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UK Gov't Launches Public Consultation On Porn-Site Age Checks (bbc.co.uk)

Posted by timothy on from the so-long-as-it's-official dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news from the BBC that the UK government has launched a publc consultation regarding plans to mandate age checks on pornographic websites. According to the article, The proposals follow a Conservative Party manifesto commitment that "all sites containing pornographic material" must check that users are over 18. Internet providers, charities, academics and others will be asked to contribute to the consultation. ... In the consultation document, the government proposes that the checks should apply to content that would receive — if formally classified — an 18 or R18 rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). "We are keen to hear from parents, schools, child protection experts, the pornography industry, internet service providers and online platforms that provide access to pornographic content," the consultation document explained. As part of the plans, the government intends to establish a new regulatory framework to enforce compliance with any rules that are made law.

21 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Keen to hear? by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about this... Watch your own damn kids and quit trying to child proof my world.

    1. Re:Keen to hear? by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Disagree. A parent can't always hover over their children - heck, a parent shouldn't. I'm happy my 9-yo is finally able to get home from school by himself (one stop on the train and a 15-minute walk), very good for his self-confidence. What he's doing out there exactly, I can't tell, but I do trust him to not start smoking, drinking, etc, and to otherwise stay out of trouble.

      There are plenty of other places where age checks are in place, such as bars, amusement centres (for playing computer games), casinos, liquor shops, etc. Those checks are done usually by someone sitting at the door and looking at your face, and asking for proof of age if you look too young. Sure, it's imperfect, but it does put a bit of a brake on under age drinking without parental knowledge and other stuff.

      Internet should be similar, but the big problem is how those age checks could possibly be done without serious privacy invasion. The real-life checks are highly anonymous. You look too young, you're out. You look old enough, you're in. You think you're old enough but look too young, show an ID, and you're in - where the ID is not copied or recorded or so. It doesn't work like that online. Everyone can lie about their age (click the "I'm over 18 and it's legal to watch this crap in my neck of the woods" button) when it's totally anonymous. So probably a login of sorts is required, and even so there is no way to check one's age without extensive personal details and cross checking them with official government records - and even so, how can you see whether those personal details belong to the person providing them?

    2. Re:Keen to hear? by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If it's happening in your home, you're responsible. Those places such as "bars, amusement centres, casino's, liquor shops" are all the place of someone else, and they are responsible.

      In other words, you're happy to let the government do your job.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    3. Re:Keen to hear? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are responsible for the behaviour of your children in your own house. Allowing a minor unfiltered access to the Internet is not "confidence boosting", it's a tragedy waiting to happen. It's easily fixed with existing software too, just install a filter or set up a white list. Not much effort, so much reward.

      In addition: the checks themselves will be an age check. How are you to prove your age online? Are they going to scan your passport or drivers license or are they going to ask you for your date of birth. Any person who is interested in looking at pornography is easily old enough to realize that a simple lie will get them to where they want to be.

      The alternative of course, as you said, is to have some system of citizen registration. "Show an ID where the ID is not copied or recorded"... even before computers were prevalent (making forgeries a far more trivial matter) documents and papers have been faked... with ease. You seem to actually want the government to regulate what is accessible online via a registered database of individuals?!

      You are clearly mad. I can't even begin to say how terrifying that willing submission of rights is. For your own sake read some Orwell.

      Then, at the end of all this effort for dubious reward... what about the porn sites hosted outside of the UK? That's only most of them that won't have to comply with any of these laws.

      So as we come full circle we realize: the only effective way to keep kids safe online is with with a little parental responsibility, since no law passed will ever affect all the porn sites and no system of identity proof will be anything short of privacy destroying. Instead of making demands from the powers that be to keep us safe how about we do it ourselves so it gets done properly?

    4. Re:Keen to hear? by Maritz · · Score: 2

      It kinda looked to me like he suggested you get NetNanny (or am I getting between you and your strawman?) :)

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    5. Re:Keen to hear? by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      So, instead, you suggest me to become a helicopter parent and never leave the kid out of sight until they turn 18 or so?

