UK government ditches 'porn block'. What happens now?

The UK government has shelved its controversial "porn block", which would have introduced legislation enforcing age verification on porn sites in the UK.

In a written ministerial statement, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Nicky Morgan confirmed that the government "will not be commencing part three of the Digital Economy Act (2017)".

This act, which was dubbed the "porn block", would have made the UK the first country in the world to bring in robust age verification laws for online pornography. The age checks would have required uploading a passport or driving licence or purchasing a "porn pass" from a store to prove one's age.

The law was intended to make online pornography less available to children.

After repeated stalling and rescheduling, the government has eventually ditched the plan entirely.

"Adult content is currently too easy to access on the internet, we’re making sure the protections that exist for children offline are provided online too," a DCMS spokesperson said in a statement in May 2019.

Morgan echoed these sentiments in the statement on the shelving of the legislation and talked about the government's next steps.

Protecting children is at the heart of our online harms agenda, and is key to wider government priorities. Going online can be beneficial for children, who use the internet for connecting with peers, to access educational resources and for entertainment. However, the government is concerned about the prevalence of adult content online, which is easily accessible to children, and believes it is vital that children are protected from accessing inappropriate, harmful content.

But, it looks like DCMS hasn't abandoned its aim to introduce age verification checks. In Morgan's statement, she talked about the Online Harms White Paper, which the government published in April 2019. "It proposed the establishment of a duty of care on companies to improve online safety, overseen by an independent regulator with strong enforcement powers to deal with non-compliance," she said.

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The government has decided that its "objective of coherence will be best achieved through our wider online harms proposals and, as a consequence, will not be commencing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 concerning age verification for online pornography," Morgan added.

The Digital Economy Act objectives will therefore be delivered through our proposed online harms regulatory regime. This course of action will give the regulator discretion on the most effective means for companies to meet their duty of care.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) was appointed as the regulator responsible for ensuring compliance with the Digital Economy Act. But a spokesperson for DCMS told Mashable the regulator mentioned in Morgan's speech is "the yet-to-be-decided regulator for the wider online regulatory regime we set out in the Online Harms White Paper."

In a statement, a spokesperson for the BBFC said the introduction of age-verification measures for online porn is "a necessary and important child protection measure."

"The BBFC had all systems in place to undertake the role of AV Regulator, to ensure that all commercial pornographic websites accessible from the UK would have age gates in place or face swift enforcement action," the spokesperson continued.

The statement also noted that the BBFC "understands the government’s decision" to bring in age-verification as part of its online harms strategy. "We will bring our expertise and work closely with government to ensure that the child protection goals of the DEA (Digital Economy Act) are achieved," the spokesperson continued.

The government said it will continue to engage with MPs on the online harms bill to ensure the objectives of the Digital Economy Bill are delivered.

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