Florida Sues Porn Websites on Age-Verification Violations
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (D) filed two lawsuits Monday against pornographic websites that the state said are in violation of its age-verification laws. The state said defendants "failed to implement the safeguards required to verify users’ ages before granting access to pornographic material."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Privacy Daily provides accurate coverage of newsworthy developments in data protection legislation, regulation, litigation, and enforcement for privacy professionals responsible for ensuring effective organizational data privacy compliance.
The first complaint was filed against Gethins Limited, Toccata, Segpay Gateway, Segregated Payments and D/B/A Segpay, all of which distribute or publish a website with pornographic video game content.
The second suit was filed against Aylo Holdings USA Corp., Aylo Billings US Corp., Aylo Group Ltd, and Nutaku Entertainment Ltd., which operate a variety of websites with pornographic and sexually explicit material.
In 2024, the Florida legislature passed a bill that "require[s] commercial entities that distribute sexually explicit material online that is harmful to minors to verify that individuals attempting to access the material are at least 18 years of age," the first complaint said. But the dependents lack "age verification process compliant with Florida law to prevent children from accessing its content," and "each day that the Defendants continue to violate Florida’s age verification law, they rack up numerous violations of these provisions and of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act."
The complaints call for the dependents to be enjoined to prevent future violations of state laws.
"We passed strong legislation to keep kids from being exposed to harmful and toxic material, and instead of following it, these platforms ignored it,” said Uthmeier in a release Monday.