Indiana AG Sues Nearly 50 Porn Sites for Violating State Age-Verification Law
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) said Monday the state sued "approximately" 50 adult websites for flouting the state’s age-verification law.
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Indiana enacted the age-verification law in 2024, prohibiting adult-oriented websites from publishing content harmful to minors unless the site operator “uses a reasonable age verification method” to ensure minors are prevented from accessing the site.
None of the websites in the lawsuit, which were associated with the porn conglomerate Aylo, comply with the Indiana law, the complaint said. The sites also “have a history of misrepresenting to Indiana consumers [their] efforts to limit child-sex abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM) in violation of the Indiana Deceptive Consumer Sales Act.”
From 2020 to 2023, the Aylo websites “allowed the upload of at least eleven million videos and photos without verifying the identities and consent of all the individuals in the videos and photos," the Indiana AG said.
After the age-verification law passed, the websites refused to “implement any form of reasonable age verification,” and instead claimed to disable access to those residing in Indiana, the lawsuit said. However, the adult websites “have publicly admitted they know that Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), proxies, and location spoofing software may be used” for Indiana residents to continue to access their sites.
Rokita sought a permanent injunction of the Aylo sites’ conduct. Though “adolescent exposure to pornography carries severe physical and psychological harms,” the adult sites “seem intent on peddling their pornographic perversions to Hoosier kids,” he said in a release Monday.
In an emailed statement to Privacy Daily, Aylo said it has restricted access by Indiana user. As such, it's in compliance with the law. Aylo looks "forward to the facts being fully and fairly aired" in court.