WASHINGTON—The religious conservative U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., sent a letter on Friday to the Montreal-headquartered Aylo and its ownership group, the Ottawa-based private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, responding to the company's own letter sent last week to dozens of state and federal officials and lawmakers across 25 states that have site-based age verification legislation on their books.
The initial letter explains that Aylo and its subsidiaries, including Pornhub.com, advocate for age verification but at the level of the operating system or mobile device settings, not a site-by-site or state-by-state patchwork like what is in place in much of the United States and in countries such as France and Spain.
In Lankford's aggressively worded two-page letter addressed to the Ethical Capital Partners vice president of compliance, Solomon Friedman, a Canadian criminal defense attorney and academic, the senator accuses Aylo of having "no interest in protecting children."
Lankford writes, "Pornhub’s letter suggests that tech companies should be responsible for protecting children from pornography. Lawmakers can and should hold tech companies accountable for the harm they pose to children. But that should not preclude state and federal lawmakers from holding platforms like Pornhub accountable for the harm it causes.
"Pornhub’s letter fails to say the quiet part out loud: Pornhub would lose customers if children were prohibited from viewing its content," Lankford asserts.
In response, a spokesperson for Aylo said that the firm disagrees with Sen. Lankford's characterizations, calling such claims factually inaccurate.
"Senator Lankford and Pornhub completely agree—effective age verification needs to be in place to prevent children from accessing age-inappropriate content on the internet," the spokesperson said in a statement to AVN. (Note that the same statement was issued earlier today to Fox News Digital, the first outlet to receive the letter from Lankford's office.)
"Unfortunately, the way the Senator proposes has been proven to be ineffective everywhere it’s been attempted, including in Oklahoma," the spokesperson added, referencing the fact that due to age verification laws in Lankford's home state, most users in Oklahoma's digital space are blocked and can only access Aylo's websites through virtual private networks (VPNs).
"Our site is one of [the] few that is currently complying with the law in Oklahoma, meaning the real risk to Oklahoma citizens of all ages lies on the hundreds of thousands of unregulated sites that remain accessible and are seeing increased traffic," explained the Aylo spokesperson.
"We are the only free site that requires verification from uploaders as well as proof of consent from all depicted in content on our platform," the spokesperson added. "The safety of our community is our top priority—this includes a zero-tolerance policy with respect to minors on our platform. We look forward to further addressing the Senator's concerns in our reply to him."
Aylo has not indicated whether said reply to Sen. Lankford will be made public. Adult industry trade group the Free Speech Coalition, meanwhile, told AVN in a statement that it takes issue with Sen. Lankford's characterization of Aylo as an organization willfully and explicitly going after minors by targeting them with marketing and prurient sexual material.
"No legitimate adult company is targeting minors," stated Alison Boden, executive director of the FSC. "Aside from the multitude of moral and ethical issues, minor access is a financial and resource drain on adult businesses. Minor access drives up server and support costs, corrupts data, and provides no business value—minors are not consumers."
She added, "Adult sites have been trying to block minors for over 20 years, developing protocols and systems, like the Restricted to Adults label, to make it easy for filters and devices to block our sites. We have every reason not to want minors on our platforms, and no reason to target them."
The Restricted to Adults (RTA) label is developed and managed by the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP). ASACP is also the largest privately-funded reporting line for child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse material in the world.
Aylo utilizes the RTA label across its websites and also reports to the CyberTipline program managed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.