Arizona Child Porn Bill Faces Strike-Everything Amendment From Governor Hobbs Office

Arizona State Representative Nick Kupper Says Governor Hobbs Office Sent Strike-Everything Amendment to Protect Child Porn Bill

State Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Yuma, says Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs office has sent a strike-everything amendment to House Bill 2133, the Protect Act, which seeks to prevent the distribution of child pornography and revenge porn.

Kupper told The Center Square that someone from Hobbs office reached out and started a conversation about the bill. The only concern raised was about the satire clause included in the legislation.

They wrote a completely different bill that did not do at all what my bill did, Kupper said.

The state representative said he told the person from Hobbs office that he worked with Meta, Google and the Free Speech Coalition on the bill. He added that it had a supermajority of votes in the state House.

Kupper said the woman who approached him about running this bill was a victim of revenge porn. Uldouz Wallace, an actress, said she was the victim of the 2014 iCloud hack leak, where she and more than 100 other celebrities had private images leaked online by hackers.

Wallace told The Center Square that after this occurred, it basically destroyed every part of her life. She said the hacker leaked private photos of her, which caused her whole world to be crumbling.

Throughout that time, Wallace said, she experienced severe bullying, harassment, gang stalking and targeting. The actress added that a lot of the bullying and harassing came from other actresses and influencers.

After her photos were leaked, Wallace said, she remained silent for eight years. During this time, she said, she asked adult websites to take down her nonconsensual content. According to Wallace, she spent millions of her own dollars attempting to have these websites take down the items.

I did not see any results from it; it was a bottomless pit, and it was never-ending, Wallace said. I was just wondering why nobody has done anything about this.

Wallace told The Center Square that she quickly realized how much time was wasted attempting to take down all this content, along with how much money and effort it took to remove the content from websites. She questioned why it was up to the survivors to have to take down all this content when it should not have happened in the first place.

Wallace said she decided to share her story with the public and also try to change the law. She said she worked with federal lawmakers to come up with a federal bill to require platforms that host pornography to obtain verified consent from people uploading content or appearing in the content.

HB 2133 Requires Age Verification for Online Sexual Material

HB 2133 requires online commercial websites that publish or distribute sexual materials to receive age verification and consent from everyone involved in the material. The bill also requires commercial websites to use reasonable measures to stop the uploading of unverified sexual material, such as automated detection tools.

Arizona state House passed the bill 41 to 16, with nine Democrats voting with Republicans in favor of the bill in February. The state Senate passed the amended bill 16-12 along party lines.

Kupper told The Center Square this week that when the bill went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, numerous concerns were raised, including that it would block satire and impede record-keeping. He said he amended his bill to address these concerns.

The Senates amended version of HB 2133 included a provision that says the law would not apply to digitally manipulated images or to images that are for parody, comedy, artistic expression or public criticism. Furthermore, the amended bill included a new provision for content created before 1988, which does not need to undergo the verification process.

The reason this year was chosen is that it was when the federal government passed a law requiring the adult content industry to begin keeping records of age and consent.

HB 2133 also now allows for data to be shared with federal, state and local governments.

Kupper Says Bill Does Not Violate Free Speech

Kupper told The Center Square that the bill makes Arizona law more proactive than reactive. He said a misconception people have about the bill, according to Kupper, is that they are equating it to his age verification bill from last years session.

Last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed into law HB 2112, which mandated commercial pornography websites to verify users are of legal age before being able to use their platform.

This bill HB 2133 is about making sure minors are not in adult content, he noted.

Kupper also said another misunderstanding about his current bill is that it restricts free speech. He pointed out that child porn and revenge porn are not protected speech.

The state representative said his bill does not affect protected speech. Kupper said he is building off of existing federal statute and bringing it to Arizona.

His legislation says online commercial platforms cannot share identifying information with federal, state or local government entities. Also, they cannot retain identifying information.

The bill also requires verification records to be kept for seven years and provided to the Arizona attorney general upon request.

Kupper said he worked with the Free Speech Coalition, a nonprofit trade association for the adult industry, on an amendment to his bill regarding record-keeping requirements.

Free Speech Coalition Working With Kupper on HB 2133

Mike Stabile, director of public policy for the Free Speech Coalition, told The Center Square that the amendments the coalition worked on with Kupper were making sure his bill complied with federal law and other regulations around revenge porn and child sex abuse material.

With these new amendments, Stabile said HB 2133 will be stronger in preventing the distribution of revenge and child porn.

Stabile said his organization is taking a neutral stance on HB 2133. Last year, the coalition opposed Kupper age verification bill.

Stable added that his trade association reached out to Kupper to provide its expertise on age and consent verification laws. Adult content sites use multiple verification steps to ensure people in their content are of legal age and have consented to be in the content.

Stabile said he was glad Kupper has been willing to work with the coalition on this bill and hopefully on future bills.

In addition to the Free Speech Coalition, Kupper noted he also worked with Google and Meta on HB 2133.

Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, and Google owns YouTube.

Kupper said he has worked with the two California companies to ensure the bill protects children and non-consenting adults as well as speech.

Kupper Does Not Expect Hobbs to Sign HB 2133

Kupper told The Center Square that he anticipates House Democrats who originally supported his bill in the state House will switch their votes when representatives vote on the amended version on Monday.

He added that he thinks Hobbs will veto the bill and has been trying to persuade Democrats to reject his legislation so the governor can argue its a partisan bill.

I think she is afraid of what it looks like to veto a bill that protects children from being in porn and protects nonconsensual adults from being in porn against their will, he said.

He added that Hobbs or her people think that if they can label it as a partisan bill thats anti-free speech, they can justify going against it.

The Center Square reached out to the Democratic governor for comment, but Hobbs and her staff did not respond before press time despite multiple requests this week for comment.