PHOENIX — The Arizona State Senate has amended a bill that would impose new requirements for adult content uploaded online, removing a seemingly contradictory provision that could have effectively made it impossible for adult sites to operate in the state.
According to Free Speech Coalition Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile, FSC worked closely with the sponsor of HB 2133 on the amendments.
“We worked hard in Arizona to educate lawmakers as to the realities of our business and to secure amendments that reflect that,” Stabile told XBIZ.
As XBIZ reported in February, Arizona’s HB 2133, titled the “Protect Act,” is part of the current legislative trend aimed at addressing nonconsensual intimate images online, including those generated by AI. However, the bill also includes new verification and consent requirements for adult websites.
Under those requirements, adult sites would be required to use “reasonable” verification methods to ensure that any individual depicted in sexual material was over 18 and has provided consent, and to maintain records of such verification for at least seven years.
The potential “catch-22” for adult businesses, in the initial version of the bill, was that it defined “reasonable” verification methods as: affidavits attesting to the consent and age of each depicted person, verification through an independent third party, or “Any other commercially reasonable method that does not retain identifying information after the verification is complete.”
The newly amended Senate version of the bill eliminates the language “that does not retain identifying information after the verification is complete,” which seemed directly to contradict the requirement to maintain verification records.
Stabile explained, “Our issue here was that our members are not able to delete model releases and other consent documents. That is fixed.”
FSC’s efforts helped to remove not only that language, but also provisions allowing warrantless attorney general inspections and barring the sharing of documentation with federal, state and local law enforcement.
While affidavits and independent third parties remain options for consent verification in the amended version of the bill, they are not mandatory so long as sites use another commercially reasonable method. This is significant for adult sites because affidavits generally require notarization, making that option prohibitively burdensome. Meanwhile, the third-party option could also have complicated compliance with the record-keeping requirement.
“When I spoke with the sponsor, I explained the methods that we currently use,” Stabile said. “While individuals and organizations affected by the law should review their practices and potential liability with their own counsel, the bill as amended lists out ways of satisfying the consent verification requirement. ‘Any other’ commercially reasonable method should allow just that.”
The amended version also adds language allowing sites to demonstrate that uploaded material was created before the enactment of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act of 1988, rather than verifying age and consent. This addresses the difficulty of verification for material created prior to the Act.
Industry attorney Corey Silverstein told XBIZ that while the updated language in the bill does arguably open the door to less invasive age verification methods and provide flexibility for content publishers in establishing the date of pre-1988 material, the legislation still impinges on constitutional rights.
“Regardless of the ‘softening’ of the language, this is all prior restraint on free speech,” Silverstein said. “The notion that this will actually protect children is absolute nonsense.”
The amended bill has now been transmitted back to the Arizona House of Representatives, which must review the changes.
