UK plans age verification for porn websites from 2018
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
The enforceability of this is hugely questionable (they have heard of VPN right?) and the societal benefit of less porn is also hard to quantify asaik. Porn is not like hard drug use, cancer or drinking-and-driving where there is a definite and significant cost to society in terms of measurable harm etc.
The UK has a lot of issues to address currently with Brexit looming, so focusing on porn could also be a 'clever; political distraction from the pending mess Brexit is shaping up to be.
China wants to sell cars in the US: The US imposes import duties on the cars. The effect is that the US automobile industry is protected, survives and can develop.
The US wants to sell web or smart phone applications (often really advertisement) in China: China blocks it. The effect is that the Chinese IT industry is protected, survives and can develop.
Whereas I don't like trade barriers, there is an unbalance in the way trade in bytes crosses borders without tariffs and the way goods are subject to import duties, taxes and sometimes outright banned due to policies deemed vital to the importing country such as environmental concerns, health regulation etc. We also protect our industries through government subsidies.
The US East Coast and Northern Europe would completely dominate search, social media, email etc. all over the world and not just in the Western world, if it wasn't regulated. That would be fine if our part of the world opened up for the goods and services they produce in Asia and Africa. But we don't.
We are quick to throw around accusations of censorship, but for billions in the developing world, access to our markets would probably mean more to their life and to further democracy than the opportunity to like kittens on facebook or read nightly tweets from Trump.
No doubt sovereign firewalls are often used by regimes to repress free speech. But let's also not forget the financial part of it. In the Western world we exceedingly sell bytes. We cannot expect for the developing world (of which the UK is not part, I know) to allow our software if we don't allow their hardware.
Once the UK has a firewall, they could also decide to block Google out of protectionism. Or (perhaps more likely) they could block smaller foreign companies with less political clout and more UK competition.
Of course, I hope they don't; it'd seem like a pretty bad decision to me. But the current conservative government doesn't have many tech-literate members - witness this very proposal! - so a bad decision is entirely possible.
While WTO negotiations in the Doha round largely failed, China perfected its firewall.
When Turkey's negotiations with EU failed, Turkey tightened its firewall.
When it becomes increasingly likely that Britain will crash out of the common market, British censorship emerges.
Whether a firewall is justified by concerns with pornography or terrorism or something else, those concerns tend to be kept at bay as long as economic forces wanting to keep society open are stronger. When those economic forces collapse, political forces that want censorship find it easier to prevail.
Also, import regulation consist of many measures and countries don't just impose those measures on products that compete with domestic products. Countries impose tariffs on wine even if they don't produce wine or competing liquors themselves.
(The outcome of the last round of ""extreme porn"" regulation was the opposite: local producers were closed down, but of course people can still import the stuff)
edit: first google result, I don't think that was it https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev...
Definitely.
On the other hand needing to provide a photo or scanned image of your driving license or passport AND give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity, while reasonably effective might somehow produce as a side effect a reduction of customers.
now it would get very interesting if any card used for verification was in turn required to send a letter to the card holder about such verification.
still the requirements seem more lenient than what some online game (think MMO) services require when they request proof of identify to secure ownership of an account
"Users may be asked to provide credit card details, as gambling websites do." this is not at all how verification works.
And on the other side we have a load of personal information given to a load more sites on the Internet, with all the potential for problems if/when they get hacked (e.g. Ashley Madison)
It may, on UK sites, on "legitimate" sites. Not so much on the darkweb, or via proxies, or IRC or Usenet or ....
There's lots of other domains like that which provide quality content and no real way of enforcing age limits.
Some might, some will simply dismiss the legislation as not something they want to be bothered with.
Of course, blocking such sites might also trigger an unwanted backlash within the UK, which may be precisely why they might not be targeted at all.
One does wonder if the drafters of this legislation even considered this.
I can imagine some nefarious porn baron making an awful lot of money out of selling (or being paid not to sell) webcam footage of people browsing their website...
"In compilance with UK [some government branch] [some law name/number], this site employs continuous age and identity verification. Your webcam will be active for the duration of your visit to ensure that only people of 18 and above are viewing the content of this website."
I'm sure there would be people who'd accept that and continue with a webcam on and recording...
It's just an idiotic legislations that most likely has nothing to do with porn - it just wants to establish a framework on which the government can ban anything it doesn't like.
In the months before and after its implementation there was a lot of discussion around the (vast) grey areas in the laws. After some months, the internet has coalesced on answers. All sites need to implement a nag screen for unknown users, in order to get "informed consent". This consent will be stored as a cookie and users should not delete cookies, or we will have to nag you next time you visit. We will also create a cottage industry of "compliance" specialists that will help you with the language of your nag screens and TCs.
