Florida AG sues porn sites for ignoring age verification law

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is suing pornography companies for flouting the state’s age verification rules.

Webgroup Czech Republic, NKL Associates, Sonesta Technologies, Inc., GGW Group, and Traffic F have all been served. Between them, they operate several of the world’s most popular pornography websites, including XVideos, XNXX, Bang Bros and pornography advertiser Traffic Factory.

The state’s HB 3 took effect on January 1 of this year, putting in place requirements for adult content sites to put “anonymous age verification” in place, as well as banning children under 14 from registering social media accounts. The company’s allegedly took no action to comply with it. AG Uthmeier wrote two of the companies in April to warn them that their non-compliance had been noticed. No changes followed.

Porn industry lobby the Free Speech Coalition, an online sex education platform and others had filed a legal challenge to HB 3, but abandoned it in July following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Texas’ age assurance law. A similar challenge to the social media portion of the bill has been filed by the equivalent lobby group, NetChoice.

In addition to HB3, Uthmeier has alleged the companies above violated Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act in building databases of information on Floridian users of all ages.

VPN downloads spiked when HB3 took effect, highlighting one of the loopholes that critics argue makes the law ineffective.

Pornhub cut off access to Florida users as of January 1, 2025. one of 17 states the company has blocked user access to that require age verification measures.

Age assurance legislation has been enacted or officially proposed in 29 states, by 404 Media’s count, while 8 have rejected bills.

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age verification  |  Aylo  |  Florida  |  lawsuits  |  legislation  |  United States  |  VPN (virtual private network)