      Dear Son/daughter/idiot that shares my genes, I understand that xyz is interesting to you. So here's some xyz things I want to explain to you, and even though I'm explaining xyz things to you and don't want you to do it...you're still going to do it. Just don't do xyz things because looking at them are illegal in this country, if you don't understand something ask...even though you'll be embarrassed to hell, you can always ask me via email/text/whatever embarrassing thing you can think of. If you can't follow xyz rules, then I'll just do xyz thing when I'm not home but you are, and you'll only have internet access/restricted access when I'm in the house. And I know that even if I do that, you'll likely go over to abc persons house and look anyway. So to head you off, if it comes to that I'll talk to their parents too.

      It's not that hard to come up with something is it? Unless you're trying to avoid personal responsibility of raising your kid(s). You know, that's how people used to raise their kids ~30+ years ago...

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    6. Re:Keen to hear? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      As usual it's the NSPCC that's behind this, probably one of the most broken corrupt charities in the UK. A charity that is supposed to exist to end things like child cruelty and child poverty and yet has over 50 people earning over £100k a year and that has enough money in the bank to end child poverty tomorrow if it really actually gave a shit about it's goals. This is a charity that has time and time again been hauled in front of the Advertising Standards Agency for outright lying with fake statistics in it's charity appeals.

      Make no mistake, the NSPCC is a hard line ultra-conservative Christian organisation trying to enforce their values on the UK population through a policy of think of the children government lobbying. Most of it's policies have run counter to what it's stated goal as a charity is and have put many children in harm's way by pursuing this sort of strategy of pretending things don't exist, rather than allowing kids to talk freely about them where they can learn how to be sensible, healthy, human beings. Their misrepresentation of abuse figures means that most abuse happens at home and yet they've misled the general public to believe that that's not a threat and that stranger danger is the biggest risk for their kids. They've successfully waged a campaign of statistics abuse that leaves parents looking the wrong way when trying to protect their kids leaving their kids incredibly vulnerable.

      It's easy to look at the government and blame them for laws like this, but time and time again it's this corrupt lobbying organisation that pretends to be a charity that's behind it all.

      The real solution to stopping this shit ending up at parliament is for people to make a stand against fake charities like the NSPCC that are little more than lobbying organisations that pay many millions to their executive team every year whilst child poverty continues.

    7. Re:Keen to hear? by Rockoon · · Score: 2

      Disagree. A parent can't always hover over their children - heck, a parent shouldn't.

      Your idea of using the government to take over for the worst parenting is awesome.

      I'll be moving in tomorrow to protect your children from you, The worst parents abuse their children after all. You are right, not every parent can be a good parent 24/7. Thats why you are no longer allowed to be around your children unsupervised.

      Are you picking up what I am putting down?

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    8. Re:Keen to hear? by wvmarle · · Score: 2

      The alternative of course, as you said, is to have some system of citizen registration. "Show an ID where the ID is not copied or recorded"... even before computers were prevalent (making forgeries a far more trivial matter) documents and papers have been faked... with ease. You seem to actually want the government to regulate what is accessible online via a registered database of individuals?!

      Thank you for not only confirming my point, but also confirming your own terrible reading comprehension.

      Indeed I can't think of a working way of online age confirmation that is as reliable yet as anonymous as looking at faces of people walking into your bar, as that's what would be needed before even starting to think of actually implementing such age requirements.

    9. Re:Keen to hear? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So, instead, you suggest me to become a helicopter parent and never leave the kid out of sight until they turn 18 or so?

      No, he's suggesting you do your job as a parent. And that job is to world-proof the child, not child-proof the world.

      Oh also: your kid is going to get access to porn no matter what you or the government tries to do. Back in ye olde days of yore when posh kids had 64k ISDN lines and CD writers and hardly anyone else had internet access, one enterprising kid in my school made a decent amount of cash selling CD-Rs full of porn for a fiver a pop.

      And guess what? It's got easier since then to access porn. First the filtering will never be 100% effective. Second there'll be kids in the school with unfiltered connections because unlike back then connections aren't expensive. Third, exchanging data is now free and doesn't require a high capital outlay (a CDRW drive circa 1997 wasn't cheap) and quite expensive disposable media (as CD-Rs were then). And that's ignoring the fact that back then (and before), the local dodgy corner shops that would happily sell schoolboys porn mags was part of the tribal knowledge of the school.

      IOW your kid's going to get access to porn when you're not looking no matter what you or David Cameron does. There is literally nothing you could have done to prevent it 20 years ago, and there sure as hell is nothing you can do to prevent it now.

