-
Putting aside the porn issue, the privacy concerns here are enough to make any sensible government set this policy aside. Giving porn companies a large database of the personal data of a substantial portion of the UK population is not going to end well. There’s also the issue of effectively restricting access to something that is legal for adults, and the fact that any site that has content that is below a threshold of 33% is exempt. It’s just such a poorly thought out policy.
The idea that this will protect children is laughable.
But my favourite bit of today’s announcement is that the department responsible for this broke GPDR rules by sending out an email with the recipients email addresses visible to all.
andyp-
any site that has content that is below a threshold of 33% is exempt. It’s just such a poorly thought out policy.
Notwithstanding that it is so loosely drafted that any porn site could exempt themselves trivially.
(4) Subject to paragraph (5), paragraph (3) does not apply in a case where it is reasonable for the age-verification regulator to assume that pornographic material makes up less than one-third of the content of the material made available on or via the internet site or other means (such as an application program) of accessing the internet by means of which the pornographic material is made available.
A site could make available (i.e. just link to) a couple of petabyte sized files, or link to a few billion small files, or non-porn material, and suddenly they don't have to do the whole registration thing.
Storage is cheap & links are free...
NotThamesWater
"UK to introduce porn age-checks in July"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47960775
Who even asked for this?
Young people will learn to use VPNs, become more tech savvy and get around the age check, while old people will be blocked from looking at porn.