Aylo, parent company of porn hub, sues Utah Over VPN Rule; Enforcement Stalled for 120 Days for Aylo sites
Aylo sued Utah again. This time, to prevent the enforcement of a VPN ban.
“Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub.com, was able to secure an agreement last week with the state of Utah preventing the enforcement of a law that prohibits the use of virtual private networks to circumvent the state's age verification statute.
Enforcement now begins September 3, according to court documents. The delay agreement only applies to Aylo sites, currently. “
“Aylo sued the Utah Division of Consumer Protection and the state's Department of Commerce in late April in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, alleging constitutional violations,
including accusations that the state is violating the interstate commerce and foreign commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution”
The lawsuit also makes allegations of "unlawful state extraterritorial regulation."
"This new law is unconstitutional for three independent reasons: it constitutes impermissible extraterritorial legislation, it violates the dormant Commerce Clause, and it also violates the Foreign Commerce Clause by interfering with purely international transactions involving foreign entities and foreign nationals," argue attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
Lawrence Walters, an attorney specializing in adult entertainment industry litigation has said about this law
"The expectation to identify the location of users who access a website through a VPN is an impossibility.
The law is extremely vulnerable to constitutional challenges, and the state could be on the hook for significant damages and attorneys' fees, particularly if it moved forward with enforcement proceedings."
“Central to Aylo's lawsuit is the assertion that SB 73 will cause irreparable harm to its businesses and the overall access to marketized privacy-preserving technology.”
"There is no feasible way for a company like Aylo to reliably verify whether any particular individual is using a VPN, proxy server, or other location-masking technology—and therefore no way to determine whether a user who appears to be located outside Utah is, in fact, located inside Utah," said a spokesperson for Aylo.
lack of standing
The spokesperson added
The spokesperson added, "Utah is projecting its policy choices onto conduct occurring entirely outside its borders, in states and countries that have made different legislative judgments. … It is our opinion that this new law is unconstitutional and that no single state has constitutional authority to set the terms under which a global company may operate on the global Internet."