      So, how about instead of advocating something expensive, intrusive and ineffective (see above), you do your perental duty and educate your kid so that he can cope and doesn't get unpleasantly distorted ideas and then accept the inevitable and that he's going to turn into a randy adolescent who will beat off over more or less anything at the drop of a hat (just as you were) and there's fuck all you can do to stop it.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. but pornography is the purpose. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The internet was created by the US defense department as a decentralized, fault tolerant network to ensure that in the event of a nuclear war, American soldiers would have continued access to pornography.

  3. Old enough by Boronx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My experience is that those who are interested in looking at porn are old enough to look at it.

    --
    Play Command HQ online
  4. What part of... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "The internet is everywhere" do these people not understand? How are you going to get a provider of content in another country to assent to this?

  5. So Many Problems by mentil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow let me list the ways age verification is a bad idea:

    *Loss of anonymity for visitors. Someone will be collecting data on what actual people are visiting what actual sites. Yes, if you pay for site access with a credit/debit card you're giving up your (pseudo)anonymity, but payment with bitcoin/burner cards is possible, as well as access to free sites. If the verification has to be done through a central authority, who wants to bet the govt. will have access to that list, and it will be a huge target for black hats.

    *Porn website companies based outside of the UK don't have to bother complying with this law. I imagine that's the vast majority, and the few that are in the UK will quickly move shop.

    *Sites will likely use IP geofencing to only ask UK visitors for verification. A VPN or proxy would get around this; I imagine many Britons already use VPNs to access Netflix USA, or the BBC viewer when on vacation.

    *Overbroad 'verification' definition will lead to "click here if you're over 18" clickthroughs which are pointless (unless the pages capture visitors who don't have a cookie set, then they might catch accidental/blind link clicks).

    *Attempting to DNS block sites that don't comply with the UK law is doomed to fail. Attempting to get Google et al, and Chillingeffects, to redact mention of these sites, is futile as they will miss other search engines.

    *18 is the age of majority in the UK, but too high of a requirement. Why not set it to be the same as the age of consent (16 there)? Watching porn is more akin to having sex than signing a legal contract (insert witty retort here).

    *How is compliance judged? The vague "would receive an R-18 classification if it were reviewed" allows the simple excuse: "PROVE that it would receive an R-18 classification" for an accused. One could simply say that in their opinion, it wouldn't have received such a classification, and assuming the material is unclassified, it would be difficult to prove it would unless the rules of classification are concrete and publicly-known (unlike the MPAA's classification rules).

    *There is some evidence that access to porn reduces the incidence of rape. This really ought to be the end of the discussion, although it needs more research before it can be considered incontrovertible. I consider it compelling enough that I think govt. shouldn't restrict access to porn. Surely there are some teens under 18 who commit rape, and allowing them to see porn may prevent some of it.

    *Theoretically, if porn is 'bad information about sex', then the proper solution in a democracy should be to solve it via the marketplace of ideas: to outshout it with 'good information about sex'. If the elite are too sex-negative to think of any compelling 'good information about sex' maybe they should let the people figure it out.
    Ya know, Invisible Hand theory :)

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:So Many Problems by Afty0r · · Score: 2
      I too think it's a terrible idea, but not all of these arguments hold water.

      Porn website companies based outside of the UK don't have to bother complying with this law.

      Actually, the UK government will bring pressure to bear on these sites by preventing them from accepting payment - possibly from UK customers only (small, but reasonable incentive) or altogether (the nuclear option, particularly likely if the site has "objectionable" content, which under UK law is anything from spanking upwards)

      Sites will likely use IP geofencing to only ask UK visitors for verification. A VPN or proxy would get around this

      So some people would get around the restrictions, but the vast majority would not. Despite the fact that significant numbers of people travel over 30mph on residential roads every day and don't get caught, we don't stop ATTEMPTING to catch/stop them.

      Attempting to DNS block sites that don't comply with the UK law is doomed to fail. Attempting to get Google et al, and Chillingeffects, to redact mention of these sites, is futile as they will miss other search engines.

      Again, just because a subset of the sites are available and can be visited, does not mean that everyone seeking the material can obtain it. For those who cannot obtain it, the law will be seem to have successfully reduced harm to them (if your idea of harm reduction is preventing lads and girls from seeing tits and dicks).

