Adult World News

Virginia is the next jurisdiction in the United States to implement a law that requires all adult entertainment websites to have age verification measures in place or face civil action. Similar to age verification laws implemented in states like Utah and Louisiana, Senate Bill (SB) 1515 was adopted with virtually universal support from lawmakers in both of the state's major political parties. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed SB 1515 into law at the behest of parental rights groups and organizations that believe that age verification mandates are the best way to prevent minors from viewing age-restricted content, like pornographic sites.

Industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) has filed suit in federal district courts in both Utah and Louisiana seeking to render the age verification laws in those states unconstitutional on the grounds of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. FSC director of public affairs Mike Stabile characterized the law in Virginia as dangerous and and said the organization has reached out to Gov. Youngkin with little results.

The Virginia law suffers from the same technological and constitutional problems as the laws in Utah and Louisiana, Stabile told AVN in an email:

Adult consumers shouldn't have to risk surveillance or secure government approval in order to view legal content in the privacy of their own home.

We are looking at potential suits in every state that has passed this law, including Virginia.

Adult industry attorney Corey Silverstein told AVN that the new Virgina law is foolish.

Virginia's law, much like Louisiana, Utah, and others are not going to survive First Amendment challenges. While these politicians are patting themselves on the back for pushing through these blatant speech suppression tools, they seem to have forgotten about the First Amendment that they swore to protect when they took office.

Virginia's age verification law goes into effect on July 1, 2023.

The notable French adult company Dorcel is currently testing a double anonymity age verification solution designed by a French tech company. The Dorcel Group is testing an AV solution by GreenBadg. The report states that 10,000 visitors to Dorcel's site will be targeted as guinea pigs during the test period.

GreenBadg founder Jacky Lamraoui said that his company built its solution in consultation with French authorities, including media regulator ARCOM.

To access Dorcel sites, users must first register on GreenBadg by providing identification and a video selfie. Another company, IDNow will verify the ID, from which the date of birth is extracted, and confirm that the ID photo corresponds to the video selfie. The video selfie/ID photo facial comparison is performed by artificial intelligence, with a second validation done by a human.

Once verified, the user will receive a badge valid for three years, allowing them to scan a QR Code on the relevant site to certify they are over 18.

Pornhub has released a new public service announcement on its homepage for site visitors in Virginia, Mississippi and Arkansas imploring them to contact their representatives and protest the age-verification laws for online adult content recently passed in each of those states.

The announcement features 2023 AVN MILF Performer of the Year Cherie DeVille, who last month appeared in a similar video for the website that greets visitors in Utah, where access to the site has been otherwise blocked in retaliation for a similar law that went into effect there May 3.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, where yet another age-verification measure took effect January 1 of this year, Pornhub is currently complying with the requirement using a state-sanctioned digital ID mobile app called LA Wallet, making Louisiana the first state to implement a digital driver's license. According to a story today by tech site Ars Technica, a Pornhub spokesperson reported that Pornhub was one of the few adult sites to put an ID requirement into place in the state, and since doing so, Pornhub's Louisiana traffic dropped by approximately 80 percent as adult content seekers presumably chose to visit sites that do not require ID.

DeVille underscores this point noting:

As we've seen in other states where similar laws have passed, this just drives activities to other sites with far fewer or even no safety measures in place. This clearly demonstrates that poorly executed age verification solutions only make the internet more unsafe.

The Ars Technica story went on to add, Pornhub reported that Louisiana users have already experienced identity theft as a result of the age verification law there.

Pope Francis I has condemned all pornography as the crudest commercialization of love during a meeting with students and bishops responsible for Catholic schools.

The Catholic Review described Scholas Occurrentes as a global education initiative which connects underdeveloped schools to those with more resources. Francis fielded questions from students and one elderly person connected by video calls from Colombia, Mexico, Spain and the United States, Catholic Review reported.

Following up on a statement where he appeared to support some form of sexual education in schools, Francis lamented that young people are learning about sexuality from pornography:

Pornography is the crudest commercialization of love. How often, for lack of sexual education, do they end up with the commercialization of love. Love is not to be commercialized.

Pope Francis has previously expressed his opinions about pornography, including his belief that it is addictive like drugs and alcohol, and leaves those who use it diminished as humans.

Perhaps he should be getting the Catholic Church's house in moral order before presuming to lecture to the rest of us.

Pornhub is fight back against Utah's new law requiring visitors to porn websites to verify their age by dangerously identifying themselves before being able to watch adult content..

Pornhub began totally blocking Utah-based internet connections' from access to its content when the law took effect May 3. The site redirects visitors to a video message of adult film actress Cherie DeVille explaining that the company disabled access over concerns that the law is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact will put children, and your privacy, at risk.

