A controversial UK authorities scheme to introduce mandatary age checks for accessing on-line pornography has been dropped — for now.
Introduction of the measure, which was supposed to guard youngsters from accessing inappropriate content material on-line, had already been delayed by a number of months this 12 months, most just lately after a bureaucratic oversight.
The technical and regulatory challenges of introducing age verification throughout grownup web sites has attracted a lot criticism, together with from privateness campaigns involved it could sum to logs of porn viewing habits linked to non-public IDs.
The purpose given for ditching the plan now could be the federal government says it has determined it now not is smart to introduce the age verify provision at this stage — given wider plans to introduce complete laws to manage a spread of on-line harms, as set out within the Online Harms white paper earlier this 12 months.
The information that age checks for accessing porn have been being ditched dropped quietly, through a written assertion from secretary of state for digital, Nicky Morgan, immediately.
“Since the White Paper’s publication, the government’s proposals have continued to develop at pace. The government announced as part of the Queen’s Speech that we will publish draft legislation for pre-legislative scrutiny. It is important that our policy aims and our overall policy on protecting children from online harms are developed coherently in view of these developments with the aim of bringing forward the most comprehensive approach possible to protecting children,” she writes.
“The government has concluded that this objective of coherence will be best achieved through our wider online harms proposals and, as a consequence, will not be commencing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 concerning age verification for online pornography. The Digital Economy Act [DEA] objectives will therefore be delivered through our proposed online harms regulatory regime. This course of action will give the regulator discretion on the most effective means for companies to meet their duty of care. As currently drafted, the Digital Economy Act does not cover social media platforms.”
A spokesman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport confirmed the intention is to include the goals of Part three of the DEA into complete on-line harms regulation that can place an obligation of care on platforms to guard customers from a spread of dangerous content material. Including within the case of inappropriate materials being accessed by youngsters.
The spokesman couldn’t give a timeframe for such a provision making it into legislation now in mild of the change of plans. But given how a lot authorities and parliamentary time continues being consumed by the brexit course of there is no such thing as a lifelike likelihood of on-line porn age checks making it onto the UK’s statute books this 12 months.
Getting settlement on complete regulation of on-line harms can also be unlikely to show any much less controversial. So the timeframe for passing a broader legislation could possibly be an extended one — ergo, it seems to be protected to imagine rules for accessing on-line porn are being booted into 2020 a minimum of.
In phrases of the place it’s at with the broader on-line harms plan, a session on the White Paper was concluded in July, per the DCMS spokesman, who stated the federal government might be publishing its response within the coming months. The intent is to introduce a draft invoice this session and move laws as quickly as doable, he added.
