A new law requiring adult content websites to verify a user's age is now in effect in Missouri.
Users must prove they are at least 18 before they are able to access sexually explicit content.
Through the law, websites have to use a third party to conduct the age verification. That could include digital recognition or uploading an ID.
Those businesses would be barred from retaining any identifying information.
The law is putting into statute rules on age verification that Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway implemented last year.
"We're now joining the community of states who really care about kids and are protecting them online," Hanaway said.
Those rules have already caused changes. Pornhub, a major website in the industry, blocked access to Missouri users last year.
Hanaway said other than the actions of Pornhub, she hasn't seen any complaints since she implemented those rules.
"We haven't had concerns about it being difficult. We haven't had concerns about noncompliance," Hanaway said.
She said it was important that the legislature put these same rules into statute because a future attorney general could repeal them.
Critics say legislation like this drives away websites like Pornhub, which moderates and takes down illegal content. What remains are websites that don't adhere to those same regulations.
"Pirate sites, sites outside the country, sites that might not take down revenge porn or child sex abuse material, or you know pirated content," said Mike Stabile with the Free Speech Coalition, a trade organization for the adult industry.
Stable said while he believes some lawmakers have good intentions with laws like this, others see it as a way to censor content they don't like.
"If they can restrict it, if they can make people fear surveillance if they're going to an adult site or if they can push them to places where it might be a little bit more dangerous, I think that there are a fair number of legislators who feel that that's fine," Stabile said.
He said these types of laws could be used eventually to threaten other types of speech.
"These laws were trained on porn because nobody's going to stand up for the rights of you know pornographers," Stabile said. "These laws get passed with this vague terminology, and then that terminology is used to threaten other types of speech."
There's also the matter of enforcement.
According to the new Missouri law, the attorney general's office is responsible for enforcement.
Hanaway said upholding the law would have to begin with complaints of violating the statute.
"We have no desire to go after individual users. Our efforts would be targeted at investigating the companies to make sure that they are actually requiring the age verification," Hanaway said.
There are ways that people can circumvent the new law. For instance, people can use virtual private networks, to appear as though they are accessing websites from somewhere other than Missouri.
Stabile said that one example of how these laws can be ineffective.
"We see VPNs surge in every state that passes these laws, right? People immediately go and look for ways around them," Stabile said.
For Stabile, a better way to stop minors from accessing adult content is to address it on the device level, which could mean verifying your age on a phone, laptop or tablet.
"The consumers are willing to do it on the device. I scan my face to go into my bank account, right? Knowing that that information stays on the device, and it doesn't have this impact of sending everybody to foreign sites," Stabile said.
He also said this method also makes it easier to stop minors from accessing adult content.
Hanaway said there would likely be instances where people get around the law.
"You will have individual users who are able to circumvent the technology. OK, I mean that happens in lots of ways, but what we're worried about is, are the companies doing all that they can to require age verification?" Hanaway said.
Hanaway said her goal is to protect children. She said her experience prosecuting child exploitation cases informed her in this matter.
"What we saw was kids being exploited online, and some of it was grooming done through the use of providing pornography to kids, normalizing sexual content with kids, and we want to protect kids every way we can from being the victims of any kind of exploitation," Hanaway said.
Stabile said the adult industry does not want minors to access this content. He wishes lawmakers would be more willing to come to the table to develop better solutions.
"I don't understand why legislators rather than work with the regulated industry, sort of fuel the growth of this sort of the unregulated industry," Stabile said. "It's like Prohibition, right? You just sort of end up pushing everything into places where there's more danger, there's more criminality, right?"
The legislation is HB1839.
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