U.K. Blew $2.5 Million on ‘Porn Block’ Law That Never Took Effect

In 2013, the then-Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, proposed that the United Kingdom create a nationwide system that would block online porn sites from easy access by anyone under the age of 18. Parliament finally passed the “age verification” law four years later. But due in large part to the technological difficulties of creating a national system for verifying the age of anyone who tried to click on an online porn site, the law’s implementation was delayed repeatedly. Most recently, the law was intended to take effect on July 15 of this year. Needless to say, that never happened either. Finally, just last week, the British government simply gave up—declaring the porn block law dead. Instead, British culture minister Nicky Morgan said that the goals of “protecting” teens from online porn would become part of “our proposed online harms regulatory regime.” The government presented a “white paper” on “online harms” in April—but so far, the paper has given rise to no actual proposals or legislation. This week, in response to a written question from Member of Parliament Tom Watson, the government revealed how much cash in British taxpayer funds had been drained in the futile effort to impose the porn age verification system. The answer: £2.2 million, or in United States currency, more than $2.8 million, according to a report by the Mirror newspaper.  “Building on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of Part Three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime,” the government statement said, in its answer to Watson’s question. But no cost estimate was given for the project of delivering the porn block law’s “objectives” through the still-vague “online harms” program. Despite the futile, and economically wasteful, effort to block British teens from accessing online porn, the idea lives on—in Australia. As AVN.com reported, the Australian House of Representatives in September said it would begin investigating how to put a porn “age verification” law in place Down Under. Photo by Wikitropia / Wikimedia Commons