SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Enforcing age verification checks for online porn sites could be detrimental to smaller ISPs and significantly increase online fraud, the government has admitted.
The measures, which are due to come into force in May, will require UK residents to prove they are 18 or over in order to get access to porn sites.
[...] And the one for age verification (PDF) – slipped out over the Christmas break – is a doozy, reeling off a list covering concerns about privacy, online fraud and reputational damage to the government.
The document also set out the costs of the new measures, which includes a cost to the public purse of between £1m and £7.9m for the creation of the regulator.
Meanwhile, the estimated cost to large ISPs of blocking sites – on the assumption that this would be for between 1 and 50 sites a year on a DNS level – is in the range of £100,000 to £500,000, which they said would cover a system update to include the BBFC's chosen porn sites.
These providers told government it was likely they would be able to absorb ongoing operational costs, probably because many already have blocking systems.
But this isn't true for all providers, as Neil Brown, tech lawyer at decoded:Legal, pointed out: "If every ISP needs to block non-compliant sites, that will impact smaller ISPs, especially if they don't already have a blocking system in place."
The government acknowledges this risk in the impact assessment, saying that the requirement "could have a negative impact on smaller ISPs with a much smaller workforce and we will need to carefully consider the impact on them".
[...] The security measures of the age verification providers has also been questioned – especially as the frontrunner at the moment, AgeID, is produced by mega-porn-corp MindGeek, whose companies don't have a great reputation for security.
"It would be ironic if a mass exposure of people's porn proclivities... is what teaches the public about the importance of online privacy and security," said Jackman.
Faced with all of this, perhaps it's not surprising that the government also lists as a potential risk that people simply stop using online porn at all.
But, hey, perhaps that's what the government wants...®
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @12:21PM (1 child)
So that's what you wish to know, is it? That's easy, because I'm the Assteller. I can see the future of your ass.
You see a toy clown with red poofy hair, a red ball-like nose, and white skin, about the size of an adult male's hand. You ask him if you can be friends, and he answers in the affirmative. You play games together until you have to leave, and then say goodbye to your new friend. The clown smiles ominously as you leave the room.
Several minutes after parting ways with the toy clown, you hear a voice say "I wanna go... you know where!" Suddenly, you feel as if something is floating between your snapcheeks and is directly in front of your asshole. You realize instantly that it's the toy clown, and have an unsettling premonition that something terrible is about to happen. You sense that the clown has interlocked the fingers from both of his hands together, but you still don't know what he's about to do. Then you feel it. The tickle. It's an excruciating level of tickle, the likes of which cannot even be properly described.
You scream and you scream and you scream, but the tickle does not stop. The clown is whamming your asshole with his hands! And he didn't just wham it once, but three whole times! And you know that he's about to wham every single molecule of your ass until nothing remains! He whams and he whams and he whams, all the while laughing at your suffering...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Wootery on Wednesday January 10 2018, @02:23PM
Oh come on. I'd hardly call last night 'the future'.