Websites got slightly more annoying. Two-bit consultants made some money. User privacy was not improved in any way.Legislation regulating the internet is tricky business.
"As you browse this site, a record of everywhere you click is sent to the following companies: Google, Facebook, MysteryAdNetwork. These companies use this information to sell targetted advertising. We use the data to inform improvements to the site."
It wasn't all sites though, it was just sites that use third-party tracking and things like that, you didn't need a nag screen if the cookie was part of the functionality of the site eg a website with a login screen[1].
Everyone just copied everyone else with adding a nag screen for all sites because nobody actually read the rules.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
> first‑party persistent cookies DO require informed consent.> Persistent login cookies which store an authentication token across browser sessions are not exempted under CRITERION B. This is an important distinction because the user may not be immediately aware of the fact that closing the browser will not clear their authentication settings. They may return to the website under the assumption that they are anonymous whilst in fact they are still logged in to the service. The commonly seen method of using a checkbox and a simple information note such as “remember me (uses cookies)” next to the submit form would be an appropriate means of gaining consent therefore negating the need to apply an exemption in this case.
This would have been both more effective (because rogue websites wouldn't have been able to avoid it) and less annoying for users, because consent could be given using a consistent UI for every website. Not to mention the many hours of lost/wasted productivity caused by requiring websites to implement the same dumb cookie consent UI over and over again.
Much like the EU's failed air pollution rules, while there's a grain of good intent behind them, the actual implementation is just broken and pointless, and does more harm than good.
Realistically, you can see if informed consent is being achieved if the number of sites with ad/tracking software installed drops. "would you like us to keep tabs on you on behalf of FB's advertising platform?"
It won't meet its aims as the targets (teenagers) are well aware of how to geo-shift their access using Proxies and VPNs and also it doesn't (AFAIK) cover non-commercial sites, so imgur, reddit etc don't count and they've got a load of porn for anyone who spends more than about 5 seconds looking.
On the flip-side there are significant downsides here. One UK adults will need to give their identifying details to commercial sites if they want access. In some cases those adults will not want it publicly known that they use those sites.
When they inevitably get hacked, we'll have an Ashley Madison style problem again with the possibility for blackmail as a result.
Also I'd imagine even more sites will mirror the content of the commercial porn sites and these less reputable sites have a rep. for hosting malware, so we'll likely see more devices gettting infected...
So far from coverage I've seen on the "mainstream" UK media, none of these issues gets a mention...
After all, what the UK government is proposing is basically to learn its citizens from an early age how to evade censorship by giving them a proper incentive to figure out how to go under the radar.
I am pretty curious though about what approach to safeguarding children might be effective – or indeed, if research suggests that it's required. It does seem reasonable that freely available pornography at a young age could have substantial effects on sexual and social development; before slamming into full-blown 'moral panic' mode, it might be good to know what those effects are.
I do wonder though, how do you scientifically analyse that? Ask people if they were exposed to porn as a kid to pick your evaluation candidates? That'd be unreliable. Expose some underage people to porn (horrible) and evaluate them after tens of years? I don't think so...
Are there any cases where something like this has been rolled out elsewhere where the effects can be looked at?
It's basically the same problem as preventing online piracy.
"good enough" here isn't good enough.
I'm going to draw parallels with online piracy again, where countless DRM and legal (both through legislation and litigation) efforts are made to curb piracy yet rarely make a dent on the numbers of people who access copyrighted content illegally via one means or another.
As a small website owner (not a porn website owner though), I really don't care if a country blocks my website because of silly censorship laws. Sure, it hurts finances a bit, but if a government truly represents the people (yeah right), then the people don't want to see my website anyway, right?! I wonder if larger websites like Reddit, forum boards, and file hosting sites will follow this same attitude.
This had me chuckling - I grew up in the Gulf region - they have the "nobody gets access" policy - way more robust.
Back when this craziness started, they had even blocked the sites giving STI information because they had "sex" in them. Not sure how it is right now.
The promotion in any form for alcoholic beverages are banned too. This is the web site for the biggest beer maker: http://efespilsen.com.tr/ (It says basically that according to a change in regulation, they aren't allowed to have a customer-facing website anymore).
