UK Could Soon Ban Porn Sites That Lack Age Verification

In case it hasn’t been proven obvious enough up to this point, the UK has a serious beef with sex. To be more specific, it has a laundry list of sexual acts it deems inappropriate, and it also dislikes the ease in which someone could procure sexual materials; eg: images and video.

A couple of months ago, the UK’s Audiovisual Media Services Regulations were updated to ban a number of sexual acts found in pornography filmed in the country, such as facesitting, fisting, female ejaculation, spanking, physical restraint, verbal abuse, among others. Rightly so, many took great offense to the fact that a government could decide what’s ethically kosher with their porn.

Well, the UK’s porn bulldozer hasn’t run out of fuel quite yet. It’s now being suggested that soon, the country could deem it illegal for ISPs to deliver websites that don’t have proper age verification mechanisms in place. Today, it’s extremely easy to get access to a ton of porn, all without age verification, and the UK believes this acts as a major threat to children.

Flickr: Lars Plougmann

I don’t think it could be argued that it’s “too easy” to get access to porn. Major sites like Pornhub don’t put a roadblock in place before getting access to its videos, and those sites that do have protections in place don’t usually go any further than simply asking, “Are you 18?”

So what’s age verification going to do, exactly? Simply asking you to put in a birthdate won’t accomplish much – most of us put fake dates in all the time just to get access to a site quicker. The next step, then, would be using a credit card to verify your age, something the UK’s Culture Secretary Sajid Javid says is a possibility.

If the UK goes that route, that opens an entirely new set of problems. Many who view pornography online are not willing to tie their name to it. I can envision a situation where someone views porn online, somehow gets a charge on their credit card bill, and then has to explain that to their S/O. What this could result in is people finding other ways to get their porn – and there are a multitude of ways to do that, even finding some sites online that the UK’s censors don’t know about, or using a VPN to get around those censors.

It’s not just adults that would find alternate methods of finding porn, though; there’s little stopping children from doing the same thing. By doing all it can to block pornography from being seen, it could take on the forbidden fruit effect that makes children want it even more. I think there’s a reason so many kids smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol – they’re not supposed to.

If the UK does in fact want to make age verification a law and tie it to someone’s credit card, things are going to become very interesting.