Adult Sites Now Complying With Utah’s New ‘Warning Label’ Law

LOS ANGELES—In April, the state of Utah enacted a controversial new law requiring adult sites to preface streaming videos with a “warning label” about the supposed health hazards of viewing porn. Now, even though the final version of the law was scaled back considerably from its highly restrictive early version, several major porn sites are now complying with the labeling requirement, according to a report by Utah television station KSTU.  Three “tube” sites, all owned by the Canadian-based conglomerate MindGeek — Pornhub, XTube, and RedTube — have all begun prefacing videos with an “opt-in” message stating that in the state of Utah, viewing adult material may be harmful to minors, according to the KTSU report. In its original form, the Utah legislation would have required an extensive warning on any content that depicted or described “nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sadomasochistic abuse,” but state legislators trimmed back the bill to apply only to material that could be designated as legally “obscene.”  The envisioned warning of porn’s allegedly “negative impacts to brain development, emotional development, and the ability to maintain intimate relationships,” was cut back to a one-sentence message saying the state considers adult material harmful to minors.  The adult industry trade group, the Free Speech Association, issued a statement at the time calling even the scaled-down bill a “landmine of First Amendment issues.” But according to the recent reports, the MindGeek sites have decided to comply nonetheless. “It shows for a lot of businesses, they’re more concerned about their pocketbook than they are about being prosecuted,” state legislator Brady Brammer, the bill’s author, told KTSU. Under the law, anyone — both public officials and private citizens — may bring a lawsuit against any porn site that does not include the “warning label” feature.  But because, as the FSC statement noted, there remains no agreed-upon, legal definition of what is “obscene,” sites could easily become bogged down in lengthy and expensive lawsuits, if they fail to comply with the warning label law. In a statement to KSTU, FSC spokesperson Mike Stabile said that his group has never advised its members to comply with the law, which it still considers unconstitutional under the First Amendment, but will “respect that a business may make decisions that limit potential liability.” The required warning label must state, "Exposing minors to obscene material may damage or negatively impact minors,” and must remain on screen for at least five seconds.  Photo By Henry Wang / Wikimedia Commons