “entirely baseless, reckless, and, most importantly, factually inaccurate.”
‘You have to walk that line’
If the Free Speech Coalition challenges Virginia law, it will argue the law violates the First Amendment.
“This ends up being backdoor censorship,” spokesman Stabile said. “This is the government limiting access for legal adults to legal speech and making it impossible for adult sites to comply in a way that allows them to stay in business. This isn’t because we want minors on adult sites. We want them off as much as anybody else.”
But Stanley — a constitutional and trial lawyer by trade — said not so fast.
“They’re saying, ‘well, First Amendment,'” Stanley said. “The First Amendment is not a guarantee to the child. OK? I’m the parent. I get to control what my child watches and doesn’t watch. The problem is with iPads and iPhones, a lot of times, I can’t exert those controls — those parental controls. So I need those companies to also exert the controls with me.”
Despite this line of argument, the state senator admitted it’s a delicate issue.
“A government can go too far,” Stanley said. “And you have to walk that line, which acknowledges the Constitution and the rights of free people to associate.”
For Stabile, Supreme Court precedent is on the side of the sex industry. Back in 1997, during the infancy of the internet, the high court ruled that the government cannot limit adults to seeing “only what is fit for children.”
“What we’ve said is, ‘Listen, it may be 30 years later, but the principle still applies,'” Stabile said. “This is still unconstitutional, and we still need to fight it.”
When asked for an alternative solution to protecting kids, the spokesman for the sex industry pointed to individualized device limits.
“We need to expand awareness of device-level filters,” Stabile said. “Something like 16% of parents use any sort of content-based filter on their kid’s phone. That is an astonishing little number.”
For Stanley, that’s not enough.
“The majority of their people watching these pornographic videos are not at the age of 18. They’re worried about losing business,” Stanley said. “That’s not a company that I’m here to protect.”
When asked about the rise in VPNs and claim that his law is ineffective, Stanley shrugged.
“Laws can never be perfect,” Stanley said. “We outlawed murder a long time ago. People still kill, unfortunately. We can put these safeguards in place and hopefully give parents another tool in the toolbox.”
