The latest move in the Conservative-led government’s war against online pornography in the United Kingdom is a promise to require pornography websites to implement age-checks in the event that the party get re-elected. While the method of age-checking wasn’t specified, the government made it clear that any website that failed to do so would be blocked by ISPs in Britain, with ISPs that fail to do so being fined.
SourceThe UK’s Conservative party has promised to introduce mandatory age-checks on online pornography websites if re-elected in May this year. Culture secretary Sajid Javid said an independent regulator would work with websites to verify users’ ages using as-yet-unspecified methods. Sites that fail to comply would be blocked by the UK’s internet service providers (ISPs) while ISPs that did not co-operate could be fined. Although the plans have been welcomed by child welfare charities, experts have warned that mandatory age-checks could be costly and difficult to implement. Some commentators have suggested that the proposals could also lead to greater censorship of the internet in the UK. The new plans have been unfavorably compared with the 2013 opt-out internet filters, which were introduced to help families control access to adult material but inadvertently blocked educational resources such as sexual health websites.
