Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is rejecting Pornhub’s call to reconsider the state’s age-verification law, saying her office intends to increase scrutiny of the company instead. Murrill stated that her office will not reconsider age verification for Pornhub’s website and will pursue even more accountability.

Pornhub’s Appeal

Pornhub appealed to Murrill, Gov. Jeff Landry, and Rep. Laurie Schlegel, the law’s sponsor, in a letter arguing that Louisiana’s website-by-website approach has failed to keep minors away from pornography. The company claimed that searches conducted on June 4 found that eight of the first 10 results for ‘free porn’ on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo led to websites without age verification.

Pornhub argued that the results expose a weakness in Louisiana’s enforcement model, as major platforms can comply or block access in the state while smaller, foreign, or anonymous operators remain readily available. The company called site-level age verification ‘performative, ineffective, and unenforceable’ and urged lawmakers to shift responsibility to Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Proposed Alternative

Under Pornhub’s proposal, phones and computers would begin with adult content blocked, and users would verify their age once through the device rather than separately on every website. Apple has adopted a version of that model in the United Kingdom, where web-content restrictions are automatically enabled for children, teenagers, and adults who have not confirmed they are at least 18.

Louisiana’s law, which took effect in January 2023, requires websites containing more than one-third material considered harmful to minors to verify that users are adults through a digital identification card or another commercial system. Websites and verification providers are prohibited from retaining identifying information after access is granted.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.