      How is compliance judged? The vague "would receive an R-18 classification if it were reviewed" allows the simple excuse: "PROVE that it would receive an R-18 classification" for an accused

      The law will likely be worded to give all the power to the enforcers. It will contain phrases like "reasonable person" and "could be lead to believe". You won't HAVE to have R-18 content to be "covered", instead just one prude in a room whose job it is to evaluate pornography has to say "I say chaps, that's a bit risque" in order for your site to be blacklisted.

  6. If you are afraid... by EzInKy · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...that your child will see something on the internet that you don't like, don't allow your child on the internet. It is not society's job to enforce your views, it is society's job to present alternative views.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  7. Priorities the Cameronian way by Teun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Poor Cameron, chased up by that troll Nigel Farage and UKIP to chance the greatest economic disaster (Brexit) the nation has faced in 50 years he has found a new priority.
    They've already overplayed their hand at a mandatory opt-out porn filter at ISP level and now he wants to go one step up on this stupidity.

    Anything will do for him to avoid the voter to see how he's only shrouding real issues by populist rhetoric.
    Poor Albion.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    1. Re:Priorities the Cameronian way by Coisiche · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I did wonder why they were actually doing a consultation rather than just plunging headlong into introducing short-sighted, impractical and unworkable legislation like they usually do when trying to pander to their main support base.

      Of course, if they don't like what the consultation suggests then it will probably be back to knee-jerk plan A.

  8. Non issue by andrewbaldwin · · Score: 2

    This is likely to flare up and disappear just as quickly

    To put things in context:

    1) The UK Government has a TERRIBLE track record in terms of IT projects; the chances of this initiative going beyond blowing a few million on starting up another failed project are slim

    2) This is part of a manifesto promise by the Tories. They have to be seen to discuss it. They can then decide it's too difficult and blame "Johnny Foreigner" for the problems.
    It's part of the "something must be done!" - we've done 'something' - job done! syndrome. Whether the 'something' done has any effect or not doesn't matter; the box has been ticked.

    3) It's in reaction to certain areas of the news media [though to call the Daily Mail and Daily Express newspapers stretches way beyond credulity]. Certain parts of the UK establishment have fixed, knee jerk reactions against anything post 1950.
    Before others get too smug, this is more or less the sort of behaviour that would result in other countries where their particular sensitivities were challenged (e.g. wake me up when an atheist has a serious chance of running for US president)

    4) Look at it as an opportunity for certain sections of society to vent feelings and then move on. Rather like a letting a child get a tantrum out of their system and then learning that the world hasn't changed to suit them after all. Actually this is true of a lot of issues - they are very rarely as extreme as some folks on Slashdot would like to believe.

    Finally, as for the comments that people should take responsibility for what they/their children view - I agree. That said, there are far worse things on line [in my world view] such as severe violence that I would consider much more deserving of concern.

  9. Re:Disagree with your disagreement by Mashiki · · Score: 2

    Part of parenting is letting go. Having some basic restrictions in place in society is part of that.

    Part of parenting is also explaining something, even when you know they're going to do it anyway. Instead of saying "I don't want to do it, I'll let xyz government organization take care of it for me."

    Or would you also argue to lift any age restrictions on things like driving, so parents can send their kids for driving lessons the moment they've grown tall enough to look over the dashboard?

    Some of us learned to drive at that age. So yeah, I guess our parents knew they could trust us with some things, explained why we couldn't go floating down the street in their car but going around on the xyz family members farm was fine. You know, the same reason why they let us watch slasher flicks because we could understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  10. A modest proposal by Chrontius · · Score: 3, Informative

    A bored, intoxicated biologist says:

    Chemical castration has a distressing way of becoming permanent in a non-deterministic way. IE, sometimes you stop the pills/injections/implants/spice, and your endocrine system doesn't restart. Bodybuilders use a drug - nandralone? Fuck it's gone from late to early - to kick their system back into functioning after a while on the steroids, but it's not all that reliable, not all that legal, not all that available, and generally unpleasant. If you're going to castrate your kids, it's best to do it before puberty. That way, they don't suffer withdrawal effects, DNA methylation and acetylation patterns won't change to become dependent on sex hormones, and will tend to live 12 years longer than their un-neutered classmates.

    Science, bitches! You'd be fucking amazed what it'll justify if misused, and I haven't even said anything that's technically incorrect.