For most sites around the world, verifying age can be a simple matter of picking a date from twenty years ago and clicking “verify”. But in the USA – Louisiana this is no longer the case. Law 440, which went into effect Sunday, requires the state’s 4.6 million residents to prove their age with government-issued ID when trying to access porn sites.
Louisiana residents currently trying to visit PornHub are greeted with a screen that reads, “Louisiana law now requires that we implement a process to verify the age of users connecting to our site from Louisiana.” Through a third-party verification site called AllPassTrust, users must link their digital ID or driver’s license to the system through LAWallet, Louisiana’s digital driver’s license platform. While other porn sites are reportedly not yet adopting this app, it should do so in a few days.
Law 440 was written by Republican state representative Laurie Schegel, passed by the state’s Republican-led House of Representatives, and signed by the state’s Democratic governor, John Bel Edwards.
Sites whose content “significantly” is deemed harmful to minors are held liable if they do not implement “reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of people trying to access the content”.
A “significant portion” is defined as more than 33.3%. Therefore, platforms such as Twitter that allow porn will likely not be affected by the law.
Some users argue that this law threatens their privacy, while others want a similar law to be passed at the federal level. So the American people are divided on this issue.
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