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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: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 01 2017, @10:29AM
[Citation needed]
Outside of the puritan Christian US, I've never seen anyone claim this. In fact, not that long ago, people only had one bedroom, if the house even had separate rooms. Do you think kids never woke up when their parents were "doing it"?
Heck, I remember reading that in the US, porn magazines are put on the top shelf. The last times I bought one (before everything moved to the internet), it was on the bottom shelf, where prudish adults wouldn't see them without looking for them.
The only actual case of "damage" I've heard of is one very young child that got convinced that "women eat peepees". No more damaging than any other misunderstanding that can be cleared up once the child gets old enough that you can explain the misunderstanding.