The Canadian company that owns the pornographic site Pornhub is leading a lobbying campaign in Ottawa to promote an age verification mechanism that would force Apple, Google and Microsoft to activate parental controls on their devices by default.
“We are proposing a law that would make it an offense to make available an operating system that is not blocked by default from access to adult content, and that can only be unlocked by reliable means of verification,” summarizes the vice-president of Ethical Capital Partners, Solomon Friedman, in an interview with The Press.
The company, whose mandate is listed in the Federal Register of Lobbyists, met with Conservative MP Karen Vecchio, sponsor of Bill S-210 in the House of Commons. This bill will be heard at third reading in the spring. If it were to be adopted, it would force the Trudeau government to impose mandatory age verification mechanisms on pornographic sites, in order to prevent access to minors.
The owners of Pornhub, one of the most visited porn sites in the world, oppose any form of verification that would require asking users for personal information or a photo of an official document to prove their age.
The company is instead proposing a solution forcing Apple, Google and Microsoft to activate by default the parental control mechanisms already existing on iPhone, Android and Windows phones. Unblocking could be done after age verification by telephone service providers “like Telus, Rogers, Bell or Videotron” when purchasing the device or activating a plan, suggests Mr. Friedman.
“It’s a technology that is present on our phones and just waiting to be activated. We just have to make it compulsory,” he insists.
Ethical Capital Partners says it is ready to test the formula as part of a pilot project and is committed to sharing the data collected with the government.
“It is clear that the status quo is unacceptable,” responded the office of the Minister of Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, while promising that the government will shortly table its own bill “to ensure online security in Canada “.
Tightening wave
Pornhub’s lobbying campaign comes as the pornography industry faces a wave of legislative tightening in Europe and the United States, where bills requiring age verification are in the works. Pornhub claims to have lost 80% of its audience overnight in Louisiana, where a mandatory age verification mechanism took effect in January 2023.
Marie-Pier Jolicoeur, doctoral student in technology law and children’s law at Laval University, sees in Pornhub’s proposal a “survival reflex” to avoid a scenario similar to that of Germany, where parliamentarians blocked the access to the pornographic site XHamster because it refused to implement an age verification mechanism.
“They tried to defeat the measure by trying to make all kinds of actors responsible, but they were unsuccessful,” summarizes the doctoral student.