Well, that will depend on how exactly the way the customers "will have to prove they are 18", as an example we know how no teenager under 18 would ever tick a box near "Yes, I am 18 or older".
On the other hand needing to provide a photo or scanned image of your driving license or passport AND give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity, while reasonably effective might somehow produce as a side effect a reduction of customers.
so how do they think this will prevent it? cannot children just borrow the numbers from their parents cards? as long as no charge is made they should be safe.
now it would get very interesting if any card used for verification was in turn required to send a letter to the card holder about such verification.
still the requirements seem more lenient than what some online game (think MMO) services require when they request proof of identify to secure ownership of an account
No matter how they do verification, the scheme won't have the intended effect as there are massive numbers of non-commercial sites which make porn available, including pretty much any site that allows user generated content.
And on the other side we have a load of personal information given to a load more sites on the Internet, with all the potential for problems if/when they get hacked (e.g. Ashley Madison)
No need to get that technical. Reddit has lots of very targeted subreddits. All behind main Reddit HTTPS and with all the content on Imgur / Reddit images. (Also HTTPS enabled)
There's lots of other domains like that which provide quality content and no real way of enforcing age limits.
This legislation might make finding porn at least non-trivial if broad community sites likes Reddit, Tumblr, and 4chan are found to be applicable. These would then just be blocked by British ISPs until they do implement some form of adult verification check.
Some might, some will simply dismiss the legislation as not something they want to be bothered with.
Of course, blocking such sites might also trigger an unwanted backlash within the UK, which may be precisely why they might not be targeted at all.
One does wonder if the drafters of this legislation even considered this.
> On the other hand needing to ... give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity
I can imagine some nefarious porn baron making an awful lot of money out of selling (or being paid not to sell) webcam footage of people browsing their website...
Indeed. Just show an official-looking popup saying:
"In compilance with UK [some government branch] [some law name/number], this site employs continuous age and identity verification. Your webcam will be active for the duration of your visit to ensure that only people of 18 and above are viewing the content of this website."
I'm sure there would be people who'd accept that and continue with a webcam on and recording...
I worry this will just funnel kids onto the kinds of porn web-sites that are unlikely to follow government regulations anyway, as they might have more damaging content.
Are there any cases where something like this has been rolled out elsewhere where the effects can be looked at?
Off topic but if you're using Three I suggest you use the "3internet" APN - it has no effect on billing but you bypass any filters and get a direct connection with your own IP address (no NAT) and no filtering proxy in between.
And honestly - I suspect this will have the bigger effect of encouraging actual porn piracy instead of porn streaming. Wonderful way to re-introduce the popularity of a porn collection.
They don't need to block 100% of all sites for it to be effective. It's the same with the lock on your home, the password on your phone, the lack of a fence or wall along the length of the border. It's "good enough".
I think you're underestimating the determination kids have for accessing content they are told they can't have.
"good enough" here isn't good enough.
I'm going to draw parallels with online piracy again, where countless DRM and legal (both through legislation and litigation) efforts are made to curb piracy yet rarely make a dent on the numbers of people who access copyrighted content illegally via one means or another.
Now that you mention it, pretty much every website with user content has porn on it. So this regulation will either ban those as well, or cause people watching "professional Hollywood porn" to instead watch user-generated porn, which doesn't solve the problem the regulation is trying to solve at all.
As a small website owner (not a porn website owner though), I really don't care if a country blocks my website because of silly censorship laws. Sure, it hurts finances a bit, but if a government truly represents the people (yeah right), then the people don't want to see my website anyway, right?! I wonder if larger websites like Reddit, forum boards, and file hosting sites will follow this same attitude.
"This, she explained, was because the Act does not tackle the fact that services including Twitter and Tumblr contain hardcore pornography but will not be required to introduce age-checks. "
It's only commercial porn sites that are being targeted. Sites that happen to host pornographic content (e.g. tumblr, reddit etc) aren't included
The relevant section, "a sentence was slipped in that gives a regulator powers to act against sites “making prohibited material available on the internet to persons in the United Kingdom”" - That means any website hosting said content, whether they accept money or not.
