LINCOLN, Nebraska — Aylo began blocking access to Pornhub in Nebraska on Monday, ahead of the state’s new age verification law — one of several bills promoted by religious conservatives across the country — expected to take effect Thursday.
“Nebraskans may need a new source for online filth,” says the Nebraska Examiner commented.
Nebraska’s Bill 1092 requires adult sites to verify users’ ages through user-uploaded identification cards or other age-identifying documents.
Free Speech Coalition (FSC) recently explained in a statement that the five new laws taking effect this month, including Nebraska’s, “allow private lawsuits against companies that do not force users to undergo identity verification to access adult websites.”
As it had already done in Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Virginia and Utah, Aylo replaced the landing page for Nebraska IP addresses with an SFW video in which Cherie DeVille explains the reasons for the content restriction.
“As you may know, your elected officials have required us to verify your age before granting you access to our website,” DeVille tells users in Nebraska. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, providing your ID every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution to protect our users, and will even put children and your privacy at risk to take. ”
Several Republican lawmakers and politicians across the country have explicitly stated that the intended purpose of their age verification bills is to specifically block access to Pornhub, and have celebrated that outcome in the states where Aylo has curtailed his services.
State Senator Dave Murman, the Republican lawmaker behind Nebraska’s LB 1092, has
claimed that the bill is not only intended to protect minors from adult content, but also to “protect women.”
Murman acknowledged that his bill was explicitly modeled after similar legislation passed in Utah, Louisiana and Arkansas, which he called “successful.”
“We’re not trying to do anything new here,” Murman said. “We’re trying to do what has been done in other states.”
Murman has also stated that he would have preferred to impose a total ban on adult websites, but opted for the age verification law instead when he realized that “for constitutional reasons” he could not allow all porn could censor in Nebraska.
During the parliamentary debate on his bill, Murman seemed encouraged by the fact that the site he called “The Pornhub” had already withdrawn from several states.
“So apparently it works,” he explained at the time.