A hot potato: Would you be happy to hand over your ID in order to view online pornography? Probably not, but it's a requirement being pushed by more seven states as a way of preventing minors from viewing material meant for adults' eyes only.

After Louisiana became the first state to require that residents provide ID when visiting major online porn sites, Florida, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia introduced similar laws, according to a tracker from the Free Speech Coalition (via Ars Technica), while Arkansas, Mississippi, and Virginia appear close to passing their own age verification bills.

In Arkansas, the Protection of Minors from Distribution of Harmful Material Act (Senate Bill 66) would require state residents to provide a "digitized identification card" before viewing a pornographic website, defined as a site in which 33.33% or more of its contents is "harmful material."

That's a pretty ambiguous definition, but Motherboard notes that the Arkansas bill, which refers to pornography as a public health crisis, goes into detail on what it considers harmful to younger viewers; specifically, body parts and certain acts: nipple of the female breast, pubic hair, anus, vulva, or genitals; touching, caressing, or fondling of nipples, breasts, buttocks, the anus, or genitals; or sexual intercourse, masturbation, sodomy, bestiality, oral copulation, flagellation, excretory functions, exhibitions of sexual acts, or any other sexual act.

Websites are also considered harmful if the material taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors, which sounds like it could rule out a lot of non-porn sites.

The bill also warns of the dangers that come from minors being exposed to pornography, including negatively impacting brain function and development, exacerbation of emotional or medical issues, triggering deviant sexual arousal, promoting harmful sexual behaviors, and causing self-esteem issues or body image disorders.

Pornhub and other major porn sites owned by its parent company, MindGeek, now requires visitors connecting from Louisiana to verify their age before accessing the content, which involves creating an AllpassTrust account and then verifying their age using LA Wallet, a Louisiana government mobile app that creates a digital version of a Louisiana Driver's License.

It's not just the US where ID requirements for porn sites are being introduced. The UK's years-long push to introduce the same thing in the country could finally come into effect within the next six months as conservative MPs call for an amendment to the Online Safety bill.

The effectiveness of these bills is questionable. No matter how much these sites promise that they don't keep user data, most people aren't going to want to hand over their ID before spending an hour looking at hentai shoe porn (or whatever, no judgment). There are also VPNs for evading ID checks and the fact that many under-18s access adult material on social media platforms such as Twitter.