"However, I want to mention briefly user-generated material on social media, an issue that naturally arises in debating this Bill if we are told that it will not cover it, despite a vast amount of hardcore porn that can easily be viewed by anyone, including young children, being just a couple of clicks away. "
They mention tumblr/facebook being included but only when showing "commcercial" material, which appears to be the differentiating factor so sites like reddit wouldn't be generally in-scope.
I stand corrected. Thank you. The next question is, "What is social media?". What about sites where the content is user generated but those users are compensated in tokens which are exchangeable for real money? Is that commercial or social?
In section 2.1, "All providers of
online pornography, who are making available pornographic material to
persons in the United Kingdom on a commercial basis, will be required
to comply with the age-verification requirement." So advertising funded sites fall outside the remit.
I'm expecting that the agency set up to police this will eventually be enforcing a policy of only allowing internet access to users who have a government assigned unique ID which will be tied to your entire online activity. first they justify it for porn, then for terrorism
This is obviously preposterous, and there is basically no chance of it lasting or being significantly effective.
I am pretty curious though about what approach to safeguarding children might be effective – or indeed, if research suggests that it's required. It does seem reasonable that freely available pornography at a young age could have substantial effects on sexual and social development; before slamming into full-blown 'moral panic' mode, it might be good to know what those effects are.
Anecdotal evidence (myself) suggests that those effects, if there is any at all, would not be significant :)
I do wonder though, how do you scientifically analyse that? Ask people if they were exposed to porn as a kid to pick your evaluation candidates? That'd be unreliable. Expose some underage people to porn (horrible) and evaluate them after tens of years? I don't think so...
This is, of course, completely barmy regulation. The most interesting thing will be the decision over what classifies as a porn website. Currently, as a teenager, you're probably most likely to 'stumble across' (i.e. view unintentionally) pornography on non-porn sites like Reddit or Tumblr. Will the regulations require age verification for these sites? If not it will not even begin to achieve its stated aims.
I think the tube sites would be considered commercial 'cause they're run by the commercial porn companies. What won't be covered as far as I'm aware is things like reddit, tumblr etc
Is reddit commercial? You can pay for reddit gold and of course they make money on ads, although they don't make money on porn directly. How about imgur? They host a staggering amount of porn yet are not a porn website - how could they regulate that? How about erotic fan fiction websites where it's 100% text? How about ones where it's just hentai?
It's just an idiotic legislations that most likely has nothing to do with porn - it just wants to establish a framework on which the government can ban anything it doesn't like.
How will this work with image search in Google, Bing, Yandex, etc.? Last time I checked you only need to enter an explicit search term and uncheck the filter, and you're flooded in porn.
Will they be forced to make their filters mandatory if the IP number looks as if it comes from the UK?
How will this work with porn sites outside the UK (such as most of them)? Will they all be blocked by default on the basis of some UK government censorship list or authority?
It seems like governments have decided that if you're on the Internet, you effectively have to follow the intersection of all laws from all countries that are also on the Internet.
I think looking at IP ranges is pretty effective actually. Google already does send people to different regional sites based on where they're coming from.
They might as well call it Operation Could-Not-Possibly-Go-Wrong.
>Companies breaking the rules set out in the Digital Economy Act face being blocked by their internet provider.
Seems to imply it would be the burden of individual sites. I'm sure many of which already have low margins since advertising in this space is extremely hard. So I'm going to guess most of them would sooner IP block all of Europe before bothering with this.
A company operating outside the UK's jurisdiction wouldn't be affected at all from my reading of that. The UK could direct UK ISPs to block noncompliant sites entirely, but then they're in the position of trying to enumerate every site in the world that hosts porn.
Make no mistake, there is an entire industry which has been dedicated to this exact task for decades now. They will be very happy to help the UK government... for a fee.
Australia has ad free tv too, and radio stations and all the same kinds of initiatives as the BBC (admittedly the tv is terrible by comparison to the BBC so) called the ABC.
there are no TV licenses in Australia though.. its just included in your tax which is how it should be here in the UK. Paying people to police the TV license is absolutely retarded
The ABC is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay underfunded compared to the BBC. And conservative governments hate it and throttle it wherever they can. Despite being shown time and time again to be even-handed by both internal and external reviews, the conservatives treat it as a mouthpiece of the progressives.
