1. United States
2. Letter

I have been writing for over a week about the ineffective nature of age verification laws. And I am writing again because an example has made itself plain in a state that passed one such law with full approval. A lawmaker in Kentucky became the unfortunate victim of her image being distributed without her consent on a rogue pirate website. Her state had the age verification law in full effect and it still failed to protect her from being victimized and exploited in spite of the many claims supporters of these laws make. The site is a rig pirate website in another country, so it will be gard The site is a rogue pirate website in another country, so it will be hard to properly prosecute the bad actors responsible for this. With that in mind, the lawmaker is proposing to expand an already ineffective law to impact all image hosting sites. This incident proves three things: These laws don't stop exploitation of minors or adults, they only conceal or push traffic to sites willing to meet the demand for photos of real people in intimate situations taken without consent. Laws like this block access to sites that regulate themselves and chill freedom of expression and speech while protecting no one. The AV laws did not prevent the lawmaker's sensitive data from being exposed and exploited by bad actors overseas. Apply strict scrutiny to these blatantly bad laws.