LAS VEGAS—Running simultaneously with the fan experiences of this year's AVN Show, the biggest adult industry expo of the year, the annual Adult Novelty Expo (ANE) featured the latest in product innovations and trends across the novelty and sexual wellness spaces in a synergetic B2B event unlike any other all year.
The growth potential and business opportunities aside, age verification—a sweeping regulatory and compliance issue in not just the adult content and film sectors—took center stage on Thursday, Jan. 22 at an expert panel led by the AVN's own Kim Airs. The panel featured Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC); Alexis Lichterman, senior vice president of sales at merchant services provider Mentom Payments; and Sherri Shaulis, an AVN alumna and eLine.com's catalog manager.
To an audience of dozens of brick-and-mortar owners, e-commerce providers, support businesses, and adult creators looking to launch their own toy product lines, the panel took on the trying intersection of age verification laws and how they ultimately are so broad that such laws impact adult novelty.
Diving in, Airs introduced the panel to the growing crisis of companies in this space receiving the same treatment, if not worse, than that of adult film studios. Key to the argument is that, per years of industry lobbying, age verification laws were led by Boden and her team at the Free Speech Coalition.
"Get up-to-date information on this increasingly important topic with these three specialists we have right here," Kim shared. Boden began her pitch by noting that the FSC also has a subgroup, the Sexual Wellness Professional Alliance (SWPA), which represents professionals in the novelty sector. She digressed, though.
"I'm sure you've at least heard that in the last several years, about, well, it's exactly 25 states out of the 50 that have passed laws requiring websites with material harmful to minors on them in certain percentages to verify the age of any user before allowing access to the website," said Boden.
"That definition of material harmful to minors is fairly broad," she warned. "I think that for the most part, these laws were targeted at video content."
She added, "So far, state attorneys general and private parties [like parents] have been suing porn websites. You could be next. Anyone could be next."
Airs transitioned the conversation, noting that one of the main risks is concerns over payment processing and the provision of merchant account services.
Lichterman steps in, noting that one of the main issues from her company's perspective is that the space for merchant accounts and gateway services is stuck under the boot of the major credit card companies, Visa and Mastercard.
"Right now, Visa and MasterCard have not taken a firm stance on pleasure products," she said. "So now we're kind of just going by state and regulatory laws. However, it's not to say that they won't, right? Their focus is not there right now, but we need to be prepared."
Lichterman added, "We always fall back on the strictest state laws is where we're gonna land."
"I mean, we've had clients who, to your point, there are 10,000 SKUs, and they've gone through every single SKU and every image on their site to put, to manually put dots on nipples," said Lichterman. "And if they wanna do that, absolutely, by all means, they can do that. It's a lot of work, but they're playing by the rules, right?"
Shaulis, who serves in a critical role at her current company, further elaborated on the simple fact that critics of porn and the pleasure spaces are going to literally put in the noteworthy efforts of scrolling through public-facing catalogs, static content, either informational or promotional, visual components to landing pages, or more.
"We're selling pleasure products," said Shaulis. "You know, marital aids, whatever you want call them. The general public and these lawyers, and I use that term very loosely, to them, it's all content. They see no distinction."
"If there is a half-naked person holding a dildo, or on the package of a product that you're selling online. To them, it is no different. ... We are trying to comb through all the products and all the descriptions. Our master catalog contains over 10,000 products."
All three experts also noted that if anything catastrophic occurs during the eventual deployment of age verification, the liability isn't on the age verification companies or any third-party vendor that might be employed. Per the wording of AV laws in most states, liability falls on the owners.
At the end of the panel, Boden teased major progress on the Free Speech Coalition's efforts to establish a federal credit union for the adult industry. She confirmed that the process has begun, including regulatory engagement with the coalition's lobbyists in Washington, D.C., with the National Credit Union Administration.
Boden also teased the launch of a new venture within the coalition's membership rolls that would offer privacy-preserving age verification services not only to the novelty and sexual wellness members of the SWPA and the FSC, but also to all members at affordable pricing compared to other larger AV providers like Yoti.
The new venture is set to launch in February.
