New online porn controls designed to stop children seeing adult content online are not a ‘silver bullet’ and will not always work, the watchdog that will police it admitted today.
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) said that despite a new law to require age checks to block access to those under 18 ‘determined teenagers will find ways to access pornography’.
Age restrictions on viewing adult videos and images, the first in the world, will come into effect on July 15, Digital Minister Margot James said.
In a question and answer section on the website set up in response to the new law the BBFC says that it will ‘primarily’ target adult websites with high volumes of traffic but be partly reliant on whistleblowers to tell it about smaller sites breaking the law.
It admitted that the new law, part of the Digital Economy Act 2017, is mainly aimed at children who accidentally ‘stumble across pornography on commercial pornographic websites’.
Under the new law companies running porn websites will have to check the age of users or risk ‘having payment services withdrawn or being blocked for UK users’.
The move, which applied to sites whose content is more than a third pornographic, has been designed to cut the number of children who are freely able to access extreme material on the internet.
But it has been criticised by freedom campaigners and others who fear that making people give personal details to websites leaves them open to fraud and blackmail.
On the website the BBFC said: ‘Age-verification is not a silver bullet.
‘Some determined teenagers will find ways to access pornography.
‘However, children will no longer stumble across pornography on commercial pornographic websites.
‘Research carried out on behalf of the NSPCC and Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) shows children are as likely to stumble across online pornography as to search for it.’
Under the current scheme adult websites will have to provide their own verification software, which will then have to meet standards and checks carried out by the British Board of Film Classification (file image posed by models)
The BBFC presented an honest appraisal of the new rule’s effectiveness on its new age verification website following today’s announcement
The Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport mad the announcement this morning that from July 15 people wanting to watch online porn in the UK would have to prove their age
Privacy advocates have raised concerns about the implementation of the age verification procedure and said it provides ample opportunity for criminals to manipulate porn viewers (file photo)
It also added that it would ‘act proportionately’ in enforcing the new rules.
‘So we will primarily investigate sites with high volumes of traffic, but also carry out spot checks on less visited sites.
‘Additionally, we’ll consider investigating sites that are reported to us by charities, stakeholders and individuals.’
The Department of Digital, Culture Media and Sport said that the law change was ‘backed by 88 per cent of UK parents with children aged seven to 17, who agree there should be robust age-verification controls in place to stop children seeing pornography online’.
Announcing the July 15 introduction, Mrs James said: ‘Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online.
‘The introduction of mandatory age-verification is a world-first, and we’ve taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from inappropriate content.
‘We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this.’
Adult websites will have to provide their own verification software, which will then have to meet standards and checks carried out by the (BBFC).
Its website says: ‘Similar age-verification processes are already in place for UK-hosted pornographic video-on-demand services, online betting, poker, and other age-restricted products and services. So we know it works.’
It has created a ‘voluntary certification scheme’ called the Age-verification Certificate (AVC), which will ‘assess the data security standards of AV (age verification) providers’.
BBFC chief executive David Austin said: ‘The introduction of age-verification to restrict access to commercial pornographic websites to adults is a ground breaking child protection measure.
‘Age-verification will help prevent children from accessing pornographic content online and means the UK is leading the way in internet safety.
“On entry into force, consumers will be able to identify that an age-verification provider has met rigorous security and data checks if they carry the BBFC’s new green ”AV” symbol.’
An NSPCC spokeswoman said: ‘Exposure to pornography can be damaging to young people’s views about sex, body image and healthy relationships, as we regularly hear from children who contact our Childline service.
‘We want to make sure that when these new rules are implemented they are as effective as possible and protect children from coming across sexually explicit content.
‘To accomplish this, it is crucial the rules keep pace with the different ways that children are exposed to porn online.’
The start date of the scheme, introduced in the 2017 Digital Economy Act, has been put back several times.
Back in November Mrs James said she hoped legislation would be in Parliament before the end of 2018 but that websites would need time to ‘get up to speed’ after.
She told the Science and Technology Committee’s inquiry on November 13, that the impact of social media had taken longer than hoped but ‘we have got it right’.
