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[Bowdon]

MPs Consider Law Forcing All UK ISPs to Block Adult-Only Websites

Ministers debating the new Digital Economy Bill 2016-17 are starting to discover what many already knew, that the proposals to add ‘Age Verification’ to pornographic websites may in practice be unworkable. Instead some of them want to impose a duty on all broadband ISPs to block “adult-only content” by default.

One of the biggest challenges with the ‘Age Verification‘ approach is with how you actually make it work, so that people can’t get around it simply by inputting fake details. As such most of the approaches being proposed would require people to share their private personal and or financial details with unreliable porn peddlers, and possibly the Government too, in order to gain access.

However the infamous Ashley Madison hacking affair showed just how dangerous such information can be in the wrong hands (following in its wake were countless cases of blackmail and suicide etc.), not that the more puritanical elements of the Government would care about a few dead people and blackmail getting in the way of a moral crusade.