This, if enacted, will do more than any effort by the EFF or others to enhance online privacy. VPN usage, TOR and bitcoin/ethereum acceptance online will skyrocket.
After all, what the UK government is proposing is basically to learn its citizens from an early age how to evade censorship by giving them a proper incentive to figure out how to go under the radar.
Ah, as usual, why solve something with education when you can solve it via forcing anyone who wants to watch porn to give their credit card details to a shady xxx website.
How about this for how to enforce parental controls... Encourage parents to supervise their childrens internet usage and educate the parents how to set up pfsense to control their own home.
I know its not for everyone, however we also have to ask the question, just how big is the problem of internet porn for society when viewed by minors? I don't have kids and haven't seen any studies, so honestly I just don't know.
Surely there are ways that you can educate, inform your kids, and maybe prepare them for what access to an unregulated stream of all of humanities information could contain.
In a weird way it may be a good thing to teach our offspring how to deal with and work around censorship on a small, non-political scale. Also, this topic assures they learn the lesson thoroughly, both because a lot of self-interest (unlike with 'boring' politics) and because of the obvious stupidity of this censorship.
I would like to present to the court exhibit 1: The EU/ or UK "Cookie Laws" AKA "ePrivacy directive."
In the months before and after its implementation there was a lot of discussion around the (vast) grey areas in the laws. After some months, the internet has coalesced on answers. All sites need to implement a nag screen for unknown users, in order to get "informed consent". This consent will be stored as a cookie and users should not delete cookies, or we will have to nag you next time you visit. We will also create a cottage industry of "compliance" specialists that will help you with the language of your nag screens and TCs.
Websites got slightly more annoying. Two-bit consultants made some money. User privacy was not improved in any way.Legislation regulating the internet is tricky business.
I've never heard a peep from anyone about the site I admin which still doesn't have one of those cookie-naggers. Hopefully, when the UK leaves the EU, the one good thing that might come out of it will be getting rid of that silly legislation.
It would have been better if more had been required.
"As you browse this site, a record of everywhere you click is sent to the following companies: Google, Facebook, MysteryAdNetwork. These companies use this information to sell targetted advertising. We use the data to inform improvements to the site."
>All sites need to implement a nag screen for unknown users
It wasn't all sites though, it was just sites that use third-party tracking and things like that, you didn't need a nag screen if the cookie was part of the functionality of the site eg a website with a login screen[1].
Everyone just copied everyone else with adding a nag screen for all sites because nobody actually read the rules.
True, but the "remember me" checkbox is sufficient consent:
> Persistent login cookies which store an authentication token across browser sessions are not exempted under CRITERION B. This is an important distinction because the user may not be immediately aware of the fact that closing the browser will not clear their authentication settings. They may return to the website under the assumption that they are anonymous whilst in fact they are still logged in to the service. The commonly seen method of using a checkbox
and a simple information note such as “remember me (uses cookies)” next to the submit form would be an appropriate means of gaining consent therefore negating the need to apply an exemption in this case.
The most bonkers thing about the "EU cookie law" is that it could have been much more effectively implemented by simply requiring browser makers to get informed consent on cookies.
This would have been both more effective (because rogue websites wouldn't have been able to avoid it) and less annoying for users, because consent could be given using a consistent UI for every website. Not to mention the many hours of lost/wasted productivity caused by requiring websites to implement the same dumb cookie consent UI over and over again.
Much like the EU's failed air pollution rules, while there's a grain of good intent behind them, the actual implementation is just broken and pointless, and does more harm than good.
I agree, though in that case I'm not sure the UK/EU legislature would have been needed at all. It also doesn't address the part of the problem that they were trying to address in the first place, limiting cookie use to where/when it is most essential.
Realistically, you can see if informed consent is being achieved if the number of sites with ad/tracking software installed drops. "would you like us to keep tabs on you on behalf of FB's advertising platform?"
