COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio lawmakers are edging closer to requiring all porn watchers to submit their state ID and other personal information before accessing explicit content.
A rule of the internet — whatever you're into, there is a video for it.
"I think sexuality is something that is important for human well-being," Clevelander Mallory McMaster told me.
Expressing sexual urges by watching pornography is a good thing, McMaster added, but a new bill introduced by Ohio Republicans would prevent her from going on explicit websites because it would require a state ID.
In an effort to crack down on kids and teens accessing porn, state Reps. Steve Demetriou (R-Bainbridge Twp.) and Josh Williams (R-Sylvania) have proposed H.B. 84, which would require every porn watcher to provide age verification.
"I just want to help protect kids here in Ohio from this harmful content online," Demetriou told me.
Verification would be done by submitting a photo of your state ID or by entering your personal information into a third-party system that will then run your details through other online databases — it could also use facial recognition technology, capturing photos of users. Companies would be penalized if they don't comply.
"Clicking a box that says 'Yes I am 18' is not gonna prevent a 15-year-old boy from going on that website," the lawmaker said. "Any reasonable person understands that."
This is simply like walking into an old video rental store, the Republican added, noting that consumers would have been ID'd at the door or cash register.
"We're simply taking those same sort of measures from the Ohio Revised Code into the 21st century," he said.
This bill has mainly GOP cosponsors but does have support from at least three Democrats.
McMaster believes H.B. 84 might as well be H.B. 1984, referencing the classic dystopian novel about government control by George Orwell, where society members were monitored at all times.
"I would not be watching pornography on a website that required me to upload a photo of my driver's license," she added. "I'm not sure where it would end up."
Numerous porn watchers have reached out, sharing concerns that data could be leaked, hacked or sold for profit.
"We're creating a log of porn that every individual watches, and it's tracked with our driver's license and a photo of our faces," McMaster argued. "Whether it's hacked by someone who wants to blackmail and extort us or, ICE agents who question our citizenship or local police investigating an alleged crime of some sort, they will all have access to this information."
She referenced cases where companies secretly provide facial recognition data to police — or law enforcement buys it from data aggregators, according to The Brookings Institution.
Demetriou argued that companies would be required to have a system that protects sensitive information.
"It's not like that's stored for a long period of time, it's immediately deleted," he said.
PornHub, the most visited explicit content provider in the country, and their parent company Aylo gave us a statement about states that have implemented these requirements, saying in part: “People did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content."
Aylo explained that they have always been a supporter of age verification of users but that parents can add parental controls to their kids' devices.
RELATED: PornSnub — Ohio lawmakers want to require ID to watch online pornography
The bill also makes it a crime to use artificial intelligence to create porn of children or nonconsenting adults.
Aylo told me that they have protocols in place to moderate and remove child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual videos, such as revenge porn.
The company also raised a red flag about data safety.
"Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy," Aylo said.
I asked Demetriou if his bill could push people to utilize under-moderated, obscure websites.
"We're not trying to push adults into the black market of porn, we're just simply trying to create common sense age verification procedures similar to what online gambling operations already have to do in Ohio," he responded.
McMaster said all the lawmakers are going to do is increase the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, which mask your IP address and let you bypass firewalls.
The lawmakers said they did think about that and are working with organizations to geofence, which would be making a virtual perimeter around a location.
"I wouldn't want my local law enforcement agencies watching what pornography I'm watching, even though that would probably really entertain them," McMaster said.
The bill will continue to be debated in the coming weeks.
McMaster said the lawmakers are amateurs and clearly should be working on bigger issues. Other online users agree, arguing that they should be dealing with sky-high property taxes, inflation or childcare costs.
Full statement from Aylo:
First, to be clear, Aylo has publicly supported age verification of users for years, but we believe that any law to this effect must preserve user safety and privacy, and must effectively protect children from accessing content intended for adults.
Unfortunately, the way many jurisdictions worldwide have chosen to implement age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Any regulations that require hundreds of thousands of adult sites to collect significant amounts of highly sensitive personal information is putting user safety in jeopardy. Moreover, as experience has demonstrated, unless properly enforced, users will simply access non-compliant sites or find other methods of evading these laws.
This is not speculation. We have seen how this scenario plays out in the United States. In Louisiana, Pornhub was one of the few sites to comply with the new law. Since then, our traffic in Louisiana dropped approximately 80 percent. These people did not stop looking for porn. They just migrated to darker corners of the internet that don't ask users to verify age, that don't follow the law, that don't take user safety seriously, and that often don't even moderate content. In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children.
The best solution to make the internet safer, preserve user privacy, and prevent children from accessing adult content is performing age verification at the source: on the device. The technology to accomplish this exists today. What is required is the political and social will to make it happen. We are eager to be part of this solution and are happy to collaborate with government, civil society and tech partners to arrive at an effective device-based age verification solution.
In addition, many devices already offer free and easy-to-use parental control features that can prevent children from accessing adult content without risking the disclosure of sensitive user data.
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