UK Censorship of Internet
As of April 2018, the government proposes that pornographic websites force users to input a verification of their age. The system that will be used is still undecided as the government is leaving it up to the industry to create a solution to this problem. The use of credit card details as verification has been vetoed as it infantilises adults without credit cards. However websites such as MindGeek are creating solutions like AgeID. According to Sky News, people will be able to login to AgeID with an email address and password, and then use a third party system to check their age. AgeID will log which pornography websites are visited and store them. This poses large problems as sites that store such large and valuable data are often blackmailed by criminals as the data could be hacked and if exposed on the internet then people’s private lives would be on showcase and the site would have to pay victims millions in compensation. The owners of Ashley Madison had to offer customers $11 million in compensation after their details were published online by hackers. Information on how often people visit porn sites could be more damaging and the site storing such data would have to have incredibly strong firewalls to stop the most skilled and persistent hackers. Even then, do we trust people to handle such data for us because people whose livelihoods depend on their reputations could be destroyed by one slip up?
The changes for online pornography are being introduced under the Digital economy act and for the first time the government will be able to block websites without a court order. The British Board of Film and Classification will oversee the implementation of these new regulations on the internet. However, there is immediately a problem as how the censorship is enforced is a large issue. What do they constitute as pornography? Is it videos or does it also include blogs that publish erotica? This is such a complicated issue and do we really trust people to censor the internet so freely and do we trust their judgement on what is suitable for the younger generation? If they are capable of blocking websites without a court order then they could easily abuse this power and block websites that hold no threat to us, yet they merely disagree with the BBFC’S views on appropriate content.
The other large problem that we face is whether or not censoring of pornography takes away democracy and is shaming people who watch pornography. Although prevention of children being exposed to pornography is obviously positive, it also creates a negative, shaming environment around the adults who enjoy porn. The need to verify your age highlights the judgement associated with such a topic and makes people ashamed to be sexually active. Do we want to create such an association that will have no positive outcome on people’s views on intercourse? This almost draconian prohibition of pornography is surprising as it drags us back to the old, prudish rules about sex. 28.258% of internet users are porn viewers and we can’t ignore these statistics that show that pornography is a large part of modern day culture.
In conclusion I think that this development needs to be treated very carefully and the system that is used should be very heavily protected as this data isn’t something that should be made public. There is a lot of stigma around porn and we don’t want to create more by putting bans in place. This new ban will be extremely hard to enforce cleverly and we can only hope that the effects won’t be too profound.