>Mr Hancock said: "All this means that while we can enjoy the freedom of the web, the UK will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world."
This had me chuckling - I grew up in the Gulf region - they have the "nobody gets access" policy - way more robust.
Back when this craziness started, they had even blocked the sites giving STI information because they had "sex" in them. Not sure how it is right now.
The promotion in any form for alcoholic beverages are banned too. This is the web site for the biggest beer maker: http://efespilsen.com.tr/ (It says basically that according to a change in regulation, they aren't allowed to have a customer-facing website anymore).
Is this really addressed to minors? Because making identification mandatory is going to affect everybody behaviour.
It also makes a perfect excuse to control what is accessible and that could be expanded to other kinds content.
Also, it's frequently the case (I can't think of exceptions) that the people in power always try to control the sexual behaviour of others. I would like to know the reason for politic and religious authorities to be so obsessed with sex.
In other gregarious species, who can reproduce is decided by the high status individuals. Maybe is related to that.
the political claims have always been silly. They support small tiny government except for the big expansive military. They want big government out of people's lives except for what they consume and do in the bedroom.
When I was a teenager there always were a few used mags that we swapped or gave each other. If kids have smartphones, they'll resort to video sharing, and there are few ways to avoid it.
I'm not sure that's a good way to spend the taxpayer money.
This sounds silly, but the existing situation is also silly. Kids aren't allowed to go to pornographic movies in cinemas. What's the point of those restrictions, which people have been happy with for probably 100 years, when they are allowed to do all that online?
It sounds like the law should be harmonized one way or another - open everything up or close everything down, otherwise it's pointless.
I'm not sure that analogy holds; the Internet is just such a different thing from cinemas. Still, I'm sure no-one actually has a problem with the concept of preventing under-18s from watching porn online, it's the implementation that's the tricky bit. For example, no-one has a problem with cinema restrictions, but they might do if you had to hand over credit card details to watch a film, and if it were still trivially easy for under-18s to sneak into the cinema.
This is an awful piece of legislation and will pretty inevitably produce dangerous side effects whilst not in any way meeting its goals. It's a shame to see this kind of uninformed law get introduced in a supposedly advanced country.
It won't meet its aims as the targets (teenagers) are well aware of how to geo-shift their access using Proxies and VPNs and also it doesn't (AFAIK) cover non-commercial sites, so imgur, reddit etc don't count and they've got a load of porn for anyone who spends more than about 5 seconds looking.
On the flip-side there are significant downsides here. One UK adults will need to give their identifying details to commercial sites if they want access. In some cases those adults will not want it publicly known that they use those sites.
When they inevitably get hacked, we'll have an Ashley Madison style problem again with the possibility for blackmail as a result.
Also I'd imagine even more sites will mirror the content of the commercial porn sites and these less reputable sites have a rep. for hosting malware, so we'll likely see more devices gettting infected...
So far from coverage I've seen on the "mainstream" UK media, none of these issues gets a mention...
161 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] threadDefinitely.
On the other hand needing to provide a photo or scanned image of your driving license or passport AND give access to the web camera to the site to verify your identity, while reasonably effective might somehow produce as a side effect a reduction of customers.
now it would get very interesting if any card used for verification was in turn required to send a letter to the card holder about such verification.
still the requirements seem more lenient than what some online game (think MMO) services require when they request proof of identify to secure ownership of an account
"Users may be asked to provide credit card details, as gambling websites do." this is not at all how verification works.
And on the other side we have a load of personal information given to a load more sites on the Internet, with all the potential for problems if/when they get hacked (e.g. Ashley Madison)
It may, on UK sites, on "legitimate" sites. Not so much on the darkweb, or via proxies, or IRC or Usenet or ....
There's lots of other domains like that which provide quality content and no real way of enforcing age limits.
Some might, some will simply dismiss the legislation as not something they want to be bothered with.
Of course, blocking such sites might also trigger an unwanted backlash within the UK, which may be precisely why they might not be targeted at all.
One does wonder if the drafters of this legislation even considered this.
I can imagine some nefarious porn baron making an awful lot of money out of selling (or being paid not to sell) webcam footage of people browsing their website...
