With the passing of the

Digital Economy Act 2017 The Digital Economy Act 2017 (c. 30) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is substantially different from, and shorter than, the Digital Economy Act 2010, whose provisions largely ended up not being passed into law. The act addr ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

became the first country to pass a law containing a legal mandate on the provision of an Internet

age verification An age verification system, also known as an age gate, is a technical protection measure used to restrict access to digital content from those who are not appropriately-aged. These systems are used primarily to restrict access to content classifie ...

system. Under the Act, websites that published

pornography Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,

on a commercial basis would have been required to implement a "robust" age verification system to prevent minors from accessing their sites. The regulator would have been empowered to fine those who fail to comply up to £250,000 (or up to 5% of their turnover), to order the blocking of non-compliant websites, and to require those providing financial or advertising services to non-compliant websites to cease doing so. After a series of setbacks, the planned scheme was eventually abandoned in 2019, and would be formally repealed by the planned

Online Safety Bill The Online Safety Bill is a proposed Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom intended to improve internet safety, published as a draft on 12 May 2021. Following the earlier 2019 Online Harms White Paper, the Bill gives the relevant Secretar ...

Delays and setbacks

The

British Board of Film Classification The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...

(BBFC) was planned to be charged with enforcing the scheme. The implementation of the law was initially delayed multiple times to allow the BBFC to draft and receive approval for official guidelines regarding the age verification requirements. Following the passage of the

Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2019 The Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2019 is a statutory instrument issued under the powers given by the Digital Economy Act 2017. It defines the criteria to determine which websites would have been required to implement an age ...

(which established a legal definition for the types of websites that would be subject to the requirements), implementation was again rescheduled, this time for a planned start date of April 2019. In March 2019, reports stated that there was still no firm date for the implementation of this policy, which had been beset by many technical problems. A BBC report at the time described implementation of the scheme as being "in a holding pattern". Key issues with the implementation included what constituted an effective means of age verification, as well as concerns over the possibility that online age verification providers could collect excessive

personally identifiable information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates ha ...

and

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

it for other purposes—potentially in violation of the

General Data Protection Regulation The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in partic ...

(GDPR). "AgeID", a service proposed by internet pornography company

MindGeek MindGeek (formerly Manwin) is a Luxembourg-based, privately held company with Canada as its center of operations that primarily focuses on pornography. It is owned by Feras Antoon, Bernd Bergmair (Bernard Bergemar), David Marmorstein, and — mo ...

, was singled out by critics due to concerns that offering this service could unduly enhance its market position. The BBFC suggested that a system of

gift card A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...

-like vouchers, purchased in person with ages checked by the retailer (identically to other age-restricted purchases such as alcohol) could provide a more anonymous and secure solution to age verification. Technical concerns included the use of

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

s and

DNS over HTTPS DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is a protocol for performing remote Domain Name System (DNS) resolution via the HTTPS protocol. A goal of the method is to increase user privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data by man-i ...

, both of which make it more difficult to perform

man-in-the-middle attack In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle, monster-in-the-middle, machine-in-the-middle, monkey-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle (MITM), person-in-the-middle (PITM) or adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) ...

s such as those required for effective Internet blocking. On 17 April 2019, regulators stated that the law would officially be effective from 15 July 2019. However, on 20 June, the government announced that it had decided to delay implementation yet again, this time for another six months, for reasons including the government's failure to notify the scheme to the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...

, and further concerns with technical issues.

Abandonment and proposed repeal

On 16 October 2019, the

Culture Secretary The secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, also referred to as the culture secretary, is a secretary of state in the Government of the United Kingdom, with overall responsibility for strategy and policy across the Department f ...

Nicky Morgan Nicola Ann Morgan, Baroness Morgan of Cotes, (; born 10 October 1972) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities from 2014 to 2016 and Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, ...

stated that the government had abandoned the mandate altogether, in favour of replacing it with a forthcoming wider scheme of

Internet regulation Mass media regulations are rules enforced by the jurisdiction of law. Guidelines for media use differ across the world. This regulation, via law, rules or procedures, can have various goals, for example intervention to protect a stated "public inte ...

based on the principles expressed in the

Online Harms White Paper The Online Harms White Paper is a white paper produced by the British government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdo ...

. The mandate would be repealed formally by clause 131 of the government's draft

, published in May 2021.

Legal action

In January 2020, a group of age verification companies started a legal action against the government, seeking a

judicial review Judicial review is a process under which executive, legislative and administrative actions are subject to review by the judiciary. A court with authority for judicial review may invalidate laws, acts and governmental actions that are incompat ...

of its decision to suspend the age verification scheme. The companies included AgeChecked Ltd, AVSecure, AVYourself and VeriMe. The plaintiffs contended that the Digital Economy Act 2017 gave the government the power to delay implementation but not to abandon it, and sought around £3 million in damages. In July 2020, they won permission for a judicial review.

References

{{British pornography Identity documents of the United Kingdom Censorship of pornography Age verification Internet censorship in the United Kingdom 2010s in the United Kingdom

Delays and setbacks

Abandonment and proposed repeal

Legal action

See also

References