1. United States
2. Ga.
3. Letter

I'm writing in regards to another reason why age verification laws don't work as intended: they increase the growth of unregulated pirate sites that don't issue age verification. This is in reference to a Kentucky lawmaker who is now erroneously pushing age verification to all sites that host images in the US because she was a victim of non-consensual image sharing. No one is arguing that her case shouldn't be taken seriously and acted upon. It is unfortunate that anyone should go through that at all and the perpetrators should be prosecuted and sentenced accordingly. However this incident highlights a few vital flaws with age verification laws as they are passed and written. First, these laws prevent access to legitimate content and chill legal expression by causing sites in the US to remove or ban anything explicit That doesn't break the law. You will notice in this case that the AV Laws in Kentucky did nothing to prevent this congresswoman's sensitive data from being exposed or exploited by third parties in countries that host sites that don't regulate their content. Secondly, these laws assume that the dissemination of these photos will be stopped by ID checks, or at the least slowed down. As the unfortunate lawmaker's case confirms, this is not true in the slightest. In fact, it only pushes traffic to less secure and less regulated sites that are already notorious for hosting NCII, CSEM and CSAM. It creates an incentive for non-consensual photos to thrive instead of vanish. The third case against AV laws is that they failed to attack the right targets. These laws were made to tackle sites like the one the lawmaker's photos were uploaded to. Not only is it going to be difficult to prosecute the actors who did this, because they are likely not based in the US in the first place, but this proposal to expand AV laws to apply to ALL image hosting sites Will still miss the perpetrators of the act while banning all legal speech here in the states and possibly worldwide. It's like making a wall with one small section of stone while the rest of it is low hanging wire and rotted wood. Please repeal or narrow down AV laws.