Why is no one stopping this?
In simpler times one of the worse ID mishaps would be getting to a club and realising you’ve forgotten it at home.
Well, now if you get that urge in the night time to look at porn you better have a government-issued ID ready or your credit card information. Even if you’re looking for free XXX content, you’ll have to provide relevant identification that you’re over the age of 18.
Under the new restrictions, any page displaying adult content will have a warning page that requires users to log in. If you don’t want to use your card or ID you can purchase a special porn pass instead. According to The Register, IDs will have to be scanned in the plan deemed “fit for purpose” by a government body, the ruling was based on the predicted costs for rolling out the new laws.
“The regulator will be empowered to direct internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to sites which fail to comply with appropriate AV (age verification) requirements and those which host extreme material,” the report reads. “The regulator will also be able to direct ISPs to block access to sites containing ‘extreme pornography’, regardless of whether AV controls are in place.”
Making changes to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) to install the age verification software is estimated to cost around £4.45 million and the report did state that the government’s plans do not “assess the costs to pornography providers resulting from the proposal”.
These plans seem to be a hangover from David Cameron’s days as Prime Minister (yeah, the guy who allegedly had sex with a dead pig’s mouth at uni). Back in 2015, when the ex-Tory leader proposed stricter laws against porn it was the EU who had our backs and defended the user’s right to consent to viewing adult content. Of course, we’ve made the incredibly dumb decision to leave the EU so now we have to defend ourselves.
About 60,000 shops in the UK will offer Age Verification cards, which should be on offer before April. That gives us only a few months of free and unregulated smutty internet. It seriously looks like nobody is going to stop this.
