London, England, Apr 22, 2019 / 05:34 am
The United Kingdom has once again delayed the launch of its constraints on virtual porn. The online age verification program is now scheduled to launch mid-summer.
Digital Minister Matt Hancock signed a commencement order for the Digital Economy Act in 2017 as a means to curb pornography access by those under 18.
After two years of development and numerous delays, the program is now scheduled to be released on July 15. A few parts of the program have been updated since the project was originally expected to launch on April 1.
To view online pornography, internet users will need to confirm their age by entering information from a driver's license, credit card, or passport. If users do not wish to input their personal information, they may purchase a special ID card, available at thousands of retail shops across the nation for under £10.
For a website to be monitored, more than a third of the site must be dedicated to pornography, ruling out platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, which are known to have small pockets of pornography. Non-commercial pornographic sites will also be exempt.
Government officials say they hope social media companies will make an effort to protect children from encountering pornographic material.
"We know that pornography is available on some social media platforms and we expect those platforms to do a lot more to create a safer environment for children," a Department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport spokesman told the BBC.
"If we do not see action then we do not rule out legislating in the future to force companies to take responsibility for protecting vulnerable users from the potentially harmful content that they host," the spokesman said.
Originally, websites that failed to follow the age verification rules were expected to face a nearly $330,000 fine, but this will not be enforced because of the difficulty enforcing payment from porn companies overseas. Rather, the government said a threat to block noncompliant websites should be sufficient to ensure conformity, the BBC reported.
In March, Matt Fradd, author of The Porn Myth and creator of the new 21-day porn detox STRIVE, voiced support for increased restrictions surrounding pornography.
"If it's something as simple as age verification, I'm all for it," he told CNA. "It just sounds like we are expecting the same thing of people online that we already expect of them offline."
Among the available age verification services is AgeID, built by MindGeek, which operates and owns several common pornographic sites.
Some critics of the new UK policy say it violates the privacy of pornography users.
"Data leaks could be disastrous. And they will be the government's own fault," said Jim Killock from the Open Rights Group, according to the BBC.
The UK's National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the age verification is a valuable first step, but that other measures need to be taken alongside it.
"The NSPCC is calling for social networks to be required by law to give under-18s safe accounts with extra protections built in, so that children are kept as safe online as they are in the real world," read a statement from the organization, according to BirminghamLive.
Children's access to online pornography has been identified as a significant problem: A 2016 study by internet security company Bitdefender found that about 1 in 10 visitors to porn video sites is under age 10.
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Fight the New Drug, an organization that works to educate on the harmful effects of pornography, has highlighted numerous studies showing the negative impact of pornography on underage users, including the creation of addictions, changes in sexual taste, and physical impact on the brain.
"Just more broadly, I would say pornography perverts a child's understanding of human intimacy and sexual life, which is a very beautiful thing," Fradd stressed.
"It's as pernicious as sex is beautiful and human intimacy is worthwhile. Since those two things are beautiful and worthwhile, the corruption of it [in regards to] a child is all together something despicable and horrid."