INDIANAPOLIS—Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, announced today that his office sued Aylo, its affiliated companies, and the ownership group Ethical Capital Partners for allegedly violating the state's age verification laws due to failures to block users using virtual private networks (VPNs).
Aylo is the parent company of Pornhub and other free and premium adult websites. AVN confirmed with an Aylo spokesperson that all IP addresses in Indiana are still blocked, as the company chose to withdraw from the state's digital space to comply with a sweeping age verification measure that took effect earlier this year.
"We know for a fact, from years of research, that adolescent exposure to pornography carries severe physical and psychological harms," Rokita said in a press statement from his office.
"It makes boys more likely to perpetrate sexual violence and girls more likely to be sexually victimized. Yet, despite such realities, these defendants seem intent on peddling their pornographic perversions to Hoosier kids," Rokita continued, justifying why his office brought the lawsuit. But he buried the lead, so to speak.
In the legal complaint filed in a state court that AVN reviewed, Rokita is proposing a legal theory that places blame on Aylo for failing to block all access from Indiana, even when the IP address is spoofed by a VPN or proxy server to appear outside the state's regulated digital space.
Effectively, Rokita is blaming the existence of VPNs on the market as a direct pipeline for minors to access content that would otherwise be blocked due to Indiana's AV regulations.
Corey Silverstein, an attorney who represents adult industry clients, told AVN that this lawsuit is not only unsurprising but extremely problematic.
"It was just a matter of time before one of these state Attorneys General tested this theory," Silverstein noted. "We are going to monitor the case very carefully."
He added, "I see substantial roadblocks for the government's case, but, again, I'm not surprised because the states have been emboldened by the Supreme Court decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton. Going after a VPN service provider would be a stretch, and Section 230 [of the Communications Decency Act of 1996] would stop it.
"That's a dangerous concept, though, because what's next? Power companies? Landlords that lease data center space?"
The legal case presented in the complaint is very flimsy, to say the least.
"As of the date of this filing, defendants’ websites (Aylo) identified above restrict access by users whose devices purport to be in Indiana," argues Rokita in the lawsuit.
"These restrictions are based on the IP address associated with that device. Rather than implement a reasonable age verification method, defendants’ websites display a message when a user with an Indiana IP address attempts to access the website, stating 'We have made the difficult decision to completely disable access in Indiana.'"
The lawsuit justifies, "These restrictions based on IP address, which only apply to IP addresses in states like Indiana with age-verification laws, are unreliable and do not prevent minors in Indiana from accessing sexually explicit material.
"Defendants’ putative IP address restrictions are insufficient to comply with Indiana’s Age Verification Law because Indiana residents, including minors, can still easily access the defendants’ websites with a VPN IP or proxy address from another jurisdiction or through the use of location spoofing software."
A common argument by opponents of age verification laws is that such laws are essentially useless because VPNs can be used to circumvent content blocks.
