Viewer discretion is advised—not mandatory. Whether you watch pornography or attend an R-rated movie showing, the government should not limit your interests. The passage of Louisiana’s newest law acts as the latest example of the government overstepping this right to privacy.

Louisiana’s Act 440 requires adults to verify their age before accessing pornographic content. Now websites like Pornhub and Brazzers demand viewers submit evidence of a government-issued ID. According to the new law, any website that shows at least 33% pornography must verify users’ ages or face legal action.

Yet Act 440 never explicitly defines what qualifies as pornography.
Is pornography limited to sex? Lawmakers will decide using a 50-year-old Supreme Court case. The Miller Test established guidelines for determining the appropriateness of explicit content. But justices created the Miller Test before the rise of pornographic websites.

The lack of clarification in the new porn law threatens all websites that fail to promote only child-friendly content. Users in Louisiana could eventually no longer have access to social media giants like TikTok and Twitter.

Say goodbye to the land of the free and the home of the brave. Louisiana is now a surveillance state.

A coalition of Republican and Democrat lawmakers supported this offensive legislation. With decades

of in-party fighting forgotten, Louisiana legislators justified Act 440 by claiming pornography causes devastating harm to minors.

“Online pornography is extreme and graphic and only one click away from our children,” Rep. Laurie Schlegel, the creator of the new law, said. “And if pornography companies refuse to be responsible, then we must hold them accountable.”

Protecting minors must not come at the cost of public privacy.

While I agree minors should not view pornography, parents can simply monitor their child’s access to certain websites through Google and Safari. Search engines established parental controls to restrict adult content. Parents can even block their children from viewing adult content by clicking a few buttons. The government was not structured to parent children but to protect the rights of the American people—the right to privacy included.

By infringing on a citizen’s right to privacy, Louisiana’s new law affects the safety of internet users. Rumors of data pillaging and identity theft plagued legislators as the law went into effect on Jan. 1.

“There is the explicit intention in the law that verifiers and websites that are using age verification should not retain [your information],” Jason Kelley, the associate director of Electronic Frontier Foundation said. “But users don’t have a lot of guarantees that

it will happen, and the data will be removed or deleted and shared or used in other ways.”

Adults wanting to watch pornography first must sacrifice private data. The new law granted porn sites access to personal information like driver’s license numbers, birth dates and physical identifiers. Websites like Pornhub and RedTube may later sell this information to the highest bidder, resulting in a massive increase in identity theft and stolen data.

According to Javelin Strategy and Research, over 40 million Americans in 2022 experienced some form of identity theft.

No longer will your credit card information, computer passwords or security questions be secured safely on your computer’s hard drive. Now it could be broadcast across the internet.

As a result, Louisianans must be concerned about the ramifications of the new law. The right to privacy does not just encompass a viewer’s ability to watch porn but also the protection of data.

The passage of Act 440 in Louisiana demonstrates the boundaries the government willingly crosses in favor of protecting its citizens.

It is a dire foreshadowing of what is to come for the United States. Pornography was never the problem. Rather it acted as a stepping stone for government censorship.

Louisiana may be the first state to require age verification to view adult content, but it will not be the last. During the latest congressional session, Congressman Mike Lee introduced the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN). This national law would drastically increase the risk of data leakage and identity theft.

Legislators must amend the porn law if they value the rights of Louisiana citizens. In an ideal world, the state fashions an amendment to Act 440 that secures data protection on pornographic websites. An altered state law would protect the innocence of children and the liberties of adults. The immense bipartisan support for
Act 440 makes the possibility of an amendment slim to none.

Get ready to keep your driver’s license handy as you log into Pornhub. Act 440 shows Louisiana lawmakers do not prioritize the freedoms of their citizens. Instead, we lack control over something as simple as porn.