"In compilance with UK [some government branch] [some law name/number], this site employs continuous age and identity verification. Your webcam will be active for the duration of your visit to ensure that only people of 18 and above are viewing the content of this website."
I'm sure there would be people who'd accept that and continue with a webcam on and recording...
Are there any cases where something like this has been rolled out elsewhere where the effects can be looked at?
It's basically the same problem as preventing online piracy.
"good enough" here isn't good enough.
I'm going to draw parallels with online piracy again, where countless DRM and legal (both through legislation and litigation) efforts are made to curb piracy yet rarely make a dent on the numbers of people who access copyrighted content illegally via one means or another.
As a small website owner (not a porn website owner though), I really don't care if a country blocks my website because of silly censorship laws. Sure, it hurts finances a bit, but if a government truly represents the people (yeah right), then the people don't want to see my website anyway, right?! I wonder if larger websites like Reddit, forum boards, and file hosting sites will follow this same attitude.
"This, she explained, was because the Act does not tackle the fact that services including Twitter and Tumblr contain hardcore pornography but will not be required to introduce age-checks. "
It's only commercial porn sites that are being targeted. Sites that happen to host pornographic content (e.g. tumblr, reddit etc) aren't included
The relevant section, "a sentence was slipped in that gives a regulator powers to act against sites “making prohibited material available on the internet to persons in the United Kingdom”" - That means any website hosting said content, whether they accept money or not.
From the lords debate on the topic https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2017-02-02/debates/D2C24...
"However, I want to mention briefly user-generated material on social media, an issue that naturally arises in debating this Bill if we are told that it will not cover it, despite a vast amount of hardcore porn that can easily be viewed by anyone, including young children, being just a couple of clicks away. "
They mention tumblr/facebook being included but only when showing "commcercial" material, which appears to be the differentiating factor so sites like reddit wouldn't be generally in-scope.
In section 2.1, "All providers of online pornography, who are making available pornographic material to persons in the United Kingdom on a commercial basis, will be required to comply with the age-verification requirement." So advertising funded sites fall outside the remit.
I am pretty curious though about what approach to safeguarding children might be effective – or indeed, if research suggests that it's required. It does seem reasonable that freely available pornography at a young age could have substantial effects on sexual and social development; before slamming into full-blown 'moral panic' mode, it might be good to know what those effects are.
I do wonder though, how do you scientifically analyse that? Ask people if they were exposed to porn as a kid to pick your evaluation candidates? That'd be unreliable. Expose some underage people to porn (horrible) and evaluate them after tens of years? I don't think so...
It's just an idiotic legislations that most likely has nothing to do with porn - it just wants to establish a framework on which the government can ban anything it doesn't like.
Will they be forced to make their filters mandatory if the IP number looks as if it comes from the UK?
How will this work with porn sites outside the UK (such as most of them)? Will they all be blocked by default on the basis of some UK government censorship list or authority?
I think looking at IP ranges is pretty effective actually. Google already does send people to different regional sites based on where they're coming from.
>Companies breaking the rules set out in the Digital Economy Act face being blocked by their internet provider.
Seems to imply it would be the burden of individual sites. I'm sure many of which already have low margins since advertising in this space is extremely hard. So I'm going to guess most of them would sooner IP block all of Europe before bothering with this.
Good luck with that.
HAH.
No problem. I have a succinct filter that covers most of them:
...The only real flaw is that it doesn't cover IPv6.Web-filter companies: "challenge accepted".
Make no mistake, there is an entire industry which has been dedicated to this exact task for decades now. They will be very happy to help the UK government... for a fee.
there are no TV licenses in Australia though.. its just included in your tax which is how it should be here in the UK. Paying people to police the TV license is absolutely retarded
After all, what the UK government is proposing is basically to learn its citizens from an early age how to evade censorship by giving them a proper incentive to figure out how to go under the radar.
How about this for how to enforce parental controls... Encourage parents to supervise their childrens internet usage and educate the parents how to set up pfsense to control their own home.
