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Comment by jleyank | Hacker News Reader

I suspect this is the preferred solution for the legislature. At no effort of their own the problem has disappeared. And disappeared in such a way that nobody can participate. (Dup)

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What problem has disappeared? There are still millions of porn sites accessible by Utahans of any age, no?

(This is a genuine question. I’m not trying to be snippy, or even to disagree, just seeking clarification).

Yes, but I imagine that other porn sites are going to block Utah as well. That being said, nothing's really going to change unless Utah bans VPNs as well.

Websites that already flaunt the law (typically on copyright, but also on adult content distribution) because they're not US-based, will continue to do so. Only US-based operations will go to the trouble of blocking Utah. Which means Utah citizens will likely resort to non-US, less-regulated sites, making everything worse (more extreme content, less protections for people appearing in content, etc etc).

>Only US-based operations will go to the trouble of blocking Utah.

Apparently not, as Pornhub is Canadian.

I expect Canada is not beyond the reach of US copyright law, in practice.

On paper PornHub seems headquartered in Cyprus, and parent company MindGeek in Luxembourg. Tax reasons both probably. But it doesn't matter because MindGeek also owns Brazzers, Reality Kings, and a bunch of other porn studios, and they operate out of the US ("porn valley") a lot. Simply ignoring US law can get them in to a lot of trouble. Even a EU-based outfit is relatively safe in comparison, never mind something located in Russia or whatnot.

Until you can't type "porn" in Google and get it, immediately, for free, Utah has made no progress.

I also suspect that there are more legislators than you'd think becoming very well acquainted with VPNs right now.

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