UK planning age verification for porn sites from April 2018

[Laphroaig]

Everything is wrong with owning a credit card. One should not be allowed to spend money they have never made.

Presumably you're against the idea of mortgages and home ownership as well then? How many people have £200,000 sitting in a bank account to buy an average house in the UK outright. World runs on credit, whether you like it or not...

[Ts RedVeX]

There is nothing wrong with private ownership and I would like to live to see times where people can actually own stuff without having to ask state officials if the roof on their house should be covered with felt or tiles.

Card payments in general enable close monitoring of where what and by whom is being bought. You can, of course use them if you don't mind, but as you may assume after reading some of the posts, poeple do mind using them in some cases. The problem with spending money one has never earned is a totally different matter. If you want to borrow money without knowing what it takes to earn it then you are very likely to get into trouble. In reference to average people, if someone decides to lend money, then it is between him and the other person. However, if you let somebody like May decide about whether you and your family are going to be able to afford to buy that car next year, or go on a family holiday, then that is totally wrong and irresponsible.

As to adult-oriented sites and kids, computers are tools and children should be under adult supervision when using them. - Ideally, under supervision of their parents. Only that effective supervision may be difficult due to all the laws that threaten parents with jail for attempts of delivering children a decent upbringing, or give the parents a false sense of assurance, e.g. that the state will take the burden of making sure that child does not see a tit on the Internet, off the parents shoulders, effectively making the parents less vigilant.

[holzz]

prepaid credit cards are better. but I think Mrs. May will hav brexit on her hands, or even keeping in office, to worry about this porn bill shit.

[skirtrustler]

prepaid credit cards are better.

There is no such thing as a prepaid credit card.

There are credit cards (including charge cards such as AMEX where you pay it all off at the end of the month), debit cards (which charge direct to your bank account), and prepaid/stored value cards (somewhat untraceable and anonymous); they all have a sixteen digit number. You can tell which it is by looking up the BIN (first six digits) via many services. Nowhere in the world is a minor allowed a credit card, making it a universal proof of ID and adulthood; anyone with a bank account can have a debit card (age 13 in the UK), and anyone can have a stored value card. They each have their place in the market. Payment systems like CCBILL can be configured to differente these and accept only credit cards: I.e. adults.

Mrs. May will hav brexit on her hands, or even keeping in office, to worry about this porn bill shit.

Agreed. For the time being.

BREXIT does mean in the long term that there will no EU redress against the additional UK ‘nanny state’ R18 category, which is not allowed under EU-AVMSD.

The other reason why this may not be followed through is that in UK we have all age verified our broadband and mobile connections (and thus our porn filters); and quite arguably in court this meets the requirement to keep porn under adult supervision.

[JayneHayle]

The other reason why this may not be followed through is that in UK we have all age verified our broadband and mobile connections (and thus our porn filters); and quite arguably in court this meets the requirement to keep porn under adult supervision.

That won't stop the under 18's in the household from accessing porn on their bedroom laptops. Most kids can turn off the security installed by their parents. That's if any parents know are savvy enough to install any!

In any case as already mentioned.... it's the Company that needs the over 18 check.... NOT the consumer.

It will affect ALL porn sites around the globe eventually not just UK based Porn sites

I can see the likes of UK sites like tvchix, Bluepixels, FAB, joannajet etc all vanishing as no one in their right mind would want to hand over their personal bank details to sites like those.

[GroobySteven]

That won't stop the under 18's in the household from accessing porn on their bedroom laptops. Most kids can turn off the security installed by their parents. That's if any parents know are savvy enough to install any!

Correct and the government is aware of this and it's not an issue. This law is not intended as a stop all and it's not intended to stop 14+ yr olds finding some way to access (the same as they'd find a way to get smokes/booze if they wanted). It's to stop 8 year old's searching for 'angels' and accidentally finding 'anal angels', which I think any responsible adult would agree is a problem.
My kids are 7 and 9 and need to use the internet to do homework.

In any case as already mentioned.... it's the Company that needs the over 18 check.... NOT the consumer.

Correct, it's going to be the website's responsibility to adhere to the rules. How they choose to do that is up to them - there are a number of programs/solutions being worked on.

It will affect ALL porn sites around the globe eventually not just UK based Porn sites

It will affect all porn sites immediately. We can't not sell to the UK as the market is too big but if we don't adhere, then we can have a $250k fine, get delisted in Google, have our processing stopped and have the IP blocked. It's expected that Australia and Canada will follow soon after.

I can see the likes of UK sites like tvchix, Bluepixels, FAB, joannajet etc all vanishing as no one in their right mind would want to hand over their personal bank details to sites like those.

You're thinking this just affects UK sites. It doesn't. UK based sites have had to be compliant to this for a few years already. You will not be able to get to ANY porn sites, tube sites, blogs, or HungAngels.com without being verified if you live in or are a visitor to the UK. Those that know how to use proxies will be able to get around it but any sites/company seen to be promoting that would be liable to the same issues.

Nowhere in the world is a minor allowed a credit card, making it a universal proof of ID and adulthood; anyone with a bank account can have a debit card (age 13 in the UK), and anyone can have a stored value card. They each have their place in the market. Payment systems like CCBILL can be configured to differente these and accept only credit cards: I.e. adults.

We process much more debit cards then credit in the UK. This would not be a good solution for us. You're also getting too caught up in the fact that it's pay sites only. What about the free sites that people want to see?

The other reason why this may not be followed through is that in UK we have all age verified our broadband and mobile connections (and thus our porn filters); and quite arguably in court this meets the requirement to keep porn under adult supervision.

That would have been addressed two years ago. This is going ahead.

What does this mean for consumers? You're likely to have to verify your age in someway. As most people don't want the government to know what they're doing (as if they're not watching and recording where you spend your online time anyway) then there are third party solutions. As a consumer you will either have to signup online to a company who will then verify your age based on your ID/info that you are putting in and match it (in the same way you get a credit score). That data will then have to be destroyed but you will have a 'key'. Another way to get the 'key' is to go into a convenience store/petrol station and in the same way you have to prove you're over 18 to get booze, you will be able to buy a 'card', this will have the key on. This will keep anonymity.
Once you've entered the key into your system/browser then you should not have to enter it again. It's being touted that to get this online would be £1 per person - or in the convenience store, £10. This would work on all websites using this system. This is not the only system that is being worked on.

For the companies/websites? You have some choices. What you don't have is a choice whether to be compliant or not. You can either make the free parts of your sites PG - and then at the payment area, include the 'key'. Or you can include the 'key' firewall before the tour. It's likely that for HungAngels we'd block anyone not a member from having access to anything other than the PG front page and then include the 'key' are where you login.

There are positives on this. I support the fact that it should be harder to just come across (no pun intended) porn online. I long campaigned for self-regulation in the adult industry but when working with many thieves, pirates and bell-ends, it doesn't happen. Many of those bell-ends and thieves will not be able to come compliant, thus the herd is thinned for people seeking real porn. By limiting the access this way, we're only going to get people who do want to join, thus cutting down on overheads.

I'd suggest anyone in the industry who wants to discuss this further, join our new industry forum at TSChatter.com where I'll be posting more on how to work on this, and issues as we get closer.