Canadian politicians vs … PornHub?

In today’s Big Story Podcast, most people would support the concept of preventing children from accessing online pornography. But the devil is in the details. How exactly do you do that? And what level of privacy will you ask adults to give up to make it happen.

A bill currently sitting in committee has this very goal, but no details yet to go with it. It may involve asking sites like industry leader PornHub to access users’ identification. It may even require facial recognition software. PornHub, meanwhile, is saying it won’t break the law, but it also might just decide to block all Canadians from the site, just to be safe.

Stephanie Taylor is a parliament hill reporter with The Canadian Press. “What [this legislation] could very well run the risk of doing is simply driving people, young people or others, to simply darker, kind of more seedy corners of the internet, to companies and sites that will not be willing to follow the laws,” says Taylor.

So Canadian politicians are trying to legislate pornography, how messy might this get?