If you’re a furry, a sex worker, an adult content creator, or just someone who likes using PornHub, then chances are you’ve heard of the PAVE Act. This new North Carolina law, which went into effect on January 1, 2024, has radically altered the way local residents can use the internet.
In particular, sites that primarily host explicit sexual content have pulled the plug on the Old North State’s users, forcing them to use VPNs and other means to combat the law’s effects. While the PAVE Act has brought PornHub and furry imageboard e621 to their knees in North Carolina, the law isn’t necessarily a “ban” on NSFW content—not in name, at least.
Rather, it’s an act that foreshadows future bills to come across Republican-dominated legislatures, suggesting Americans living in red states might soon find their access to pornographic content de facto controlled by their local governments.
What is NC’s PAVE Act?
The Pornography Age Verification Enforcement Act, better known as the PAVE Act, was signed into law during September 2023 as part of North Carolina’s House Bill 8. Sponsored by a plethora of Republicans (and one Democrat), the act legally requires commercial ventures to verify users’ ages if a company “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material.”
In order to do so, North Carolina requires these sites to either use “a commercially available database that is regularly used by businesses or governmental entities for the purpose of age and identity verification,” or utilize “another commercially reasonable method of age and identity verification.” Companies are not allowed to hold records on any personally identifying information used to confirm users’ ages.
Additionally, North Carolina offers residents the right to a lawsuit if a site is found to record user identifying information, or if a minor’s parent or guardian finds that a website allowed their child to access a site purposefully hosting material “harmful to minors.”
Under North Carolina law, “harmful to minors” means “any material or performance that depicts sexually explicit nudity or sexual activity” that, to the average adult, believes said content “has a predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest of minors in sex”—and would find sexually explicit depictions “patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community concerning what is suitable for minors.” If the work is deemed to be lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors,” the work is considered “harmful to minors.”
Artwork and videos perceived as pornographic in nature are generally seen as “harmful to minors” under such a standard. However, it can be incredibly difficult to both define the term “pornography” and to specifically clarify what material is or isn’t “harmful to minors.” While adult websites are generally deemed to be hosting material “harmful to minors,” the term is vague, open-ended, and up to legal debate.
For example, North Carolina conservatives regularly declared queer art “harmful to minors” in an attempt to ban students from accessing youth-oriented LGBTQ books. That means laws like the PAVE Act could have a ripple effect beyond porn, preventing young queer kids from accessing age-appropriate artwork about their sexuality and gender identity.
Does that mean North Carolina is banning porn?
Technically—and we quite literally mean the word “technically” here—no. The distribution and access of online pornography in North Carolina is still allowed if a site complies with the PAVE Act. That means an adult website must efficiently and discreetly verify that all North Carolina users accessing a pornographic website are 18 or older.
So, how does the PAVE Act actually impact porn?
De facto, the PAVE Act is a crackdown on NSFW content for North Carolina residents, as the state’s law makes it incredibly expensive and legally risky to provide online pornography to North Carolina visitors. In late December 2023, PornHub pulled the plug on North Carolina users (as well as Montana users, after the state instituted a similar age verification law), resulting in a homepage message calling the states’ laws “not the most effective solution for protecting our users,” arguing it “will put children and your privacy at risk.”
“In addition, mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,” PornHub stated. “As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.” PornHub went on to encourage Montana and North Carolina users to “contact your representatives” and “demand device-based verification solutions,” offloading age verification to hardware suppliers over porn providers.
Age verification laws also harm adult websites’ business operations, according to Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition. While speaking to Politico last year, he warned that age verification systems introduce extensive costs, essentially destroying a company’s revenue. Beyond that, porn users don’t want a privacy-invading age gate, as users tend to avoid accessing sites that use them altogether, according to Stabile. “It turns out, unsurprisingly, that nobody wants to upload their driver’s license or passport before watching porn,” Politico reported.
It makes sense that PornHub or e621 would rather pull out of North Carolina than set up a whole new verification infrastructure. Losing one state’s traffic—and potentially regaining it via a VPN—is a better business move than destroying your entire company with an expensive age gate.
Will the PAVE Act impact the rest of the U.S.?
It’s unclear if PAVE will have a chilling effect on adult content access across the U.S., but North Carolina isn’t the first state to demand adult sites verify their users’ ages, and it likely won’t be the last. And as more of these bills pop up, they have a higher risk of interfering with adult content access across the country. After Virginia implemented its own age verification law for porn access, adult tube site xHamster created an age verification system for the state’s residents. However, one New York City Redditor said they were forced to verify their age in order to continue accessing the site.
As a Brooklyn-based reporter, I tried visiting xHamster without a VPN as well, only to find the site requested my identity in the exact same way. While xHamster offers a relatively quick webcam age-assessment feature, which was far less privacy-invading than uploading my government ID, it certainly felt invasive compared to the alternative: clicking a button that said I could view adult content in my jurisdiction.
It’s not exactly fair for a New York City resident to submit her face and identity to an adult website, all because of the whims of a bunch of powerful Republican men in a stuffy Virginia legislature. But if these laws continue to pop up across red states, we may quickly find a future where pornographic access is pulled from the web, age gated behind obscenely expensive verification systems, or completely inaccessible without access to the darkweb.
Each of these would be a major free speech disaster for American citizens nationwide, and an unfair crackdown on our right to artistic expression.
(featured image: MADUAart/Getty Images)
