Pornhub disables website in Texas amid legal battle with attorney general's office
Pornhub has blocked access to its content in Texas in protest of the state’s age verification requirement.
The site, one of the most-visited pornography platforms in the country, is blocking anyone who accesses it from a Texas IP address. Instead, its homepage displays a statement explaining its reasoning and encouraging users to contact their representatives about the law.
“Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” the statement read, according to a copy Pornhub provided to NBC News. “Not only will it not actually protect children, but it will also inevitably reduce content creators’ ability to post and distribute legal adult content and directly impact their ability to share the artistic messages they want to convey with it.”
And it’s not just Pornhub: The entire portfolio of adult content platforms owned by Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo, including Brazzers, YouPorn and Men.com, have also removed access to their content in Texas.
"Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must ensure minors do not access content intended for adults and preserve user safety and privacy," Alex Kekesi, Aylo's vice president of brand and community, said in an email statement.
Instead, Kekesi wrote, the "real solution" to an age verification mandate is to impose a device-based verification system, which would have users input their age information directly into their phone’s operating systems.
Aylo is reviewing its options and consulting with its legal team, Kekesi said.
Texas is the latest in a string of states — including Montana, North Carolina, Louisiana, Utah, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia — where Aylo has restricted access to its porn sites in response to age-verification laws.
The state of Texas sued Aylo alleging it violated its age verification law, which requires visitors to porn sites to show government-issued identification or other data to confirm they are 18 or older.
Having taken effect last year, the law was challenged in federal court by an adult industry trade association before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the injunction in November, allowing Texas to enforce it.
It subjects porn sites to fines of up to $10,000 per day for failing to verify users’ ages. Texas’ lawsuit claims Aylo has been in violation for 160 days and so must pay up to $1.6 million, as well as up to $10,000 for each additional day after the filing date.
“Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children,” Attorney General Ken Paxton said in an email statement on Thursday. “We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law from taking effect. In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, good riddance.”
In its website statement, Pornhub claimed that asking users to provide ID every time they access porn sites will “put minors and your privacy at risk.” It said leaving enforcement up to individual platforms will drive users away from sites that do comply with the law but funnel them toward those that don’t.