"This, she explained, was because the Act does not tackle the fact that services including Twitter and Tumblr contain hardcore pornography but will not be required to introduce age-checks. "
It's only commercial porn sites that are being targeted. Sites that happen to host pornographic content (e.g. tumblr, reddit etc) aren't included
The relevant section, "a sentence was slipped in that gives a regulator powers to act against sites “making prohibited material available on the internet to persons in the United Kingdom”" - That means any website hosting said content, whether they accept money or not.
From the lords debate on the topic https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2017-02-02/debates/D2C24...
"However, I want to mention briefly user-generated material on social media, an issue that naturally arises in debating this Bill if we are told that it will not cover it, despite a vast amount of hardcore porn that can easily be viewed by anyone, including young children, being just a couple of clicks away. "
They mention tumblr/facebook being included but only when showing "commcercial" material, which appears to be the differentiating factor so sites like reddit wouldn't be generally in-scope.
In section 2.1, "All providers of online pornography, who are making available pornographic material to persons in the United Kingdom on a commercial basis, will be required to comply with the age-verification requirement." So advertising funded sites fall outside the remit.
How about this for how to enforce parental controls... Encourage parents to supervise their childrens internet usage and educate the parents how to set up pfsense to control their own home.
I know its not for everyone, however we also have to ask the question, just how big is the problem of internet porn for society when viewed by minors? I don't have kids and haven't seen any studies, so honestly I just don't know.
Surely there are ways that you can educate, inform your kids, and maybe prepare them for what access to an unregulated stream of all of humanities information could contain.
It also makes a perfect excuse to control what is accessible and that could be expanded to other kinds content.
Also, it's frequently the case (I can't think of exceptions) that the people in power always try to control the sexual behaviour of others. I would like to know the reason for politic and religious authorities to be so obsessed with sex.
In other gregarious species, who can reproduce is decided by the high status individuals. Maybe is related to that.
TL;DR: It's a non-problem
The crux of the problem is the "Check this out!" scenario with the kids who have smartphones, or unsupervised Internet access at home. I simply can't protect them from that.
In addition to unabashed education, my focus will be on making sure they know how to put things into perspective; that shocking stuff they might see represents extremes of human behaviour, far removed from the world they know.
The norms of today might not be the best, but the norms of yesteryear were also pretty fucked-up. Age verification on sites is going to do squat in terms of changing young adult mindsets.
I think that the solution should be more acknowledge that fact (fiction is not real, and that's ok) and build from there. If we pretend people to have as only source of information the movies, we'll have a problem.
In other words, is the main problem here that gangbang videos exist or that some kids get a really shitty upbringing that leaves them full of gaping holes, incapable of handling life or making wise decisions?
The point I'm trying to make is that people are shifting the responsibility and consequently limiting freedom and varied views for all, like the ban on "gay propaganda" in Russia or "facesitting" pornography in the UK. It's the wrong solution to a (I assume for some) real problem.
And yeah, 6yo do have access to porn if they can read/write by then.
1) Parents should discuss sexuality issues with their children, so they understand them. 2) Schools should provide good sex education that isn't "if you play with it, it'll fall off" 3) If parents or schools want to block easy access to inappropriate materials on their networks, use one of the many many existing blacklist blocking programs available. No need for legislation to do that.
Banning porn doesn't even begin to address that problem. People talk. They boast about what they do, and the more naive people go ahead and do those things too because they believe that's what they should be doing. That's true in everything, not just sex. The answer is to educate people to make their own decisions, and have the understanding, knowledge and empowerment to know they can say no if they don't want to do a particular thing.
Extreme sex acts existed before the internet. Hiding it won't make it go away. "Security through obscurity" doesn't work.
This happens to be why my company is using a NoSQL database in one of its new projects.
That does leave open the possibility that some children would be exposed to "extreme sex acts", and this would probably disproportionately affect the poor.
The government providing free voluntary filtering software would probably irk people less than the government policing morals.
This already exists, really. With the major providers, you get asked if you want filters turned on or off.
A solution that imposes costs but doesn't actually solve the problem is worse than doing nothing.
To be fair, without porn lots of folks wouldn't know what was normal anyway - so it is easy to talk folks into something. All it takes is the more persuasive person to have these things in mind (and obviously folks do, considering this sort of porn isn't new to the internet). The same problem happens when discussing abusive relationships. Young folks don't know what normal and healthy contains.
The big thing that is missing in the US is comprehensive sex and relationship education. I don't see a problem with teaching kids about film making so they can understand that a porn shoot is set up to look good for the camera or be other-worldly. I don't see a problem telling young folks they can try some of the stuff out, with the caveat of respecting everyone's health and comfort while doing it. I don't mind telling folks it is OK to be into - or not into - something.
