Hoosiers will no longer be able to access a popular porn website soon if a new state law is allowed to take effect.
On Wednesday, the parent company of Porn Hub released a statement saying that when a new state law requiring age verification to access porn online goes into effect on July 1st, they will cut off access to the website altogether.
The law signed by Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb in March says the state’s attorney general and individuals can bring legal action against a website’s operator if material “harmful to minors” is accessible to users younger than 18.
“In practice, the laws have just made the internet more dangerous for adults and children,” read a statement from Aylo, which owns Porn Hub.
Aylo called on governments to require existing technology that verifies the users’ ages on devices. The state wants porn sites like Porn Hub to require age verification by having users provide personal information like a driver’s license number.
Aylo’s statement continued that laws like these will only encourage people to “migrate to darker corners of the Internet that don’t ask users to verify age, that don’t follow the law, that don’t take user safety seriously, and that often don’t even moderate content.”
Finally, Aylo said it is much safer if parents exercise better control over the content their children look for while on the Internet, which negates the risk of user data being compromised.
“Many devices already offer free and easy-to-use parental control features that can prevent children from accessing adult content without risking the disclosure of sensitive user data,” the statement said.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a defendant in the lawsuit, said on June 11 in a post on X that he looks forward to defending the law in court.