Porn Ban: UK Parliament Passes Digital Economy Act, Requires Age Restriction For Porn Sites

The Digital Economy Act 2017 approved by British lawmakers includes a little-discussed clause that will require porn sites to verify a visitor's age and places an outright ban on certain types of “extreme porn.”

The law requires porn sites to make sure no users under the age of 18 are visiting. Those that fail to do so will be hit with a hefty fine and may be subject to additional punishment.

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The bill establishes the need for an “age-verification regulator” to oversee how porn sites confirm a visitor's age. Sites that don’t comply will be hit with a fine of 250,000 pounds ($323,000) or up to 5 percent of revenue. The government agency also would be able to order internet service providers to block websites and tell advertisers to stop placing ads on the offending sites.

The strict punishment may be enough to scare porn sites into abiding by the rule, but for the time being there is still a major issue for both the sites and the enforcement agency: There is no agreed upon way to verify an individual visitor’s age.

A number of suggestions have been floated for the process — most of them personally revealing. Visitors to the porn sites may have to provide credit card details, mobile phone number or details from electoral rolls or contracts. One proposal would have required citizens to visit the post office for age registration.

The law also places an outright ban on specific types of pornographic material lawmakers determined to be “extreme porn.”

The law says porn that depicts rape, sexual acts that may lead to harm or death, and other forms of violent sex acts will all be prohibited within the U.K. The ban on extreme porn is set to go into effect next March and will be enforced by the British Board of Film Censors.

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Porn sites have already started pushing back against the law, which was rushed through Parliament without much discussion to pass it before the general election, set for June 8.

That haste is evident in the text of the law, which appears nearly unenforceable, PornHub Vice President Corey Price said. In a statement, Price said the age verification requirement can be circumvented using a VPN or proxy service.

“There are over 4 million domains containing adult content, and unless sites are enforced against equally, stumbling across adult content will be no harder than at present,” Price said. “If the regulator pursues a ‘proportionate’ approach we may only see the 'Top 50' sites being affected.”

He called selective enforcement “wholly unacceptable,” adding the law will be ineffective in actually preventing underage users from visiting pornographic sites; it will “simply discriminate against compliant sites.”

It is also unclear how the law would be enforced on sites that aren’t pornographic in nature but may contain user-generated pornographic content. Social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter contain porn as do sites that offer user storage like Dropbox.