Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, recently introduced the Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking Act of 2022 (PROTECT Act) to bring much-needed and long-overdue regulation to the porn industry, which is currently rampant with abuses.
The PROTECT Act requires porn websites to verify the age, consent, and identity of all individuals appearing on their platforms, filling an urgent and essential regulatory gap.
Online pornography is one of the most lucrative and fastest growing industries in the world today, yet at the same time it is one of the most immune from regulation. This has made an already dangerous industry ripe for further exploitation. The lack of regulation has resulted in pornography websites hosting a large amount of material that is the product of sex trafficking and child exploitation.
The last few years especially have seen a rapid increase in the amount of child pornography (known as child sexual abuse material or CSAM), with social media only further exacerbating its distribution. Without any legal requirement for websites to verify the age or consent of individuals depicted in porn, human traffickers are able to easily exploit children and other victims and upload that exploitation for profit. And every time that exploitation is viewed, that child is revictimized again and again.
