Blocking access to Canadians is an option under consideration as Pornhub owners persuade MPs to reject age verification approach outlined in controversial Senate bill He said that it is one of the
“We’ve made different choices in different jurisdictions,” said Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Pornhub’s parent company Aylo.
“I don’t want to speculate on (the bill) as it stands. I’m going to go to committee to make sure the wrong bill doesn’t get passed.”
A House of Commons committee will consider a bill proposed by independent senator Julie Miville-Deschênes that would require Canadians to verify their age when accessing pornography online.
The bill outlines a variety of concerns about minors accessing sexually explicit content, including the potential for developing pornography addiction and reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes.
The group is proposing that companies hosting such content be made inaccessible to young people under threat of fines ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.
The law does not specify how sites can verify a user’s age, but options include establishing a digital ID system or services that can estimate a person’s age based on a visual scan of their face. .
Such proposals have raised widespread concerns from privacy experts about the implications, ranging from the risks associated with asking Canadians to share personal information with external providers to the use of measures such as facial recognition technology. is causing it.
Some companies have warned that age verification could lead to the suppression of freedom of expression, with some companies likely to block access to their sites instead.
They warn that others may simply find a way around the rules.
Overseas legal examples
Sitting in a cafe in downtown Ottawa last week, Friedman said his company has similar concerns about minors accessing Pornhub, one of the internet’s largest porn sites. .
“We don’t want kids on our platform at all.”
That’s not only from a moral perspective, he says, but also from a commercial perspective.
In 2023, his company acquired ownership of Pornhub’s parent company. They were upset by reports that exploded in late 2020 that the site contained child sexual abuse material and countless images and videos uploaded without individuals’ consent.
In response to this report, payment companies such as Visa and MasterCard withdrew their services from the site.
Pornhub has removed millions of unverified videos from its platform and introduced new safety protocols.
Similar laws have been passed in several U.S. states, including Louisiana, that require internet porn sites to verify the age of their users. Traffic plummeted after Pornhub required the use of a government ID to access it.
Friedman said Pornhub completely blocked access for Utah residents after the state passed a bill that didn’t include the option to use government IDs.
the house10:36For the Liberals, there is growing urgency to introduce online harms legislation
Between the rise in online anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and recent horrific sextortion cases involving young people, there are a number of pressing issues that the Liberals’ long-promised Online Harms Bill could address. Host Katherine Cullen speaks with Emily Laidlaw, Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law, and Matt Hatfield of Open Media to find out what the new law is and why. Let’s talk about why it takes so long.
Friedman said such laws fail to achieve the desired effect of protecting children from sexual content and push them into the darker corners of the Internet, sites that may not comply with the law. He claimed he was just pushing him away.
What the company is seeking instead is to hold the manufacturers of the devices used to access the sites accountable, not the sites themselves.
“We never capture personally identifying information about our users,” he said.
“(We) will always abide by the law,” he said.
“It is by imposing a solution, it is by not operating… or all of these, plus when it is considered to violate higher legal principles such as the Constitution. by challenging them by law.”
So far, only Liberal MPs have voted against the bill.
The New Democratic Party, Bloc Quebecois and Conservative Party voted in favor of sending the bill to committee.
NDP House of Commons Leader Peter Julian said in a statement that the New Democratic Party supports the bill because it is intended to protect minors.
“We look forward to considering the bill in committee, including testimony from community, health, and public safety experts, to fully understand the impact of the proposed bill. .”
The Conservative Party has regularly raised concerns about children accessing sexually explicit content, while accusing the government’s efforts to regulate social media companies as censorship.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poièvre’s office did not respond to a request for comment by the publication deadline.
Ontario MP Karen Vecchio, who introduced the bill in the House of Commons, told MPs in December that she agreed personal information should not be collected on individual sites.
However, she expressed hope that a solution will be found as technology advances.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has long promised to enact new protections against online harms, including those that most impact children.
Justice Minister Arif Virani suggested that the new bill would focus on child safety while also respecting freedom of expression.
When asked directly about the matter, his office declined to say whether age verification would be part of the measures being considered.