In the United States, lawmakers in several states have pushed for ‘age verification’ anti-porn laws that claim to protect children. These laws fail at their purported mission and place undue burden on the free speech rights of adults.

The most recent of these states is Texas, our home state. As you can imagine, this impacts our operations significantly.

However, Artconomy isn’t going anywhere.

This article will explain what the law requires. It will also cover what issues it presents, and how we will comply with the law while pushing forward freedom of expression.

Quick Answers to How we’re Handling the Anti-Porn Law Requirements

You’re probably nervous at this point, so here’s the concrete info:

1. For connections detected from Texas and states that have passed similar laws, access to content above a general rating will not load assets.
   • The page will load and you can read the description of the piece or product but you will not be able to see or read the piece itself. Explanatory messages will show why and redirect to this blog post. The current affected jurisdictions are: Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia.
2. All transactional functionality of the site will still work.
   • This will have some odd side-effects, like the ability to submit adult content but the inability to view it in a gallery where it was posted if you are in a restricted jurisdiction. This also will prevent tools like PostyBirb from breaking.
3. In cases where we can reasonably infer adulthood through verified means, these restrictions will be lifted. These include:
   • Artists who have set up shield protection, as they must onboard with our payment processor which verifies ID and requires registrants to be at least 18 years of age.
   • Users who have commissioned artwork using Artconomy Shield, as they would have needed to provide a credit card to do so. In our view, a credit card transaction is sufficient as a ‘reasonable verification method’ under the law, as account holders must be 18 years of age or older.
   • Users who have paid an invoice that was issued via PayPal integration, for the same reason.
     
     Note that these circumstances will not automatically enable adult content. They will only allow you to enable it if you want to in your settings.
4. For users in states without active anti-porn legislation, the site will function as it always has.
5. We are not currently implementing any system for verifying visitors who haven’t had a business transaction with us.
6. The moment we become convinced a particular jurisdiction is no longer affected, we will lift these restrictions.

An Overview of the Anti-Porn Laws and Their Requirements

In Texas, the law require websites that host a significant amount of adult content to require age verification via electronically verified means.

These electronically verified means are further specified to require verification against real-world business or government records. That means that the previous attestation form we provided, which required setting your birthday and explicitly opting into adult content, no longer suffices for verification.

For casual browsers, this means that they would have to provide government ID or other transactional proof of their adult status.

We find the idea that people would feel comfortable providing their legal documents to websites just to view content absurd. This requirement does not aim to protect children but to stifle legally protected speech.

It also means that affected sites would have to pay verification services just for viewers to access content.

The law pretends to address this by requiring fines for any entity which retains verification information. However, security is hard. The number of data leaks that appear in headlines day-to-day are too numerous to count.

It is a fundamental principle of information security that you do not collect information that you do not truly need. We do not find the reasoning for demanding government documents from visitors convincing, especially in light of the risks. Fines would not undo the damage of a leak.

The Larger Context of Such Laws

Artconomy works to comply with legal requirements. Today, we have modified our site’s functionality to comply with the new laws. We will continue to comply with legal requirements.

A policy is to be judged not by its intents but its effects. We believe there are supporters of these anti-porn laws who erroneously believe that they are protecting children.

We do not believe these laws attain these goals.

Much has been written on the subject already–a simple search will find detailed essays on the shortcomings of these bills. They include details on how these measures can be easily circumvented. They also show how many sites, far beyond the reach of US states, need not, and will not, comply. These sites, unrestrained and unconcerned with safety, will continue to operate and serve content.

We appeal to your reasoning and beg your consideration.

Aside from earnest supporters, there are lawmakers who deliberately designed these laws to interfere with the individual choices of adults. Those who did not and voted for it anyway were grossly negligent in their performance as legislators. They did not care about the implications.

These individuals should not have power over a three legged race, let alone the laws of the land. To interfere with the personal choices of another is to claim ownership over their minds and bodies. It is authoritarian iniquity, unworthy of respect.

Final Thoughts

Self-discovery, self-actualization, and self-authorship are core tenants of individualism. The United States’ identity, and Texas’ in particular, binds tightly to ideals of liberty.

Liberty: the freedom to determine what is right for one’s self and direct one’s own affairs.

Sex and sexuality are intensely personal, and adults should not have to furnish their government ID to random entities in their journey of self-discovery. Such conspicuous spying drives self-censorship and blunts the development of the spirit.

Legislation like this is a mirror that shows in what ways we stray from our ideals, seeking to constrain the flourishing of all in pursuit of our narrow vision of a perfect world.

We know that the truth of individual discovery is both profound and messy– that it does not always appeal to our sensibilities, especially when seeing the journey of others. At Artconomy, we respect this sacred right and responsibility to discover one’s self.

We will continue to operate in ways that maximize individual freedom of expression while working within the constraints of our legal framework.

We stand in hope for the repeal of this legislation.

-Fox, Artconomy.com Founder