Utah's ban on VPNs for porn is on hold, but not for long

A ban on VPNs to access porn sites was supposed to go into effect in Utah weeks ago, but it's now on hold.

The statute, SB 73, expands on Utah's 2023 age-verification law (SB 287), which requires proof of age like a digital ID card, a third-party verification service, or a credit card, in order to view adult content or content the state deems "harmful to minors." Pornhub blocked itself from Utah when SB 287 went into effect.

SB 73 instructs that a porn site can't "facilitate or encourage the use of a virtual private network [VPN]." A VPN masks someone's real location. This law functionally requires porn sites to somehow block traffic from VPNs, which the digital civil liberties nonprofit, Electronic Frontier Foundation, called "a technical whack-a-mole that likely no company can win."

Now, the enactment of this law has been delayed due to a legal challenge by Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub. Aylo filed the complaint against the Utah Division of Consumer Protection and the state's Department of Commerce on April 22, stating, "There is no feasible way for a private company like Aylo to reliably verify whether any particular individual is using a virtual private network (VPN), proxy server, or other locationmasking technology — and therefore no way to determine whether a user who appears to be located outside Utah is, in fact, located inside Utah."

The complaint alleges that complying with SB 73 could expose Aylo to liability risks under other jurisdictions' laws, such as consumer privacy protections. Aylo says it would have to implement age verification for all users everywhere, regardless of where they are, because, as stated above, there's no way to determine where a user is actually located. Aylo claims that the law exceeds Utah's authority under the U.S. Constitution, as all states are supposed to have "equal sovereignty," and that it violates the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which limits a state's authority to regulate interstate commerce. Finally, Aylo claims Utah is violating the Foreign Commerce Clause, which gives the federal government sole authority to regulate commerce with other countries.

Enforcement of SB 73 is now delayed until Sept. 3, AVN reported, but only Aylo properties (which include Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube).

"It's illegal for Utah to get in the way of what people in other states do on the internet, and the only way that their law can be implemented would do exactly that," campaigns and communications director for digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, Lia Holland, said in a public statement. "Utah says they're doing it for the kids. But passing a law that gets you sued and wastes resources isn’t how you protect kids. It’s time for some grown-up logic here."

Holland calls on Utah officials to meet with tech justice organizations to pass legislation that's "grounded in reality and the constitution to protect us all from bad actors online by giving us the tools to defend our privacy, our freedom of speech, and all the rights that big tech companies that love age verification and VPN bans have been stripping away."

While lawmakers say age-verification laws are meant to protect children, preliminary studies suggest they don't achieve that aim and might instead infringe on adults' First Amendment rights.

Free speech advocates call for device-level filters instead. Aylo recently made Pornhub available in the UK again due to the implementation of such filters on Apple devices, after blocking it due to the UK's age-verification law, the Online Safety Act.