UK Threatens to Require Age Verification for Porn Sites

LONDON—The British government appears determined to follow through on long-simmering threats to force porn sites to engage age-verification technologies in order to ensure that adults only (18+) are able to access sexually explicit content. The news was delivered this weekend by the Sunday Mail, which reported, "The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is working on the plans with Treasury minister Andrea Leadsom, who oversees regulation of the banking system." That tidbit of information, along with other reports indicating that PayPal and Visa will be taking part in the new scheme in addition to other approved methods of verification, suggests that one way the government ostensibly means to gain control of the internet is by pressuring processors to age-verify while simultaneously holding out the (dubious) promise of increased and officially sanctioned business. But as with everything else the British government has tried over the past few years, as Prime Minister David Cameron has attempted to fulfill his promise to do something about internet porn, the reality of the solution being proposed is at odds with the promises being made. That proclivity to over-promise has repeatedly led the government to consider, propose and then implement increasingly restrictive measures that will inevitable lead it to one day propose, after everything else has failed to provide the promised relief, putting all adult sites into an online ghetto.   Indeed, if Britain follows through on imposing mandatory age verification to access porn sites, which, as AVN has noted many times over the years, has been repeatedly struck down in the United States as unconstitutional, it will have taken a vital first step in trying to corral all porn sites, and not just those located in the UK, under its regulatory thumb. The plan, according to the Independent, is for new age verification to "initially only affect UK-based websites, however there are concerns that this move would have severe consequences on the balance sheets of some British firms." The only way to lessen those consequences would be to try to level the playing field by making all porn sites wishing to do business in the United Kingdom to abide by the law, something that is already on the table. The plan is already being criticized. Martin Daubey posted up an immediate analysis, arguing somewhat hysterically that in addition to being unworkable, the "prohibition of porn carries an even darker risk: to drive users onto the dark web, via untraceable proxy servers, with greater secrecy and access to potentially far more damaging—and illegal—temptations."