The Digital Economy Bill comes into force in April 2018. Its the most dangerous IT Bill put into force since the EU 'Right to be forgotten' legislation. Under that legislation, criminals could expunge evidence of their crimes from search engine results .... this includes sex offences, such as paedophile behaviour.
This latest bill, is a cack-handed attempt to keep “.... children safe from harmful pornographic content online ...” according to Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. At least the final Act of Parliament did drop the term “adult content”, in favour of using the specific term “pornography.”
To do this, all sites with adult/pornographic content will be asked to ensure UK users have to provide evidence of age. Yes, hand over their identity or credit cards details to foreign pornographers. It should be noted that the majority of households in the UK are also childless, so this law basically punishes them, even though adult content is not illegal, and even pornography is not entirely illegal.
Oddly, Facebook and Twitter often host content that may fall foul of this legislation, but no one seems to have really addressed this fact .... Adult verification for these sites? Forcing adults to hand over their ID, or credit card bank details, and be put on a list, simply in order to view legal content seems to me to be close to censorship. This just to stop children illegally accessing the same content, is really putting the cart before the horse. Oddly, with all of the major broadband ISPs already offering subscribers optional network-level filtering system (Parental Controls), and with the majority of parents already appearing to be using them, this also looks to be overkill, and an infringement of adults rights.
These 'Adult Verification (AV)' systems are inherently open to abuse, and the data will most certainly will be misused in some manner. Fears are that the age verification system will force people to reveal their identity details and will open the doors for hacking, blackmail, and potentially, credit-card fraud. It will almost certainly open up a new monopoly, as Mindgeek, which runs the popular Pornhub and other such sites, also have an AV system, and so could become the 'Facebook of porn', as other sites are forced to deploy their AVS to get business.
Of course it will mainly punish the older person, who most likely will have never heard of methods of masking a UK users location completely (and thus should allow continued access to most sites without using an AVS). However some UK sites may try and force all users, including non UK residents to sign up to a card system .... we will have to wait and see.
Those of us (including those teens and children who are supposed to be blocked from adult sites), with a modicum of computer skills will simply bypass these checks by using one of at least two methods that I can think of (which I wont elaborate on ... If you have to ask, then possibly these laws are really meant to stop you), but which many kids already use to view regional content such as US TV shows. So probably the new laws are actually going to be ineffective, but still a real pain.
While Matt Hancock, UK Digital Minister, said “All this means that while we can enjoy the freedom of the web, the UK will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world.” .... the UN, in the form of 'The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights' expressed concern over this law, and Tim Berners-Lee, the actual inventor of the world wide web, marked the passing of these laws with the words: “Dark, dark days.”
STOP PRESS UPDATE:
It appears that there is still some fear of the potential electoral impact of this unjust intrusive law, and just before I was to publish this story, I found out that the government is delaying plans to introduce compulsory age checks for people accessing porn online, and now says that age checks will only be enforceable “by the end of the year.” ... If they have any sense they will just quietly shelve it. But since when did any UK government ever show any of that?
SUPER UPDATE:
Common sense prevailed and in October 2019 the UK government dropped the whole idea. It was never going to work (Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), or the TOR Browser sees to that) .... so they have abandoned it. Of course its likely that some other lame brained scheme will be proposed .... the answer is for parents to turn on parental controls on devices given to minors and password protect the porn lock. But it appears that we all suffer for the sake of bad parents.
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| All The Glossy Explanations Don't Disguise What An AVS Is |
This latest bill, is a cack-handed attempt to keep “.... children safe from harmful pornographic content online ...” according to Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. At least the final Act of Parliament did drop the term “adult content”, in favour of using the specific term “pornography.”
To do this, all sites with adult/pornographic content will be asked to ensure UK users have to provide evidence of age. Yes, hand over their identity or credit cards details to foreign pornographers. It should be noted that the majority of households in the UK are also childless, so this law basically punishes them, even though adult content is not illegal, and even pornography is not entirely illegal.
Oddly, Facebook and Twitter often host content that may fall foul of this legislation, but no one seems to have really addressed this fact .... Adult verification for these sites? Forcing adults to hand over their ID, or credit card bank details, and be put on a list, simply in order to view legal content seems to me to be close to censorship. This just to stop children illegally accessing the same content, is really putting the cart before the horse. Oddly, with all of the major broadband ISPs already offering subscribers optional network-level filtering system (Parental Controls), and with the majority of parents already appearing to be using them, this also looks to be overkill, and an infringement of adults rights.
These 'Adult Verification (AV)' systems are inherently open to abuse, and the data will most certainly will be misused in some manner. Fears are that the age verification system will force people to reveal their identity details and will open the doors for hacking, blackmail, and potentially, credit-card fraud. It will almost certainly open up a new monopoly, as Mindgeek, which runs the popular Pornhub and other such sites, also have an AV system, and so could become the 'Facebook of porn', as other sites are forced to deploy their AVS to get business.
Of course it will mainly punish the older person, who most likely will have never heard of methods of masking a UK users location completely (and thus should allow continued access to most sites without using an AVS). However some UK sites may try and force all users, including non UK residents to sign up to a card system .... we will have to wait and see.
Those of us (including those teens and children who are supposed to be blocked from adult sites), with a modicum of computer skills will simply bypass these checks by using one of at least two methods that I can think of (which I wont elaborate on ... If you have to ask, then possibly these laws are really meant to stop you), but which many kids already use to view regional content such as US TV shows. So probably the new laws are actually going to be ineffective, but still a real pain.
While Matt Hancock, UK Digital Minister, said “All this means that while we can enjoy the freedom of the web, the UK will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world.” .... the UN, in the form of 'The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights' expressed concern over this law, and Tim Berners-Lee, the actual inventor of the world wide web, marked the passing of these laws with the words: “Dark, dark days.”
STOP PRESS UPDATE:
It appears that there is still some fear of the potential electoral impact of this unjust intrusive law, and just before I was to publish this story, I found out that the government is delaying plans to introduce compulsory age checks for people accessing porn online, and now says that age checks will only be enforceable “by the end of the year.” ... If they have any sense they will just quietly shelve it. But since when did any UK government ever show any of that?
SUPER UPDATE:
Common sense prevailed and in October 2019 the UK government dropped the whole idea. It was never going to work (Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), or the TOR Browser sees to that) .... so they have abandoned it. Of course its likely that some other lame brained scheme will be proposed .... the answer is for parents to turn on parental controls on devices given to minors and password protect the porn lock. But it appears that we all suffer for the sake of bad parents.
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