The Free Speech Coalition, a group representing the adult entertainment industry, also sued to block the law's enforcement that same day, making a similar argument about the trade-off regarding safety, privacy, and adults' freedom to browse the web as they wish.

The group has also vowed to sue over unsafe age-verification measures set to take effect soon in other states.

The European Commission has officially identified 19 major platforms and search engines to be targeted for compliance under its new internet censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Under the new rules, Very Large providers will be required to assess and mitigate the risk of 'misuse' of their services and the measures taken must be proportionate to that risk and subject to robust conditions and safeguards.

The EU Commission officially designated 17 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and two Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), each of which, according to the EC, reaches at least 45 million monthly active users.

The VLOPs are: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and German retailer Zalando.

The two VLOSEs are Bing and Google Search.

Following their designation, an EC statement explained, these companies will now have to comply, within four months, with the full set of new censorship rules under the DSA. Under the subheading Strong protection of minors, the EC listed the following directives:

• Platforms will have to redesign their systems to ensure a high level of privacy, security, and safety of minors;
• Targeted advertising based on profiling towards children is no longer permitted;
• Special risk assessments including for negative effects on mental health will have to be provided to the Commission four months after designation and made public at the latest a year later;
• Platforms will have to redesign their services, including their interfaces, recommender systems, terms and conditions, to mitigate these risks.

According to industry attorney Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal, the impact of the new designations and consequent obligations could be substantial because many of the platforms that have been designated as VLOPs and VLOSEs are frequently utilized by the adult entertainment industry.

Assuming these platforms decide to comply with the DSA, Silverstein told XBIZ, there may be major changes coming to what these platforms allow on their services within the EU.

This could end up leading to major content moderation and outright blocking of adult content in the EU, including the blocking of websites that display adult entertainment from being listed in search results.

It is also noted that as the larger adult platforms continue to grow, some may pass the EC's benchmark of having 45 million monthly active users, and therefore face the potential for future designation under the DSA, which could have even more direct impact on their users and creators.

Amsterdam City Council have instigated a new campaign, dubbed Stay Away , targeting people considering a stag party or pub crawling trip to Amsterdam. however the publicity seems to have inadvertently led to increased bookings for stag do trips.

The city's Stay Away campaign is aimed to deter British lads aged 18-35 from visiting, via targeting people who search for terms including stag party, Amsterdam or pub crawl Amsterdam with supposedly off-putting online ads.

One company which organises boozy trips to the Dutch capital saw quotes for holidays rocket 649% in just a day after news of the anti-lad advertising campaign began to circulate.

The marketing effort comes as the city moves to make it harder for visitors to get their hands on psychoactive substances and hop between strip clubs. In order to tackle anti-social behaviour and keep things calm, the city council is making it illegal to smoke cannabis on the street in the Red Light District from later this year. From mid-May lighting up will be forbidden in public spaces in the inner city between 4pm and 1am from Thursday to Sunday, while a ban on take-away cannabis sale is also being considered.

Meanwhile Dutch sex workers are not impressed by the Amsterdam initiative. They say they plan to protest against earlier closing times and plans to move them from the city's red light district to large erotic centres on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

The Australian government has recently released a report into Australia's national classification regulation, which is likely to have a significant impact on the laws regarding pornography across the nation.

Currently Australia does allow for the classification of hardcore porn as X18+ for video and Category 2 Restricted for magazines. However its has more restrictions in play than most of the free world. One particular restriction that was discussed in the report is that fetish material is banned outright and that dramatic violence is also banned outright even if it is nothing to do with the sex content. (Eg a pirate film with sword fights above deck and totally separate sexual exploits below deck).

Even if a pornographic publication or film is able to get classified in Australia, there are significant restrictions on where that media can be sold or exhibited.

Category 1 (softcore) and Category 2 (hardcore) restricted publications are able to be sold in all States and Territories except for Queensland, but must only be sold in age-restricted sections of premises, in packaging which conceals their content.

X 18+ classified films can only be sold or exhibited in the ACT or the Northern Territory. It is therefore a criminal offence to sell or exhibit X 18+ films throughout most of Australia.  

The recently released report into national classification regulation suggests a number of key reforms when it comes to pornography. This includes:

• The removal of prohibitions on "fetishes" in Category 2 (restricted) publications and X 18+ films as long as they are not illegal .
• The removal of prohibitions on violence in sexually explicit films, if the violence is not related to sexual activity.
• Limits the need to classify sexually explicit films to films which are professionally produced, directed at an Australian audience and distributed for commercial purposes. This means that many "amateur" forms of pornography no longer need to be classified.

Any such reform to Australia's classification guidelines will require cooperation and agreement from each State and Territory and is likely to be a gradual process.