Slashdot Mirror


UK Proposes Mandatory Age Verification For Porn Sites (mirror.co.uk)

A proposed bill read in the House of Commons, "suggests that by next year websites will require visitors to prove they are of legal age before entering..." reports the Mirror. Britain's prime minister "says none of Britain's top 10 porn sites -- which account for 52% of all views -- have a 'robust' process to verify users' age," citing figures that 10% of the site's viewers are below the age of 18. The Independent adds that "the issue has alarmed privacy campaigners, since it could mean having to register a credit card with a porn website." U.K. lawyer Neil Brown contacted Slashdot with more on the age-verification requirement: Sites which failed to do so could face fines of up to 250,000 pounds or 5% of annual turnover. Their URLs could also be given to ISPs and payment processing providers, to consider voluntary blocking/service suspension, although no mandatory blocking regime is planned currently.
This is the same bill that proposes jail terms up to 10 years for those found guilty of copyright infringement. According to the article, one 2013 study found that 7% of the world's porn was hosted in the UK, with 60% in America and 26% in the Netherlands.

7 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Sinking Ship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Great, another reason for businesses to abandon the sinking ship that is the UK economy.

    1. Re:Sinking Ship by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Funny

      The rest of the UK is pretty conventional in it's choice if porn sites.

      I thought y'all just stood around watching people fucking in car parks.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Priorities by Wowsers · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's sick how the politicians are using their usual excuse of "think of the children" to attack the free internet via porn, while they let paedophile (pedophile) gangs roam UK's treats for decades, even police and social services helping these gangs commit their crimes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    But just as bad, while politicians have a fetish over banning porn, they have no problem having 24/7 violence on TV. How many people are killed with sex, and how many people killed because TV gives impression to people that violence is ok?

    It's all a smokescreen to control the internet, most people too stupid to see it, they are just fixated on the control porn argument.

    --
    Take Nobody's Word For It.
  3. Re:So,basically the verification bill will be usel by Feral+Nerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unless I'm missing something, how exactly do they plan to enforce this for overseas sites?

    Or is this going to end up with some braindead ISP filter saying: "I see you're trying to access a porn site, I've logged that for you, now confirm who you are so I can log that too (under the guise of letting you have access once verified)"

    Privacy invasion, much.

    It's the job of the parents to control access to the internet from their house, not the state. If the state has to do this, then perhaps the parents should be held more responsible?

    I find it amusing how conservatives, who are usually the most energetic at raging against regulations and the mommy state, are the most eager to impose mountains of regulations, draconian censorship and generally the mommy state on the public in order to regulate other people's sexual behaviour. In fact it is downright creepy how obsessed they are over who other people might be having sex with in the privacy of their bedrooms and how they are doing it, or in this case what they are using their laptops or tablet computers and tissue dispensers for in the privacy of their bedrooms.

  4. Re:Proxies anyone? by quenda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes.

    The other 99%: "what's a proxy?"

    The 80%: "oh, you mean that thingamajig my friend / neighbour / youtube-video-instructions did to my internet connection so I could watch US-Netflix / pirate movies / porn ?"

  5. Re:futile by gilgongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "This is the brainchild of Andrea Leadsom, one of the two final contestants for leadership of the Tory party..."

    Who by current indications will be eating a boiled kangaroo's anus on I'm A Celebrity in about 12 month's time. This, however, is only a tiny compensation for the fact that Teresa May will become PM.

    On a general note, what can be done about the policy ratchets that these people advocate? That is, the belief that things are bad because the policies that brought them about (eg financialisation, under investment in social infrastructure, wealth concentration, mass surveillance, censorship, etc.) were simply not implemented hard enough.

    This is the essence of what people like May and Leadsom believe: like a sort of Taliban approach to politics. Corporation tax in the UK is lower than almost anywhere in the EU and we have intense austerity policies partly as a result. So what do we do - we lower it some more because *obviously* the economy isn't getting better as a result of the previous lowering. What happens if we lower corporation tax to zero then? Where is the evidence that these policies are working as they are right now, let alone that they will work better for being all the more extreme?

    --
    "And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
  6. Re:So,basically the verification bill will be usel by Zaelath · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, where's the verification bill requiring that car companies prove people have a driver's licence before operating their vehicles? One of these leads to wanking, the other leads to death....