Tag: Porn Bans

UPDATED: Michigan Legislators Propose Online Porn Ban

I know that the Christian religion has been on a push for forcing the US to be a theocracy run by their personal church doctrines.   Why I don’t understand?  Do they think that will earn them favor with their god?  Is it simply a way for the leaders of the movement to gain more power  / wealth?  Is it simply they are terrified of after they die and are convinced that their forcing others to follow their church doctrines will get their god to give them more benefits in heaven.  The religious strictures on sex and sexual stuff is rooted in an ancient not correct misunderstand of life and sexuality.  I still do not understand why others watching porn upsets Christian republicans.   I really don’t get it.  Is it because they are afraid the people watching will masturbate?  Is it because sexual arousal is fearful to them?    I really wish someone could explain it to me.  Even in the church boarding school I went to my senior year of high school they did not push that no sex stuff very hard, instead they occasionally reminded us not to touch ourselves.   They need not have worried, in the boy’s dorm we were touching each other which in our kid brains got around the entire sin of jerking off thing.  Hugs.

https://www.xbiz.com/news/292258/updated-michigan-legislators-propose-online-porn-ban

Michigan lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it illegal to distribute pornography via the internet in the state.

HB 4938, introduced last week by six Republican members of the state House of Representatives, would “prohibit the distribution of certain material on the internet that corrupts the public morals.”

Pornography is the principal target, though the bill also seeks to criminalize depictions of transgender people.

The bill defines “pornographic material” broadly, to include “any content, digital, streamed, or otherwise distributed on the internet, the primary purpose of which is to sexually arouse or gratify, including videos, erotica, magazines, stories, manga, material generated by artificial intelligence, live feeds, or sound clips.”

The bill appears to exempt from the ban material protected by the First Amendment. Since pornography is constitutionally protected speech, this makes it unclear how the legislation could actually work.

According to the law, “prohibited material” means “material that at common law was not protected by adoption of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States respecting laws abridging freedom of speech or of the press.”

XBIZ spoke with adult industry attorney and First Amendment expert Corey D. Silverstein to attempt to explain what this meant.

“I think they are trying to say that it would not be applicable to content not deemed as obscene under the Miller test,” he said. “But it is written so poorly that there is some uncertainty as to their angle, which also makes the proposal both vague and ambiguous.

“At the same time, it could be another attempt to undercut and soften the Miller test, which we have been seeing in various other states throughout the country,” he added.

The proposed penalties in the bill are severe, including up to 20 years in prison or a fine of up to $100,000, or both. It also allows for civil fines of up to $500,000 per violation.

The bill would require internet service providers to implement “mandatory filtering technology” to prevent Michigan residents from accessing “prohibited material” as defined in the bill, to “actively monitor and block known circumvention tools,” and to block access to specific websites on receipt of a court order.

The bill calls for the state attorney general to establish “a special internet content enforcement division” staffed with “digital forensics analysts, legal experts, cybersecurity specialists, and investigators” to enforce the proposed law.

Silverstein added that he doesn’t believe the bill has much of a chance at being adopted.

“This bill has virtually no chance of going anywhere, given the current makeup of the Michigan legislature and its far-left Democrat governor,” he said. “The bill is unconstitutional at every turn. Regardless, it is alarming that this type of thinking and government waste continues to occur.”

The bill was referred to the Committee on Judiciary.

Talk of porn bans has increased in recent months. Earlier this year, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced federal legislation that would redefine almost all visual depictions of sex as obscene and therefore illegal, a goal that was also laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy blueprint, which has heavily guided the Trump administration’s agenda.

Update, Sept. 19: The bill’s reference to “known circumvention tools” includes VPNs, proxy servers and encrypted tunneling methods, which would make it nearly impossible to access adult content online within the state.

