UK Regulator Wants Universal Mandatory Porn Site Age Checks

UNITED KINGDOM—The Authority for Television On Demand (ATVOD) has called for a new law that would require porn sites to ensure the legal age of an individual before allowing them access to sexually explicit content. This proposed law would apply not just to U.K.-based porn sites, which are already required to prevent access by minors, but to all porn sites. According to the BBC, leverage proposed by ATVOD to give the law some teeth would be a provision whereby "credit and debit card operators would be forbidden from processing payments from British customers to sites that did not comply." In response, a spokesperson for the ruling coalition government said, "We will continue to work with industry and others to look at where further action could be taken, including around age restrictions." In contrast, according to the BBC, " Labour has ... already come out in support of the move." America, of course, has been down this road many times, with the many versions of COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, which endeavored to place similar restrictions on access to adult sites by minors, but which versions were continuously fought back by the American Civil Liberties Union and likeminded free speech groups, with regular and sometimes surprising help from the U.S. Supreme Court, as Clyde DeWitt outlined way back in 2004! Ten years later, and the Brits are now flirting with internet-based proscriptions that many believe will be as fruitless now as they would have been in 2004 and before. According to Sex & Censorship's Jerry Barnett, "It won't make any difference to the sites that give all their videos away for free and sell advertising because they don't need credit card processing. And some sites are already accepting bitcoin and other anonymous online payment systems. A clampdown on card payments would just accelerate this trend. Even if implemented, this measure would have no effect on the range of content available to British consumers." Mindgeek, formerly known as Manwin, told the BBC it already verifies age in countries where it is required, adding, "There is no single 'silver bullet' solution to protecting children and adolescents from potentially harmful content and interactions in their digital lives. The best solution lies in a multi-layered approach in which the parent assumes the central role." Still, ATVOD characterizes the situation in crisis terms, saying it is "critical the legislation is enacted during this Parliament," and before the next general election, even if it does not present a silver-bullet solution to the problem. Challenging the argument made by Barnett and others, the regulator argued, "The material that appears on the free services is placed there by the paid services to attract customers to sign up to subscriptions. As long as the paid service placed content on a free service without age verification it would be in breach of its licensing conditions and so would not be able to access funds from the U.K. "We're not saying this will stop all children seeing all pornography online," it added. "But our argument is that even if you reduce the number of children who are accessing hardcore pornography online by 10 percent, that would be a significant win."