And to be fair, I'm not sure most folks do this stuff instead of loving someone, rather as part of the course of loving someone. I'm pretty sure my sex life with my spouse mirrors average porn more closely than the whole "making love" thing.
Have there even been evidence on how porn actually hurts people at a large scale? I'd love to see that evidence.
I understand different people have different views on censorship. In my opinion it is a lot more important to raise children – boys and girls – with a healthy and balanced view of sexuality, and teach especially girls to demand respect for their own sexual needs and not let horny guys waltz all over.
The other problem is that by letting governments regulate more and more of the internet, we are giving up the freedom the medium provides to all of us. Again, some might prefer to live in a curated bubble, but I prefer to see the world as-is with its raw edges and myriad of opinions, and it would be nice if teens would be raised to be strong and decide for themselves what is acceptable and when to close the browser window rather than letting the authorities decide what views are acceptable.
Porn is paradoxically minor. Most people are familiar with the arguments about the negative effects of porn (even if they don't believe the arguments), and reflects the way society already has a paranoid always-on-guard attitude towards porn.
We have first-pass mental filters regarding porn. If anything deserves to be made harder to access for it's negative repercussions, the prime targets are those we haven't yet (or can't) built mental filters against.
I won't even bother reiterating all the well known and widely accepted reasons half-baked social interventions are destined to fail, and likley make things worse.
I don't think this is the right approach either but what is the solution?
Maybe work on making a society that isn't outright terrified of sex? There will never be an adult conversation with the youth about sex until adults can have an adult conversation among themselves.
I'm not sure that's a good way to spend the taxpayer money.
>Companies breaking the rules set out in the Digital Economy Act face being blocked by their internet provider.
Seems to imply it would be the burden of individual sites. I'm sure many of which already have low margins since advertising in this space is extremely hard. So I'm going to guess most of them would sooner IP block all of Europe before bothering with this.
Good luck with that.
HAH.
No problem. I have a succinct filter that covers most of them:
0.0.0.0/0
Web-filter companies: "challenge accepted".
Make no mistake, there is an entire industry which has been dedicated to this exact task for decades now. They will be very happy to help the UK government... for a fee.
How many things is the state going to control? How many moles are you going to whack? Most networks are able to keep out pornography quite easily with consequences for those who seek to work around. This is an opportunity for those can can secure networks and provide products and services to parents.
The parent is in control to place constraints they see fit and parent, rather than seeking state intervention and empowering those who seek control and power. A nanny state built on 'saving children' is never about saving children but feeding on the vulnerable and self righteous sections of society to concentrate power.
There are always those in power who will latch on any excuse they can find and like always they remain the biggest threat to not just children but everyone in a free society.
It sounds like the law should be harmonized one way or another - open everything up or close everything down, otherwise it's pointless.
I'm sure lots of under-18s would have a problem with that. The vast majority is unlikely to accidentally end up on a porn site.
you're starting to get it
Probably the anti-porn ideas come from this same cesspool.
I recently read an article about how easy access to an almost unlimited amount of pornography is giving boys unrealistic sexual expectations and placing unreasonable demands on girls. I can't find the link to the article right now but from this and several others that I've read, this is a real problem. Issues like personal freedom, consent and others are all true. However, the typical website has a vested interest in making sure that it's offerings reach a large audience and I'm sure they're not beyond pushing the envelope a little to make that happen.
What is a solution?
> To date every study offers support for the porn addiction model (no studies falsify the porn addiction model). The results of these 34 neurological studies (and upcoming studies) are consistent with 220+ Internet addiction "brain studies", many of which also include internet porn use. All support the premise that internet porn use can cause addiction-related brain changes
Will they be forced to make their filters mandatory if the IP number looks as if it comes from the UK?
How will this work with porn sites outside the UK (such as most of them)? Will they all be blocked by default on the basis of some UK government censorship list or authority?
I think looking at IP ranges is pretty effective actually. Google already does send people to different regional sites based on where they're coming from.
But to the problem it purports to solve, underage kids viewing material that they shouldn't be viewing, what do you propose as a workable solution? I don't mean a 15 year old occasionally viewing a normal porn video, porn sites these days house all sorts of things you wouldn't want your kids to stumble across.
there are no TV licenses in Australia though.. its just included in your tax which is how it should be here in the UK. Paying people to police the TV license is absolutely retarded
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety
Hard to implement? Business opportunities (aka money) don't come freely ;-)
What problem is it, really?
I don't think percentages work the way you think they work.