CHARLESTON, W.Va. – It used to be that adult websites didn’t have a lot of rules and regulations to follow, especially at the U.S. state-level. Or maybe it used to be that I just didn’t know how many rules and regulations there were that I was supposed to be following, and I was merely living in that blissful state of ignorance people often talk about.
Speaking of states of ignorance, West Virginia is looking to add itself to the growing list of states passing age verification mandates for adult websites, by way of HB 4867, in which the “HB” stands for “Hoo Boy,” of course.
Like age verification bills either passed on under consideration in other states, HB 4867 creates civil liability for entities that “knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the Internet from a website that contains a substantial portion of such material… if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of an individual attempting to access the material.”
The slight twist with HB 4867, as compared to similar Hoo Boys published by other hillbillies legislatures comes in the definition of “substantial portion.” Under the proposed law, a substantial portion means “more than 33-1/3% of total material on a website, which meets the definition of ‘material harmful to minors’ as defined in this section.”
The sponsor of HB 4867, Del. Geno Chiarelli, a Republican from Deliverance Monongalia, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that the 33.33% is a “commonly accepted threshold” for this sort of legislation – one designed to limit the application of the law to dirty websites that deserve our scorn, rather than nice, clean, kid-friendly environments like X, the online cesspool of miscreants and trolls formerly known as Twitter.
“That’s sort of meant to act as a buffer for the types of websites this was meant to target,” Chiarelli said. “The specific example that I have is social media websites like X or Instagram. They do host adult content but that is not the intent of the website.”
Unfortunately for any proactive site operators seeking to stay beneath the “commonly accepted threshold,” HB 4867 doesn’t specify what is being measured in this 33.33%. Is that one-third of the site’s content in terms of total individual files? Is file size the relevant question? Is it run-time of the videos on a video site?
Alas, the current text of Hoo Boy 4867 doesn’t address these questions, leaving us webmasters to guess at how the law would be applied with respect to our websites, some of which are roughly 100% porn at the moment.
The good news is, I have come up with a foolproof system by which we can assure our sites fall under the 33.33% threshold, without sacrificing any of our current, allegedly harmful-to-minors content. All it requires is a digital video camera of some kind (your smartphone will work just fine), a little bit of your time and the ability to make entertaining faces and sounds in response to something you’re watching.
Yes, that’s right: The solution for getting your adult site beneath the magic 33.33% West Virginia threshold is creating a single “reaction video” of the sort you see all over YouTube these days.
I know what you’re thinking: How can a single reaction video offset all the porn already on my server? The secret lies in what you’ll be reacting to, which is the entire, full-length director’s cut of Oppenheimer, which I believe clocks in at just over six years long.
The good news is, it’s possible to shoot a reaction video while multitasking and handling other important tasks. I’m still making my Oppenheimer reaction video as I type this post, for example, making sure to stop every so often to furrow my brow, shake my head, tear up slightly, laugh out loud, scream won’t somebody please think of the children! and all that good reaction video stuff.
When I’m done, my adult website will need a name change (I’m thinking of registering BenSuroesteReactsToOppenheimerAndTits.com sometime during the second half of the film), but what it won’t need is age verification with respect to citizens of West Virginia.
Checkmate, Del. Chiarelli!
Welcome sign photo by Tim Mossholder from Pexels
