Porn as normal and boring? New Pornhub owners support age verification

After saying governments should stop cracking down on porn websites and instead take pride in sexual expression and help to make porn normal and "boring," the new owner of Pornhub said that their company is in favor of legislation that will require users to verify their age before accessing their content.

Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, which bought Pornhub's parent MindGeek three months ago, said they do not want underage users to be on their website.

"We are strongly in support of age verification solutions that do two things: protect children effectively and do not expose personal data," said ECP founder Solomon Friedman in an interview with AFP.

"The only solution that accomplishes both of these goals is device or browser-based verification," he said, adding that it would be "a very simple step for Google and Apple."

A few countries have passed age verification laws to protect minors from adult content, such as the United Kingdom and France. Several US states such as Utah, Louisiana, and Virginia also have similar legislation.

In the Philippines, age verification protocol is among the provisions of Republic Act 11930 or Anti-Online Sexual Abuse or Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) and Anti-Child Sexual Abuse or Exploitation Materials (CSAEM) Act, which lapsed into law in July last year.

"All online providers of adult content shall be required to adopt an anonymous age verification process before granting access to adult content," Section 35 of the law reads.

The National Telecommunications Commission is mandated to complete a policy study into age-verification controls. This is in order to come up with rules and regulations to restrict access of children to content within the purview of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board.

The rules and regulations have to be put into effect within 18 months after the passage of RA 11930.

According to the law, nothing in the provision is an exemption to the Data Privacy Act of 2012.

The Philippines topped the list of countries spending the most time on PornHub in 2021, with Filipino users spending 11 minutes and 31 seconds on average on the website.

MindGeek, which also operates other adult entertainment websites such as YouPorn and RedTube, got into hot water in 2020 when the New York Times published allegations that its sites were hosting material depicting rapes and sex involving minors.

The article sparked heavy pressure from regulators in several countries and Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments.

The owners spent two years trying to sell the firm, which is largely based in Canada but has a complex corporate structure spanning many of the globe's tax havens, with its official headquarters in Luxembourg.

The new owners—who include two lawyers, an ex-police officer and an Italian investor who made his fortune in the legal sale of cannabis—are keen to distance themselves from the New York Times allegations.

Friedman said the company had completely changed in the past few years.

He boasted that eight million pieces of content had been taken down in 2021— a claim AFP cannot verify.

"A content removal request automatically results in the content being removed," he said. "We review it after it's removed."

In addition, uploaders had to provide identification, all content was scanned by algorithms to filter out copyright-protected material, and it is then viewed by company staff before it hits the web.

—with reports from Marisse Panaligan/GMA Integrated News