The owners of online pornography site Pornhub say blocking access to Canadians is one option they are considering to persuade lawmakers to reject an approach to age verification outlined in the Senate bill.
“We took different options in different jurisdictions,” admitted Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, which owns the company. Pornhub era, Aylo. I don't want to speculate about (the bill) in its current state. We go to a committee to make sure that no bad laws are passed.
A House of Commons committee is expected to consider a bill from independent senator Julie Miville-Dechâne. Canadians would be required to undergo age verification to access online pornography.
The bill sets out a number of concerns about minors' access to sexually explicit material, including the risk of developing an addiction to pornography and increasing sexual abuse. Harmful sex changes.
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Senator Julie Miville-Dechène proposed this bill. (archive photo)
Photo: Radio-Canada / Jacques Corriveau
It also requires companies hosting such content to ensure that young people do not have access to it, punishable by fines of between $250,000 and $500,000.
Methods to be determined
The legislation does not specify how websites must verify a user's age. However, options include implementing an identification system or digital technology services that can estimate a person's age based on a visual analysis of their face.
Such proposals have sparked widespread concern among privacy experts about their overall impact, from the risks associated with asking Canadians to share personal information with an outside provider to the use of measures such as facial recognition technology.
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The various age verification methods raise many questions about data protection. (archive photo)
Photo: iStock
Other critics have warned that age verification could lead to restrictions on freedom of expression, with some companies likely preferring to block access to their websites. And others may simply find ways around the rules.
In an interview last week in Ottawa, Solomon Friedman said his company shared concerns about minors' access to Pornhub, one of the largest porn sites on the Internet. We don't want children on our platform. This is not only the case from a moral perspective, but also from a business perspective, he says.
In 2023, his company acquired ownership of Pornhub's parent company when it was rocked by reports, which exploded in late 2020, that the hosted site contained countless examples of child sexual abuse material, as well as other images and videos, that had been uploaded without a person's consent were uploaded. These reports led to payment companies such as Visa and Mastercard withdrawing their services from the site.
Pornhub has removed millions of unverified videos from its platform and implemented new security protocols.
Examples elsewhere
Similar laws requiring Internet porn sites to verify a user's age have been passed in several US states, including Louisiana. After requiring the use of a government-issued ID to access Pornhub, traffic to the site plummeted.
After Utah passed a law that, according to Friedman, did not provide for the ability to use a government ID, Pornhub added the temporary blocking of access to state residents.
Solomon Friedman argued that such laws would not have the desired effect of protecting children from sexual material, but would only drive them to even darker sites on the Internet, sites that may not comply with the law.
Instead, the Company requests that responsibility lies with the manufacturers of the devices used to access the sites, rather than the sites themselves. We will never take ownership of our users' private credentials. “We will always respect the law,” Mr. Friedman assured.
The opposition supports the bill
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New Democratic Party leader Peter Julian says his party supports the bill. The Conservatives and the Bloc also support it. (archive photo)
Photo: The Canadian Press / Spencer Colby
So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the bill. The New Democrats, Bloc and Conservatives support sending the bill to committee.
Peter Julian, leader of the House of Representatives for the New Democratic Party (NDP), said in a statement that the New Democrats supported the bill because of its intent to protect minors. We look forward to considering the bill in committee, including testimony from community, health and public safety experts, to understand the full implications of the proposed bill.
Conservatives have regularly raised concerns about children's access to sexually explicit material while condemning government efforts to regulate social media companies as censorship. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre's office did not respond to a request for comment before the publication deadline for this article.
Ontario MP Karen Vecchio, who sponsored the bill in the House of Representatives, told MPs in December that she agreed with individual websites not collecting personal information. However, she expressed hope that as technology advances, a solution can be found.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has long promised to enact new protections against online harms, including those that most affect children. Justice Minister Arif Virani said the next bill would focus on the safety of children while respecting freedom of expression. However, when asked directly, his political staff did not respond to whether age verification was one of the measures he was considering.
Responsibility for online harms legislation was transferred from Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge to the office of Arif Virani, whose office said in a press release that the status quo was unacceptable.
While we offer our own made-in-Canada approach to online security, we've taken a cue from the European Union (EU) with the Digital Services Act. Rules, the Online Safety Act of the United Kingdom and that of Australia, where they appointed an Electronic Safety Commissioner in 2015, said a press release.
We can all agree that what happens online doesn't stay online, and our government is committed to making social media platforms safer for our children and all Canadians.
Lianna McDonald, executive director of the Canadian Center for Child Protection, said in a recent interview that she has long advocated for age verification of children. The Center also believes that platforms must create websites with guarantees for children.