I know its not for everyone, however we also have to ask the question, just how big is the problem of internet porn for society when viewed by minors? I don't have kids and haven't seen any studies, so honestly I just don't know.
Surely there are ways that you can educate, inform your kids, and maybe prepare them for what access to an unregulated stream of all of humanities information could contain.
In the months before and after its implementation there was a lot of discussion around the (vast) grey areas in the laws. After some months, the internet has coalesced on answers. All sites need to implement a nag screen for unknown users, in order to get "informed consent". This consent will be stored as a cookie and users should not delete cookies, or we will have to nag you next time you visit. We will also create a cottage industry of "compliance" specialists that will help you with the language of your nag screens and TCs.
Websites got slightly more annoying. Two-bit consultants made some money. User privacy was not improved in any way.Legislation regulating the internet is tricky business.
"As you browse this site, a record of everywhere you click is sent to the following companies: Google, Facebook, MysteryAdNetwork. These companies use this information to sell targetted advertising. We use the data to inform improvements to the site."
It wasn't all sites though, it was just sites that use third-party tracking and things like that, you didn't need a nag screen if the cookie was part of the functionality of the site eg a website with a login screen[1].
Everyone just copied everyone else with adding a nag screen for all sites because nobody actually read the rules.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/ipg/basics/legal/cookies/index_en.htm
> Persistent login cookies which store an authentication token across browser sessions are not exempted under CRITERION B. This is an important distinction because the user may not be immediately aware of the fact that closing the browser will not clear their authentication settings. They may return to the website under the assumption that they are anonymous whilst in fact they are still logged in to the service. The commonly seen method of using a checkbox and a simple information note such as “remember me (uses cookies)” next to the submit form would be an appropriate means of gaining consent therefore negating the need to apply an exemption in this case.
This would have been both more effective (because rogue websites wouldn't have been able to avoid it) and less annoying for users, because consent could be given using a consistent UI for every website. Not to mention the many hours of lost/wasted productivity caused by requiring websites to implement the same dumb cookie consent UI over and over again.
Much like the EU's failed air pollution rules, while there's a grain of good intent behind them, the actual implementation is just broken and pointless, and does more harm than good.
Realistically, you can see if informed consent is being achieved if the number of sites with ad/tracking software installed drops. "would you like us to keep tabs on you on behalf of FB's advertising platform?"
This had me chuckling - I grew up in the Gulf region - they have the "nobody gets access" policy - way more robust.
Back when this craziness started, they had even blocked the sites giving STI information because they had "sex" in them. Not sure how it is right now.
The promotion in any form for alcoholic beverages are banned too. This is the web site for the biggest beer maker: http://efespilsen.com.tr/ (It says basically that according to a change in regulation, they aren't allowed to have a customer-facing website anymore).
It also makes a perfect excuse to control what is accessible and that could be expanded to other kinds content.
Also, it's frequently the case (I can't think of exceptions) that the people in power always try to control the sexual behaviour of others. I would like to know the reason for politic and religious authorities to be so obsessed with sex.
In other gregarious species, who can reproduce is decided by the high status individuals. Maybe is related to that.
I'm not sure that's a good way to spend the taxpayer money.
It sounds like the law should be harmonized one way or another - open everything up or close everything down, otherwise it's pointless.
I'm sure lots of under-18s would have a problem with that. The vast majority is unlikely to accidentally end up on a porn site.
you're starting to get it
It won't meet its aims as the targets (teenagers) are well aware of how to geo-shift their access using Proxies and VPNs and also it doesn't (AFAIK) cover non-commercial sites, so imgur, reddit etc don't count and they've got a load of porn for anyone who spends more than about 5 seconds looking.
On the flip-side there are significant downsides here. One UK adults will need to give their identifying details to commercial sites if they want access. In some cases those adults will not want it publicly known that they use those sites.
When they inevitably get hacked, we'll have an Ashley Madison style problem again with the possibility for blackmail as a result.
Also I'd imagine even more sites will mirror the content of the commercial porn sites and these less reputable sites have a rep. for hosting malware, so we'll likely see more devices gettting infected...
So far from coverage I've seen on the "mainstream" UK media, none of these issues gets a mention...