An Oklahoma Senator Introduces Legislation to Ban All Porn and Imprison Content Creators

https://www.them.us/story/oklahoma-porn-ban

What is it with these religious bigots who think their god gives them the right to force everyone to believe / live as they claim to do.  They are the first to demand their rights to worship / live as they wish.  What gives them the idea the rest of us don’t want the same right. They were the first to attack the Taliban for forcing everyone in the country to worship / live by their version of Islam.  Yet now they demand to be the US Christian Taliban.  I do not understand their hate.   They pick one or a few passages in the OT to clobber others while ignoring all the rest.  They don’t stone their rebellious children, they don’t follow the other things in Leviticus and they do not follow anything Jesus said about caring for others.  Hate, dominance, and vengeance is all they care about.  The Old Testament god gives them that. And pleae notice the bill is titled Increasing Penalties for Child Pornography …   it goes against all porn.  Just like innocent drag queen story hours were attacked to protect the children from seeing people in costumes reading stories.   Hugs

Alongside SB593, Deevers, who is also a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, introduced legislation to abolish abortion, prohibit drag performances in front of minors, ban divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, and provide tax credits to couples who opt into “covenant marriages” or have multiple children within the bounds of marriage — just to name some highlights.

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SB 593, introduced by Senator Dusty Deevers, is part of a slate of eight bills by the legislator to “restore moral sanity” to the state.
By Mathew Rodriguez
Image may contain Computer Electronics Laptop Pc Computer Hardware Computer Keyboard Hardware Body Part and Finger
Gender Spectrum Collection

An Oklahoma state senator has introduced legislation that would ban all pornography, with criminal penalties of up to 10 years in prison for the “production, distribution or possession” of any pornography, according to a press release from the Oklahoma Senate. SB 593, proposed by Senator Dusty Deevers on January 21, is part of a slate of eight bills by the legislator to “restore moral sanity” to the state of Oklahoma.

The bill, entitled “Increasing Penalties for Child Pornography and Prohibiting Pornography in Oklahoma,” goes far beyond the scope suggested in its title. While it does advocate for raising the penalty for the possession, distribution, or production of child pornography from 0-20 years up to 10-30 years, the bill has gone so far as to prohibit pornography entirely.

Deevers’ description of pornography as a “highly addictive drug” directly echoes the words of the authors of Project 2025, who, in the foreword to the over 900-page blueprint for a very different America, linked pornography to both child abuse and trans identity.

“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare,” the foreword to the document reads. “It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed.”

Alongside SB593, Deevers, who is also a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, introduced legislation to abolish abortion, prohibit drag performances in front of minors, ban divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, and provide tax credits to couples who opt into “covenant marriages” or have multiple children within the bounds of marriage — just to name some highlights.

Mike Stabile, the director of public policy at the Free Speech Coalition, said the proposed bill was really an attempt to encroach on free speech in a statement to USA Today.

 

“Porn is the canary in the coal mine of free speech, and the trial balloon used by governments to pass laws that can censor speech more broadly,” he told the outlet. “No matter how people feel about adult content, we should all be concerned about the proposed government crackdown on speech.”

Deevers’ attack on pornography comes less than a month after age verification laws effectively made porn inaccessible in 16 U.S. states, mostly in the regional South.

At the time that many of these bans went into effect, Aylo, the parent company to PornHub, told Mashable that it has “publicly supported age verification of users for years” but that the kind required by these bills is “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous,” as well as a threat to users’ security.

PornHub
Pornhub Is Now Inaccessible in Almost the Entire U.S. South
A contributor to Project 2025 was recorded last year stating that age-verification laws are a “back door” to broader porn bans.

Legislators in several states have introduced similarly bizarre bills criminalizing sexual freedom in the short time since Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency for the second time. Last week, Mississippi state senator Bradford Blackmon introduced the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act,” which would make it illegal for a person to “discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.” The bill suggested a fine of $1,000 for a first offense, $5,000 for a second offense, and $10,000 thereafter. In a statement to local affiliate WLBT, Blackmon said the bill was meant to act as a counterpart to contraception and abortion bills.

