Visits: 3
A new law will ban people in the U.K. from accessing online porn without first verifying their age.
div > div.group > p:first-child”>
The U.K government confirmed Wednesday that Britain will become the first country in the world to introduce age-verification for online pornography, with measures coming into force on July 15 this year.
From that date, internet providers of pornography will have to check that users are at least 18-years-old.
Failure to meet the measures risks having payment services withdrawn or the sites being totally blocked for all U.K. users.
In a release Wednesday, the U.K. Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Margot James, said privacy concerns had been balanced fairly against protecting children from early-age exposure to sexual imagery.
“We want the U.K. to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this.”
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the new laws. It conducted a survey which claimed that almost nine out of ten U.K. parents, with children between the ages of 7 to 17, support the age verification process.
The BBFC says U.K. visitors to porn sites will be allowed a variety of options to prove their age and that verification providers will be rigorously assessed over how they protect user data.
But others are less convinced by U.K. government’s promises. In a statement Wednesday, Executive Director of Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, said authorities must ensure a compulsory privacy scheme.
“Having some age verification that is good and other systems that are bad is unfair and a scammer’s paradise — of the government’s own making.”
“Data leaks could be disastrous. And they will be the government’s own fault,” Killock added.
Last week the U.K. government laid out wider plans for laws to regulate internet and social media safety.
The document proposed a set of rules which could punish social media companies for failing to protect its users against a wide range of online harms.
Tech giants such as Twitter and Facebook would be held legally accountable for allowing access to material such as child abuse, terrorist content, cyberbullying and trolling, encouraging self-harm and suicide as well as spreading disinformation.