So apparently PornHub from today is blocking Utah from their sites due to a new law going into force tomorrow in that state.
Anyone else doing it?
I’ve blocked Utah for years now - ever since they passed that other law. And I started blocking Louisiana earlier this year. I also block all countries where there’s a significant risk of death for LGBT folks.
How did you do it? Did you have to buy a IP database? Some of them seem very expensive.
I use Maxmind’s free GeoLite2 database:
To block states you need the GeoLite2 City. It’s a database you replicate locally (make sure to turn on updates!) then there’s an Apache module that lets you pull the data into Apache environment variables which you can use in .htaccess files as well as in your own code.
If you need code examples, let me know. I’m happy to explain further. Are you with Mojohost? If so - just tell them to set it up the way it’s set up on my server (srv5768). Though they didn’t set up the stuff in my .htaccess files - I did that part.
When I need more accuracy I do API calls to MaxMind to get data from their GeoIP2 service.
Thanks for sharing will take a look. My programmer did say though that this database isn’t very accurate.
I store the values when I retrieve them (paid) from Maxmind and when I record the value I also record what GeoLite says for the same IP. Based on the the ~587K IPs that I have data on - if you go out N decimal places on latitude here’s what percentage of the Lite responses are identical to the paid version…
- 28.7% at 4 decimal places
- 29.3% at 3 decimal places
- 32% at 2 decimal places
- 42.1% at 1 decimal place
The standard deviation for the non-exact matches was about 1.07 for all of those cases.
The fact that 58% of the time it can’t even get accurate to 1 decimal isn’t great. But it’s better than nothing I guess.
I should also mention that I haven’t done the paid pulls in over a year and the exact matches averaged nearly a year younger than the not exact matches. So the Lite data was getting better…
we use maxmind already, so will try out the paid and see how accurate we get.
we have 11 paid members from Utah, so we can run an accuracy test on their logins…
We were thinking of creating a page where they need to upload their ID (which then needs to be manually verified) in order for them to visit the site. It would be some extra work, but I think if someone was going to go to that much trouble they might actually become a paying subscriber.
Has anyone tried something like this? Or is there an age verification system on the market that is easy to set up and could do this for us? Do you think it would at least show enough intent on our end to comply with this draconian law? There is virtually no guidance, the FSC even sent the Mayor of Utah an open letter about this, it’s really ridiculous but I think if you are showing an intent to comply that should be enough for a jury in court at this point.
Danny - the problem is the law is contradictory to the point that there may be no age verification system that would keep a site out of trouble. It’s explained in FSC’s open letter to the legislator who drafted the law…
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Yes I saw that letter. At this point I was just thinking doing something might be better than doing nothing. I guess I’ll keep an eye on things. You’d think with all the money in the adult industry we could do more to challenge this in court rather than just blindly complying, like if everyone joined together to pay for a legal fund to challenge it and hired some great lawyers. We should be suing the state of Utah for a violation of our freedoms.
Legal challenges take time. I’ve been chatting here and there with one of the big first amendment lawyers and first up is challenging the Louisiana law, though I don’t think they’ve filed yet. Utah is a copycat of that law so if they can win LA, it should invalidate UT. (I’d think - didn’t discuss that with him).
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It looks like the FSC is already on it. 
I’m not sure we would be comfortable even possessing a copy of someone’s ID. Over here it would certainly breach all GDPR rules.
Some bigger companies I spoke with are going to rely on CC verification and keep all their outward-facing material G rated until they are told explicitly that this is not ok.
There are solutions like age-ify.com that will allow you to do X number of verifications a month for free. We are also testing out Yoti (they seem to have the greatest tie-in with the UK system, but are usable in most cases).
FSC can fight this all they want, and even if they win, new laws will be drafted to counter any weaknesses in the original one… and by that time, we will be already verifying age for the rest of the world.
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Speaking from a UK point of view that might help you guys with the law here, eBay here uses https://www.verifymyage.co.uk/ they have also contacted us back a few years ago when the UK age verif was first being talked about…
Reason I point them out is basically since someone who is already registered with them gets auto verified and since most people in the UK use ebay they have a very good coverage, I know personally I have been verified by them buying vaping products in the UK on ebay and since if I go to buy alcohol or vape juice or anything age restricted here online on a random online retailer I see the little verify my age box pop up on the checkout and it just auto verify’s me, no need to login or anything, so not sure exactly how that would work for adult (as when it checks on checkout it obviously has my name/address in the cart it can check against to see its the same person, but its possible it could work by someone confirming 1-2 details on page landing, or more at checkout.
I have no idea about the costs ect though although I know when I discussed with them a few years ago they were throwing the 10-25 cents numbers around at the time.
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here are solutions like age-ify.com that will allow you to do X number of verifications a month for free. We are also testing out Yoti (they seem to have the greatest tie-in with the UK system, but are usable in most cases).
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Thank you guys, I’ll be reviewing these next week and also going to seek out some legal counsel on it. Much appreciated!
We are blocking Utah and Louisiana currently. Hopefully the FSC makes progress in the Utah courts.
We had VerifyMyAgre all ready to go… reasonable prices (15p) etc and then they sent over an agreement with a 1000gbp/month minimum guarantee
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Thinking of simply making it conform with the rules for Utah by adding Spencer Cox’s face over anything non-compliant
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Well, if you put Spencer Cox’s face at least you will be showing a real dick…
“Oh, you said you wanted to see cocks, I thought you said Cox…”
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