“All across the country, especially here in Mississippi, the vast majority of bills relating to contraception and/or abortion focus on the woman’s role when men are fifty percent of the equation,” he told WLBT. “This bill highlights that fact and brings the man’s role into the conversation. People can get up in arms and call it absurd but I can’t say that bothers me.”

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Mathew Rodriguez is the former senior news editor at Them. In the past, he has been a senior culture editor at The Atlantic, as well as a staff writer at Out Magazine, INTO, and Mic. His writing has been featured in Slate, Teen Vogue, The Village Voice, MEL Magazine, and more. He … Read more

Florida demand for VPNs surges by 1,150% after Pornhub bans access

Florida demand for VPNs surges by 1,150% after Pornhub bans access

I use NordVPN and have for years.  They are hyper secure, lots of sites worldwide, and they do not log or record user data.  The VPN also has its own security built in for detecting and blocking Malware and other threats.  It works. Plus it has the kill switch mentioned in the article.   When I first got it VPNs were new and expensive.  The price has dropped way down.   I wouldn’t dream of going online with it.    Hugs

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But will users of the surfing services face more exposure than they expect?

Demand for virtual private network (VPN) services surged in Florida after Pornhub shut down access in the state. But cybersecurity experts say Floridians using VPNs may find more exposure than they desire.

A report by vpnMentor found the interest in VPNs skyrocketed as the internet’s leading pornography publisher publicly punished states over age verification policies. No state witnessed greater enlargement than Florida, where VPN interest jumped by 1,150% immediately after Pornhub started limiting access on Jan. 1.

“This surge in VPN usage suggests users are circumventing the IP-block and accessing Pornhub (and other restricted websites) through IPs where the block is not implemented,” a report reads.

Pornhub beginning Jan. 1 prohibited users in Florida from accessing pornographic content on the site. A video now greets Florida porn consumers trying to access the site and urges them to contact state lawmakers to object to age verification requirements. The state imposed a requirement for third-party age verification on publishers of content “harmful to minors,” with rules in effect as of the beginning of 2025.

But VPNs allow users to work around geo-blocking measures, including those used by Pornhub, to restrict traffic from certain states. Sports fans have for years used such services to evade regional broadcast rights restrictions.

 

The vpnMentor report also mentions other contributors to a surge in demand for restriction-dodging technologies. Use of VPNs soared nationwide when a U.S. TikTok ban briefly went into effect this month.

But the researchers found interest in the location-masking software went up disproportionately in 17 states where Pornhub now limits access. They based findings on state-by-state search volume, web traffic and clicks to downloads for VPN services.

Florida’s 11-fold spike led all other states. In South Carolina and Tennessee, where Pornhub limited access the same day as in the Sunshine State, VPN demand jumped 171% and 40%, respectively.

Other states with content throttled also saw mass interest in VPNs. In Oklahoma, where Pornhub announced a ban in October, demand spiked by 1,060%. In Utah, where Pornhub blocked access in mid-2023, VPN demand rose by 967%.

In Louisiana, where Pornhub allows access but other publishers restricted visits after age verification states went into effect in 2022, VPN demand leapt by 200%

 

Of note, Pornhub saw a significant decline in U.S. traffic last year regardless of VPN usage. Researchers found 15 million fewer visits to the website from U.S. users (or at least those with U.S. IP addresses). But that likely matters little to the publisher as traffic to the site exceeded 1.8 billion visits before the end of 2024. The website continues to have around 500 million more visitors than its closest competitor, XVideos.

While Florida users may turn to VPN services to bypass Pornhub’s gateway restrictions, that brings certain unsafe surfing risks.

Many VPN services lack the same security of major internet providers. In 2023, vpnMentor reported that a cybersecurity security researcher had found 360 million records leaked online after a breach of SuperVPN users’ data. The records included passwords, email addresses, personal financial information and personal content from individuals’ personal devices.

The report recommends users only employ VPNs with strong encryption services, an enforced policy not to log personal data from users, a “kill switch” feature that automatically disconnects users from the internet if a VPN connection drops, and a built-in DNS leak protection.