CANBERRA, Australia—Aylo, the parent company of adult tube site Pornhub.com and a network of premium sites, is now restricting access to its platforms for the population of Australia. This move comes days before new national online safety codes requiring age verification for users enter force on March 9.
AVN confirmed that Aylo sites are no longer accepting new users, either, noting on their regionalized sign-up pages that new account creation is now restricted for the region.
Aylo sites are “not currently accepting new account registration in your region,” notes the platform, which AVN was able to review through a virtual private network.
Australia eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant welcomed the development, as her office is set to enforce one of the most expansive age-verification regimes in the world.
“Industry must now apply consistent standards across its services so children are not accidentally exposed when they search or scroll online,” Grant said in a statement.
Of the industry codes entering force, one covers pornography platforms requiring sites to take steps to develop an age verification scheme to prevent underaged visitors and to offer an age-appropriate experience once ages are confirmed.
Pornhub’s ownwership has decided to protest the new codes and the national age verification requirement by restricting access to all adult users. Like many age-verification laws in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, these laws and related content blocks can be circumvented using a VPN or proxy server.
The age-check measures recommended for compliance with new Australian legal requirements are for porn sites to offer facial age estimations augmented by artificial intelligence, digital wallets and passkeys, photo identifications, or other tokenized approaches.
Penalties for violations could amount to as much as AUD$ 49.5 million per breach.
“These industry-developed codes shift that responsibility back where it belongs—onto the companies designing these digital platforms and profiting from their users—and will give children back a little more of their childhoods,” Grant said in the above statement.
