UK's Tories Promise To Enact Age Limits For Viewing Online Porn

An anonymous reader writes with this news from the UK: The Conservatives say they will force hardcore pornography websites to put in place age-restriction controls or face being shut down if they win the election. The culture secretary, Sajid Javid, said the party would act to ensure under-18s were locked out of adult content after a recent Childline poll found nearly one in 10 12-13 year olds were worried they were addicted and 18% had seen shocking or upsetting images. Experts welcomed the move – targeted at both UK-based and overseas websites – but warned it would take hard work to implement in practice.

Comments

I think there's more to it than that

[Zocalo]

Given the previous clueless comments on tech matters that have been made by the UK government I'm inclined to discount this being a case of "yes, we know it's stupid, but it'll win us some votes (from those equally clueless) and we'll forget about it after the election". Nope, the real motivation here seems to be in the bit Slashdot skipped over, despite it being right there on the byline of TFA: "ensure under-18s were locked out of adult content via an independent regulator with power to compel ISPs to block sites". Oh yes, it's the old "let's censor the Internet" meme again, only this time it appears they've at least learnt from their previous mistakes and placed all the financial burden of doing the impossible and somehow blocking the vast number of sites that won't comply with this legislation firmly on the ISPs with fines if they don't co-operate.