Wisconsin governor rejects porn age verification

Wisconsin's Governor Tony Evers rejected a bill that aimed to make residents confirm their age before entering adult websites, as highlighted in an article from 404 Media. 

In a communication to the lawmakers last week, Evers stated that the bill “places a significant and unnecessary hardship on adults accessing legally protected material.”

If it had passed, the bill (AB 105) would have mandated any website with over one-third of its content potentially harmful to minors to provide a “reasonable” age verification method. 

This could include requesting users to present a government-issued identification. More than twenty states have already established similar age confirmation protocols for adult content, like Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, and Virginia, prompting Pornhub to restrict access in these regions.

Last month, the Wisconsin branch of the ACLU provided testimony cautioning that AB-105 “raises major concerns about privacy, monitoring, and First Amendment rights,” and apparently, Governor Evers concurred. 

“I am rejecting this bill entirely because I oppose its breach into the privacy rights of Wisconsin citizens,” Evers conveyed, voicing his worries about data protection and the risks of personal information being improperly used due to the age verification requirement.

An earlier draft of Wisconsin’s age verification proposal also suggested a prohibition on virtual private networks (VPNs), tools frequently employed to bypass age barriers online. 

Lawmakers eliminated this clause in February, although there's growing scrutiny on VPNs by global regulators.

While turning down this particular bill, Evers remains open to different approaches for age verification, such as “device-centric” methods to confirm a user’s age via their mobile phone or other digital devices.