The UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced that the government’s controversial new ‘porn block’ plans will go into effect from July 15, 2019.
The scheme – which we’ve covered extensively – will see sites that host pornography needing to implement strict age verification measures to ensure that no users are underage. As noted before, the aim is fine, but the measures likely won’t have the desired effect, due to the ease of circumvention.
The DCMS says that”websites that fail to implement age-verification technology face having payment services withdrawn or being blocked for UK users.”
This part of the Digital Economy Act regulation is crucial: it applies to UK users on websites based anywhere in the world, not just UK-based porn sites. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the new laws, which will have a short implementation period ahead of the July date when enforcement will begin.
For UK users that still want access to adult content, you’ll need to prove your identity via one of the BBFC-accredited Age Verification (AV) systems. Those that have been approved are Age Verification Certified(AVC) for their “robust data protection conditions”.
The email we received from the DCMS announcing this news contained the email addresses of every journalist it was sent to in plain text, which doesn’t necessarily bode well.
Websites and services that have implemented AV measures according to the new regulations will display (or, can display) the new AV symbol (shown above).
Of course, as blocking access is based on location – and thus IP address – if users wanted to access adult material without verifying their identity, it wouldn’t take more than firing up a VPN.
Read Next: UK ‘porn ban’ to start in just a few weeks, and there’s still no plan to protect personal data
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