UK's lords want more details on adult website check plans A House of Lords committee has called for greater detail on how the UK government intends to introduce online porn age verification plans in the Digital Economy Bill. Under the proposed legislation, pornographic websites that fail to implement checks would be blocked by all UK internet service providers. The Digital Econonomy …
As others have asked.. is it really a problem?
I suppose that depends on the age of the kids.
Mine are 9 and 12 and have unrestricted access, but they also know that I monitor what they have been looking at, and if they overstep they loose access. So far we have had one minor infraction.. as they get older I'm ready to engage in a game of cat and mouse trying to catch them.
The reason I'm not too worried is that I was in my mid teens at the end of the 90s... It's was slower and blockier but I don't think there's anything online now thats worse than what I saw back then (there's more now.. much more) but I reckon I turned out ok, so I'm not overly concerned with them watching a bit of porn when they are older.
"The Digital Econonomy Bill has been passed by MPs and is now due to enter the committee stage, which will examine the legislation.
But the committee said the Bill does not spell out "how the age-verification regime will actually work."
Guidelines for age checks are to be drafted by an "as yet-to-be-designated regulator" which could adversely affect the ability of the House "effectively to scrutinise the legislation", it said."
This is what I love (sarcasm) about our governments - that a bill can pass through a house without the people voting for it having any idea how it will actually work or what the implications will be. How can you honestly say you are representing your constituents and their interests when you can't even say how they will be affected?
When it's up to an un-elected group of nobles and holy men to inject some sense then someone really needs to have a good hard look at how well those men and women elected to represent the 'common' person are really doing their jobs.
That said, I actually don't think the House of Lords is an inherently bad idea as these people are not career politicians and are not, therefore entirely submerged in that particular soup. If the representatives of the people actually represented the interests of the people then they just wouldn't be needed but apparently they are.
What this does is highlight the root cause of the problem:
That is that there is simply NO WAY WHAT SO EVER of reliable verify age or consent to use access/use a service/website on the Internet.
Parents make the problem far worse by allowing kids to have Facebook Instagram or other account in blatant breach of the age restrictions. What is truly bonkers is that this has been going on for years and no one has yet found a fool proof way to manage it. In a shop, if you go in and try to buy cigarettes, alcohol etc and are clearly under age, you can be refused unless you provide appropriate ID. It works because that ID has a photograph on it. Online, it simply is a non started. There is simply no way of verifying age, identity or consent reliably.
Given the popularity of pron sites, and the inconvenience of having to stop what you're doing to verify your age, I can see an upsurge in UK VPN adoption being the most likely outcome.
This would have the added benefit of overriding all the other UK net censorship
If only everyone in the UK had some sort of ID card with a code that they could enter into something like a payment page for a credit/debit card and a PIN number to go with it. That could be verified by the bank of government identity watchdog and then the age consent passed back to the website.
ID cards for all and .gov knowing all your favourite smut sites!
Hasn't that been a Hobby horse for May for several years now....
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