By now, most adult creators have seen the news: Clips4Sale has restricted access in Alabama following the passage of House Bill 164, a law that introduces new notarized consent requirements for performers and platforms. The company says the move is about compliance and long-term stability. Many creators say it feels like abandonment.
Both things can be true at once — and that’s part of what makes this moment so troubling.
Laws like Alabama’s are often framed as “protective,” sold to the public as safeguards against exploitation. But when you listen to the people actually affected by them — performers, independent creators, and small businesses — a different picture emerges. One of confusion. One of fear. And increasingly, one of quiet erasure.
House Bill 164 is not an isolated development. It is part of a growing wave of state-level legislation that targets adult platforms through consent verification, age checks, and documentation requirements that sound reasonable on paper but quickly fall apart in practice.
The result is not better protection. It’s fragmentation.
A Law That Misunderstands the Industry It Regulates
Adult performers are not operating in a legal vacuum. For decades, the industry has followed strict federal record-keeping requirements, including identity verification, age documentation, and signed model releases. These processes are already mandatory, already audited, and already taken seriously — because the consequences of getting them wrong are severe.
That is why many creators reacted with disbelief when reading Alabama’s legislation.
Adult performer Leilani Lei summed up the frustration nicely on X when she asked whether lawmakers understand what notarization even does. A notary, she pointed out, simply verifies identity and witnesses a signature. They do not evaluate consent, approve content, or judge legality. Requiring notarization for every performer signature does not increase safety — it increases paperwork, cost, and logistical impossibility.
Do lawmakers expect notaries on every set? For every solo clip? For content created privately by independent performers in their own homes? These questions are not rhetorical. They expose the gap between how laws are written and how adult work is actually done.
When legislation ignores operational reality, compliance stops being a matter of responsibility and becomes a matter of geography. Platforms geoblock. Creators lose access. Income disappears — not because of wrongdoing, but because compliance becomes impractical.
When “Protection” Leads to Financial Harm
Perhaps the most overlooked consequence of laws like HB 164 is economic.
Adult creators are not abstract entities. They are individuals, many of whom rely on digital platforms as their primary source of income. When a state is geoblocked, performers living there are suddenly cut off from their audience. When a platform restricts access, creators with fans in that state lose sales overnight.
Cupcake SinClair’s reaction to the news on X captured what many are feeling: fear. Not fear of regulation itself, but fear of where this leads. If laws like this continue to spread — each with slightly different requirements — what happens to creators a year from now? Two years from now? Do platforms simply retreat from state after state until access is determined by ZIP code?
That is not protection. That is attrition.
And while platforms like Clips4Sale may view geoblocking as the least harmful option available, the burden of that decision falls squarely on creators. Creator criticisms of the move reflect a growing resentment that platforms are making unilateral decisions that reshape livelihoods without offering alternatives or support.
From the creator’s perspective, compliance decisions made in boardrooms translate into real-world consequences: lost customers, reduced visibility, and increased instability in an already precarious line of work.
The Patchwork Problem No One Wants to Solve
One of the most dangerous aspects of the current legislative trend is inconsistency.
Each state passes its own version of “protective” laws, often without coordinating with others or consulting industry experts. The result is a patchwork of requirements that no single platform can realistically satisfy in full. What is legal and compliant in one state may be non-compliant in another.
For large tech companies, patchwork laws are an inconvenience. For adult platforms — many of which already operate under higher scrutiny, higher fees, and higher risk — they can be existential threats.
And for independent creators, they are destabilizing.
When lawmakers fail to consider the cumulative effect of these laws, they create an environment where compliance becomes less about ethics and more about survivability. Platforms that cannot afford bespoke, state-by-state compliance systems opt out. Creators are left scrambling to adapt, relocate, or rebuild their businesses elsewhere.
Who Is Being Protected — and From What?
Supporters of laws like HB 164 often speak in moral absolutes. They talk about exploitation, trafficking, and consent — serious issues that deserve serious solutions.
But when laws fail to distinguish between criminal behavior and lawful adult work, they end up punishing the latter while doing little to stop the former.
Bad actors do not comply with paperwork requirements. They do not notarize consent forms. They do not operate transparently on established platforms. Meanwhile, compliant creators and platforms bear the cost of laws that do not meaningfully target wrongdoing.
Protection that collapses under scrutiny is not protection at all. It is optics.
A Future Built on Exclusion Is Not a Solution
The adult industry is not asking for deregulation. It is asking for regulation that reflects reality.
That means lawmakers engaging with performers, platforms, and legal experts who understand how consent, documentation, and digital distribution actually work. It means recognizing that adding procedural hurdles does not automatically increase safety — and that removing access can actively harm the very people these laws claim to protect.
If the current trend continues unchecked, the future of adult content in the United States may not be one of reform, but of retreat. More geoblocking. More platform withdrawals. More creators pushed out of legitimate marketplaces and into less secure alternatives.
That outcome serves no one — not performers, not platforms, and certainly not the public.
The conversation around adult content regulation needs to move beyond slogans and start grappling with consequences. Until it does, laws like Alabama’s will continue to feel less like protection and more like erasure.
