LONDON – An organization representing the UK’s adult entertainment industry has helped create what some are calling an invasive and potentially dangerous proposal to verify the ages of consumers who view porn online.
The Adult Provider Network, a trade association for UK porn producers, feels a standardized, database-driven age-verification system that doesn’t rely on credit cards would make life easier for consumers, government and the industry itself, according to Chris Ratcliff, chairman of the organization and managing director for adult broadcaster Portland TV.
Such a system not only would remove the threat of even harsher government oversight, but also force porn companies outside the country to play by the same rules imposed upon domestic websites, Ratcliff indicated.
“Current regulations only apply to UK-based companies,” he told Britain’s Mirror.com. “If the government says it’s now illegal [to distribute porn to anyone whose age has not been independently verified], then the companies based offshore would be breaking the UK law.
“There needs to be parity in the way things are regulated,” Ratcliff continued. “Otherwise there will be no regulated industry in the UK. Everyone [will move] offshore.”
Social scientists argue for a non-credit-card-based system for another reason.
“Currently in an online situation, a large amount of adult content is available free-to-view on adult ‘tube’ sites [like Pornhub and RedTube], so children and young people can easily access 18-plus-rated content,” online child safety expert Dr. Rachel O’Connell told The Guardian. “By introducing age verification, it will be possible to limit children’s access to adult content [on free sites].”
Among the verification databases mentioned so far are those maintained by mobile operators, banks, credit-rating agencies, the National Health Service, the Department of Work and Britain’s postal service. Under the proposal, which Ratcliff called “a frictionless, privacy‐preserving user experience,” adult websites would require visitors to provide sufficient personal information to verify their adulthood against the records held by one or more of the “trusted providers.” Each website would check a visitor’s age only once and wouldn’t be required to store the information.
According to the proposal’s authors, the process would preserve consumer anonymity by running identity-check requests through an “anonymizing hub.” The concept is vague at the moment, but even if it becomes well-defined, privacy advocates worry weaknesses in the system could allow hackers and others to develop “pornography profiles” of individual users. That possibility became even more worrisome when Home Secretary Theresa May announced the government’s intention to revive a bill requiring ISPs and phone companies to record data about customers’ texts, emails, calls and browsing habits and maintain the files for at least a year.
According to Ratcliff, the proposed system would solve a number of concerns for both government and the adult industry, without causing either to run afoul of public opinion or the courts. Prime Minister David Cameron’s mandatory porn filters, instituted in 2013 and largely ineffective, are under review by the European Union, which may declare “opt-out” filtering illegal. On the industry side, devising a standardized, independently verified age-check scheme could free adult website operators of recent regulations banning content categories including spanking, verbal abuse, humiliation, watersports, physical restraint, facesitting and female ejaculation. Preventing children from accidentally or intentionally encountering such material online composed the government’s primary reason for restricting those content categories.
The proposal, supported by APN and the non-partisan government consultancy Digital Policy Alliance, represents pushback against the conservative political party’s pre-election promise to levy fines and mandate ISPs block foreign and domestic websites that do not conform to strict and as-yet-undefined regulations meant to ensure internet users younger than 18 cannot access adult content anywhere on any device.
Ratcliff said MindGeek is among the large online porn distributors already embracing the proposal.
