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UK age verification legislation will lead to a porn habit database (archive)
The country is eager to protect children from porn. It's a worthy goal, mind you, given that research shows that exposing kids to porn can be damaging. Unfortunately, it's a quixotic goal, given that porn is impossible to block. Nevertheless, the UK is now on the brink of creating a database of the country's porn habits.
It also seems poised to hand the age verification piece of that puzzle over to an outfit that Vice refers to as "the shady company that controls the majority of free porn tube sites." That company is called MindGeek. Vice likens it to the Walmart of porn. Britain's leading obscenity lawyer, Myles Jackman, says it supposedly owns about 90% of tube sites on the internet, and it didn't get that way by making friends in the industry.
[...] And now, MindGeek, the WalMart of porn, is getting ready to become even more filthy rich by having maneuvered itself into the position of becoming gatekeeper for consumers of porn, be they adults or kids who don't know how to use a virtual private network (VPN). It's not a done deal quite yet, but MindGeek has had several conversations with officials. It's also currently pushing its own age verification platform, AgeID. If selected, Britons could be dealing with AgeID as the principal gate between themselves and their porn.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday December 01 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
It would be nice his could work... and I have heard the idea in the past. Other variations include limiting them to the .xxx domain.
However, it will not work. Some porn producers are almost as sleazy as corporate executives... More than a few of them will ignore the law (or just pay it lip service) for the money. Think of how popular the porn site that gets by the filtering software will be. And we all know how quick the legal system is...
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday December 01 2017, @02:47PM
With the right penalties, the easily-provable crime of not identifying your content shouldn't take long to get you sued. Especially if this happened in the litigation-happy US.
It's not like the people being blocked are a huge market anyway. How much money are you really going to get from the teenagers that can't figure out their way around a software filter?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?