It’s the latest part of an intense government crusade against minors accessing adult content
The British government has been in a relentless moral pursuit of the porn industry for some time now – last year, it passed the Digital Economy Act to enforce strict rules for accessing porn sites, as a way of preventing people under the age of 18 viewing adult content.
The latest suggestion for enforcing the law is ‘porn passes’ to prove your age online, bought in local newsagents along with your morning paper or hangover Lucozade, Anyone hoping to access porn will have to buy a 16-digit code from the local shops to verify their age. Potential porn viewers will have to produce a photo ID to purchase the pass, proposed to cost around £10.
The British Board of Film Classification was meant to have finished the new rules for adult websites in April, but it’s been delayed. The law will mean sites have to enforce age restrictions and oversee the age-verifying systems themselves – if not, they risk fines of £250,000 and being blocked by internet providers, as the Telegraph reports.
It was previously suggested that credit card details could be used by porn outlets for age-checking, much like gambling websites. The most serious concern here lies in cybersecurity, leaking personal and private information along with credit card details that could leave viewers pretty vulnerable (think back to the Ashley Madison hack in 2015). Additionally, up to 40 percent of people over 18 in the UK don’t have a credit card, according to the UK Cards Association. And then of course, any super horny 15-year-old could steal mum’s Visa Debit.
A 2014 study found that 56 per cent of UK adults admitted to watching porn “occasionally”. A few years back when the British government amended the 2003 Communications Act to ban porn in the UK with spanking, female ejaculation, and face-sitting, hundreds came out to a Westminster protest.
A spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport said in a statement: “We are in the process of implementing some of the strictest data protection laws in the world. A wide variety of online age verification solutions exist, or are in development, and they will have to abide by these high standards. We expect data security to be a high priority in the BBFC’s guidance on age verification arrangements.”
The big issue around this is actually having to go to what’s probably your local shop, face the smiley shopkeeper, and buy access to porn along with loo roll and house milk. A big plus for this option however is that the porn pass wouldn’t require any personal information that could be compromised or used maliciously in a cyberattack.
The age verification laws are expected to pass later this year.
