UK Porn Laws – Update – Scrapped Completely!

Update – Scrapped Completely!

Well, we all knew that when the UK Government proposed introducing an online porn age verification system that it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it seemed to be a ridiculous task proposed by those who clearly had little understand of how it could actually be implemented.

Well, new reports are confirming that the UK Government has now (quietly) decided to scrap the scheme entirely. You can read more about it via the link here!

Will They Return?

It’s possible that the UK Government may look to revisit the subject again in the future. For the moment, however, it seems that the penny has finally dropped that the practicality of applying such a system was, frankly, just too difficult to overcome.

The original article will resume from this point!

UK Porn Block

Porn is a subject we generally prefer to steer away from here at eTeknix. Well, except on the odd occasion when it does have a relatively relevant (or amusing) theme. Of course, in this case, we are willing to throw this into that category.

You may have heard news in recent months that the UK was set to introduce new laws regarding online pornography. Specifically that you would be required to prove your age before you could access an adult website.

If you haven’t heard of these laws, you shouldn’t feel too bad about it. In a report via the HuffingtonPost, a recent survey found that around two-thirds of Britons were entirely unaware of this.

What Are The New Porn Laws?

Put simply, the new laws will make it necessary for internet users in the UK to ‘prove their age’ before they can access an adult website.

Despite the government implementing this law, it seems that they ran out of ideas as to how to enforce it. As such, adult websites are entirely expected to regulate this themselves. Yes, the government made the laws and will supposedly come down (excuse the expression) on those who are non-compliant. They’ll presumably do so with fines, but would that work!? Of course, they just didn’t bother suggesting a system to make this actually work.

In short, the websites will legally be compelled and required to block your access if your age isn’t verified.

The laws are, incidentally, being introduced for what we feel are largely legitimate reasons. Specifically that there is practically nothing stopping anyone under the age of 18 accessing adult material online. By design or accident, the internet is full of it and even an occasional benign Google impact search will often provide ‘interesting’ results.

You don’t even find many websites offering you tick-box ‘Yes, I am over 18’ options which you could determine to be the bare minimum anyway.

Who Is This Affecting?

Well, it should be noted that if you pay for your online adult entertainment, then this shouldn’t affect you. Well, at least not on that specific website.

The upcoming block will only largely affect those websites which offer adult material for free. I don’t think I have to name names here for you to guess which sites I’m referring to.

So, in other words, this is going to be a problem for a significant number of internet users in the UK be it on mobile or PC.

What Will We Have To Do?

The UK government has simply stipulated that a user must prove their age to access any ‘free’ pornographic websites.

The company Mindgeek, who owns many of the more ‘popular’ adult websites does seemingly have a system ready via a registration service called ‘AgeID’. This will, at the very least, require the entry of credit card information to at least verify that you are over 18. It is not, however, believed that this will require any payment. Owning the card is, put simply, the proof required as you can’t have one until you are 18.

Some more disturbing aspects, however, allude to the transmission of far more sensitive information. This may include passports or birth certificates. While these latter options are unlikely, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility.

This is, however, all still something of a grey area. In terms of specifics, while registration via credit card seems likely, it hasn’t been confirmed as of yet.

Passport To Porn!

After your registration, you will receive or be given some form of ‘log-in’ account. This may be based around your e-mail address or an account name. In combination with a password, however, this will essentially be your ‘passport to porn’. This isn’t, however, entirely straight forward.

Your ‘porn passport’ may only be specific to a certain website or verification service. As such, if you visit multiple sites, you might need to do this more than once. This is based on the likelihood that they will not all fall under the same age-verification umbrella.

Either way, however, you will essentially have to create your own unique account to access online pornography. Great! More passwords to remember!

While this might sound inconvenient, the good news is that, as above, most of the more popular sites are all owned by the same company. As such, on most occasions, you will not be required to constantly register new details for each site. Your ‘log-in’ should (hopefully) have access to various sites.

Security

As you might imagine, such a system is a little bit worrying. Considering that you’re going to have to use some pretty sensitive information to get your ‘passport’ we’ve seen all too many examples in recent years of bad security leading to masses of data breaches.

Do you really trust an online ‘adult’ company to keep your credit card information safe?… It’s not something that sits entirely comfortably with us!

There are, however, ways to get around this ban entirely.

VPN

You can, of course, bypass the block entirely by tricking your internet service provider into thinking you’re accessing from a completely different country.

While this might sound complicated, it’s actually easily achievable via a VPN (Virtual Private Network). By using a program of this type you can effectively set yourself a brand new IP address originating from another country. This also has the added bonus of (generally) masking your internet access from your service provider and, by proxy, allowing you to get a far more secure internet experience.

While we don’t recommend any particular provider there are some you can pay for (which can be great) and others you don’t (which can still be decent). A Google search will point you in some good directions!

Alternatively, the internet browser Opera offers this as a free built-in feature to their browser. You can check out their website via the link here!

When Does The Block Start?

With the born laws set to come into effect on July 15th, not for the first time the UK government has now decided to delay their implementation. This is likely due to the factor that, quite simply, they couldn’t decide on a system of ‘monitoring’ this. Well, not one that didn’t raise a few security question marks at least.

Thoughts?

Let us know your thoughts on this matter in the comments. We’d love to hear if you even knew this was happening?