How To Stay Legally Protected When Policies Get Outdated

Let’s review four key factors in this sea change, their implications for the adult industry, and what you need to do to protect yourself and your business.

Failing to update legal documents like terms of service, model releases and disclaimers dramatically increases your chance of incurring legal and financial risk.

1. The Age Verification Tsunami

As anyone working in adult today knows, a number of countries and many U.S. states now require websites to verify the ages of users in order to prevent minors from accessing adult content. In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s June 2025 ruling upholding the constitutionality of AV laws made it clear that the First Amendment is no longer a shield against such rules. Florida, Texas, France, Germany and the U.K. are all in the midst of pursuing legal action and penalties against adult content providers for failing to comply with age verification requirements. Penalties for noncompliance can be severe, including substantial fines and civil liability.

Companies must now navigate a patchwork of national and regional laws and standards, requiring them to tailor their terms, policies and operational procedures to each jurisdiction. This global shift means that a one-size-fits-all legal strategy is no longer viable.

The implications for adult businesses: Terms of service and user agreements must now explicitly outline a site’s age verification process, while privacy policies must be updated to reflect AV data collection and user privacy practices.

2. The Aylo FTC Order: Increased Scrutiny

The Federal Trade Commission and the state of Utah recently settled a complaint against Aylo, requiring the parent company of Pornhub to pay a $5 million penalty and implement new measures to prevent illegal content from appearing on its sites. The FTC and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection claim that Aylo misrepresented the extent to which it guards against the posting of CSAM and nonconsensual material (NCM).

The order references the policies and practices of Aylo's predecessor, MindGeek, which were in effect prior to the company’s 2023 acquisition by Ethical Capital Partners. Aylo admits no wrongdoing in the settlement, but the order does require enhancements to the company’s existing safety measures. While this is arguably largely a PR move by the FTC, it still sets a precedent for how content platforms must guard against illicit material.

The implications for adult businesses: Websites and platforms — especially those hosting user-generated content — must ensure that their policies and procedures go beyond lip service. This means not only stating a zero-tolerance policy for CSAM and NCM, but also detailing the measures in place to enforce it, ensuring effective implementation of those measures and being able to demonstrate that. That includes a clear and efficient reporting mechanism and a process for quickly responding to and removing flagged content.

3. Revenge Porn, VIRP, North Carolina and Model Releases

Model releases, consent forms and related records have long been a cornerstone of the industry, as demonstrated by decade-spanning court battles over 2257 regulations. However, three important developments have brought these documents back into the legal spotlight.

First, legitimate concern and increased public awareness about unauthorized sharing of intimate images — so-called “revenge porn” — has prompted new state and federal laws cracking down on NCM, as well as private lawsuits over alleged NCM. This raises the bar for how websites and platforms ensure and demonstrate that all hosted content is consensually produced.

Second, credit card companies have introduced stricter rules for adult industry merchants. Notably, Visa’s Integrity Risk Program (VIRP) now requires more stringent age and identity verification for performers, robust content moderation and detailed consent records.

Third, anti-porn legislation is subject to "trends" — and one new trend may be emerging in the form of laws requiring an inaccessible level of documentation for previously published content, and effectively invalidating model contracts. North Carolina’s HB 805 is testing the waters by requiring that adult sites verify performers’ ages and consent via a process that significantly exceeds federal record-keeping requirements under Section 2257, obtain explicit written consent for each individual sexual act in the content, obtain separate consent for distribution of the content, and remove content if anyone appearing in it withdraws their consent, regardless of signed legal contracts. If other states or countries adopt such rules, it could create havoc in the adult industry.

The implications for adult businesses: Websites and platforms should meticulously update their internal record-keeping, and expand their model releases and consent forms to include highly specific and granular consent clauses that go far beyond a simple blanket release. In this new legal reality, consent must be not only documented but demonstrably informed and ongoing.

4. Getting Up to Speed on Data Privacy

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) and various other state laws in the U.S. have fundamentally changed how companies must handle user data. These laws come with substantial financial penalties and are being enforced actively — yet most adult websites still operate with privacy policies that are woefully out of date, failing to meet the rigorous standards of modern data privacy laws.

Those standards include: data minimization, so that sites do not collect more information than is absolutely required; the “right to be forgotten,” meaning that users, especially in the EU and California, have the right to request that their personal information be deleted; opting in rather than opting out for collection of sensitive personal information like geolocation or biometric data; and the right of users to access their data and request corrections if needed.

The implications for adult businesses: A modern, compliant privacy policy must do more than simply state that a site collects data. It must clearly outline users’ privacy rights and how they can be exercised, provide clear and accessible mechanisms for submitting requests, and provide users with a granular level of control over their data.

The Perils of Outdated Legal Documents

In all four of the cases described above, failing to update legal documents like terms of service, model releases and disclaimers dramatically increases your chance of incurring legal and financial risk. These documents are often riddled with vague language, predate crucial laws like the GDPR and CPRA, and fail to address modern concerns like NCM and detailed consent. The repercussions can include:

• Discredited defenses: If a company faces litigation, an outdated model release or consent form can be challenged easily in court, leaving the company without a credible legal defense.
• Regulatory fines: Data privacy regulators, such as those enforcing the GDPR, can impose fines of up to 4% of a company’s global annual revenue for privacy violations. An outdated privacy policy that fails to adequately protect user data is a prime target for such enforcement actions.
• Loss of payment processing: A company that cannot produce detailed, legally sound model releases and consent forms will likely have its payment processing terminated, effectively shutting down its business.
• Erosion of public trust: Failure to update policies also signals disregard for safety and privacy. This can lead to a loss of trust among performers and users, reputational damage and a decline in user engagement and business viability.

These legal, financial and regulatory shifts mark a complete paradigm change. In this new environment, the use of a simple, boilerplate legal disclaimer is no longer a safeguard. It is a liability.

To meet and survive these challenges, adult businesses must adopt an increased level of legal rigor.  The initial costs of becoming compliant — such as investing in legal counsel to draft new policies, implementing robust age verification technology, or establishing secure data storage — are insignificant compared to the potentially devastating financial and reputational fallout of a regulatory action or private lawsuit. A single high-profile case could result in millions of dollars in legal fees, multimillion-dollar fines and crippling settlement costs that could force a company into bankruptcy.

The old way of doing business is no longer a viable option. Companies that fail to adapt risk not only fines and litigation but also the very ability to operate. Ignoring this imperative would be a dangerous mistake.

This article does not constitute legal advice and is provided for information purposes only.

Corey D. Silverstein is the managing and founding member of Silverstein Legal, which represents all areas of the adult industry. His clientele includes hosting companies, affiliate programs, content producers, processors, designers, developers, operators and more. He is licensed in numerous jurisdictions. Contact him via MyAdultAttorney.com, corey@silversteinlegal.com or 248-290-0655.