Pornographic internet websites

The law creates website duties and civil remedies aimed at content depicting people without consent, including material created when they were minors.

What the law does ​

• Requires covered website operators to use ordinary care and reasonable diligence to prevent sexually explicit content involving a nonconsenting person or a person who was a minor when the content was made.
• Requires uploaders to certify under penalty of perjury that every depicted person was an adult when the content was created and consented both to being depicted and to the upload.
• Requires operators to collect uploader contact information, verify the uploader’s email address, and retain certifications and contact information for at least seven years.
• Makes knowingly false uploader certifications an infraction punishable by a $1,000 fine.
• Allows harmed depicted individuals to seek damages of up to $75,000 per violation, or actual damages if greater, plus punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and court orders.
• Allows public prosecutors to seek $25,000 per violation, court orders, attorney’s fees, and other relief; each day unlawful content remains accessible is a separate violation.
• Excludes private, user-selected direct messages on online dating services that are not publicly available, publicly fed, or publicly searchable.

Who it affects ​

• Operators of websites that permit or solicit user-uploaded sexually explicit content.
• People who upload sexually explicit content to those websites.
• People depicted without consent, depicted as minors, or whose content was uploaded without consent.
• Public prosecutors enforcing the law.

Context ​

The law does not cover email, direct-messaging, cloud-storage, or file-transfer services based solely on those functions.