At the dawn of the new year, Pornhub will leave Florida. Thanks to a harsh new age verification law that takes effect on January 1, the porn giant will no longer do business in the sunshine state. The law mirrors similar laws passed in other Republican led states where Pornhub has stopped doing business.
But, isn’t Florida where they make some of the porn?..California, Florida, Nevada. The rest is the other parts of the world or people in their bedrooms or hotel bedrooms.
The law doesn’t technically ban porn. It just sets arduous requirements on distribution of porn. They can still produce it all they want, but Florida is now a difficult market to sell it in.
I expect to see a rise in European or other foreign porn sites. These will be able to safely ignore any “requirements” from Florida.
Any corporation not based in Florida can safely ignore Florida laws. This is just PH making a statement, like they have been in other states.
That gets complicated if they’re in the US. Technically, they only need to follow laws in places where they have a presence. But there are US courts that have ruled that operating a web service available in their jurisdiction counts. Then there’s all the stuff about interstate commerce and enforcement, lawsuits and criminal charges, etc. for a simple example, look up Media Matters and Twitter.
Conversely, if they are entirely outside of US jurisdiction, Florida can file (and win) lawsuits to their heart’s content. It only matters if they can collect or enforce an injunction, or at least enforce a block.
Pornhub is a Canadian company.
Seems they are officially based out of Cyprus, with a large parent (equity) company operating in multiple countries.
I’m betting at least some of those operations are in the US, although I couldn’t easily find a list to confirm. They could also have employees, such as developers, or operate data centers in the US. HQ isn’t especially meaningful in this context.