A new law in Louisiana requires age verification with an actual ID before accessing some websites.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

Every January, the new year marks the point when new laws kick in all over the country.

In Louisiana, one of those laws is HB142.

It requires users in that state to prove their 18-year-older before accessing sites that

contain pornographic material.

If a website's content is at least one-third porn, you gotta show an ID.

And the reason that's possible in Louisiana is because it's one of the few states in the

US that allows residents to store government-issued ID digitally on their smartphone.

And that's the ID the state wants people to use if they want to view adult content online.

This new law has many privacy advocates worried, and some researchers warning about unplanned

ripple effects of the law's implementation.

Jordan Taylor is an Internet and social media researcher and PhD student at the Human

Computer Interactive Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

This law says that if a website has, quote, unquote, a substantial portion of its content

deemed harmful to minors, then they need to install these age verification processes.

And it is impacting these pornography sites, like Pornhub, but there's a lot of other

websites out there that may also be meeting this threshold.

For instance, social media sites like Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr have significant amounts

of adult content.

What's the enforcement mechanism for this law?

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