The United Kingdom has recently come out with a new legislation meant to ensure stricter regulations against pornography for the protection of children.
Faithwire reported that the new law is called Online Safety Bill and includes a provision that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of their users. Websites who provide pornographic content that do not comply with the legislation will be fined to 10% of their global income. The government will also block the URL of violating websites as part of their penalty.
In a press release dated February 8, the U.K.'s Digital Economy Minister Chris Philip announced the new legislation, which is in line with the celebration of Safer Internet Day. Philip also explained that the new legislation hopes to give parents the "peace of mind" they deserve when it comes to their children surfing the internet.
"Parents deserve peace of mind that their children are protected online from seeing things no child should see. We are now strengthening the online safety bill so it applies to all porn sites to ensure we achieve our aim of making the internet a safer place for children," Philip said.
The press release explained that websites may use any age verification technology provided that it must "be secure, effective, and privacy preserving." Websites are suggested to check a user's age through information held by their mobile providers, government held data such as passports, credit card verification, and other means. The bill, however, does not require websites to require a full identity check nor to store whatever data they acquired for the said process.
"All companies that use or build this technology will be required to adhere to the UK's strong data protection regulations or face enforcement action from the Information Commissioner's Office," the press release stressed.
BBC reported that the first draft of the Online Safety Bill was published last May 2021. The draft allowed the "duty of care" of removing pornographic content for children's protection under the decision of big tech companies while supervised by the Office of Communication.
Accordingly, the parliament reviewed the draft and reported that a tighter standard needs to be in place, which included "an explicit duty for all pornography sites to make sure children cannot access them." The parliament's report also cited the need to include "the potential harmful impact of algorithms," "fake adverts designed to trick users," and "paid advertisements" that led to scams.
The parliament's report also recommended to the Law Commission that criminal offenses should be created and integrated in the final version of the bill. Some of the criminal offenses included those that incite "violence against women, or based on gender or disability," "distributing seriously harmful misinformation," "promoting self-harm," and the sending of unwanted naked images commonly referred to as "Cyber-flashing."
Children were reported last May to fake their age to get into the pornographic site OnlyFans to make "easy money." Minors, whose ages range 13 to 17, were able to create accounts in OnlyFans and earn around $7,000. OnlyFans, which is a content-creation service based in London that's reserved for individuals 18 years and above, is being used as a platform for the sexual trafficking of minors.
The platform announced that it will suspend its policy of banning "sexually explicit" content beginning October 1. Christian Action, Research, and Education (CARE), an organization based in the U.K, criticized the announcement. CARE raised that removing the policy will make it "easier for vulnerable women and children to be exploited."
