UK May Have Finally Ditched Its Absurd Porn Filter Plan

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the censor-the-naughty-bits dept

As we’ve noted for years, internet filters don’t work, routinely censor legitimate content by mistake, and implementing them is a massive waste of money, time, resources, and precious calories. In the UK, that’s been a lesson that has been painfully difficult to learn.

The UK has long implemented porn filters in a bid to restrict anybody under the age of 18 from accessing such content. New age verification controls were also mandated as part of the Digital Economy Act of 2017. But as we’ve previously noted, the UK government has seen several fits and starts with its proposal as it desperately tries to convince the public and business sectors that the ham-fisted effort was going to actually work.

Back in April, the UK government announced that after numerous delays the program would effectively be taking effect July 15. Under the proposal, websites that failed to comply with the country’s age verification program face fines up to ?250,000, risk being taken offline, or may lose access to payment services. Randy folks who wanted to view some porn were to be redirected to a special subsite where they’d be prompted for an email address and a password, before verifying your age using a driving license or a passport. They’d then, theoretically, happily be passed off to compliant porn websites.

Of course anybody who has watched anybody with a whit of technical prowess bypass these costly blockades using VPNs or proxies knew this wasn’t going to work. Getting global websites to comply with UK law was largely preposterous, and the creation of a database of porn habits created fairly obvious privacy and security issues.

After years of grumbling, the UK government appears to have now scrapped the proposal “indefinitely.” UK outlets are suggesting that bureaucratic dysfunction — not any epiphany as to the stupidity of the program — was to blame:

“The UK?s age-verification system for online pornography will be delayed for around six months because the government failed to inform the EU of its proposals, the culture secretary has said.

The already delayed policy, which will require all adult internet users wanting to watch legal pornography to prove they are over 18 by providing some form of identification, was due to come into force on 15 July.

However, the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, told the House of Commons, that would not happen, because of a failure to comply with European law in how statutory instruments are passed.”

Some have argued that the claim of bureaucratic dysfunction is a polite way to kill the program, without making it obvious that the UK government is killing the program. Regardless, the quest to filter out the internet’s naughty bits will now be kicked down the road for the next Prime Minister to worry about.

Hopefully said Prime Minister realizes that 1) collecting everybody’s porn interests poses a terrible potential privacy risk, 2) internet filters routinely wind up censoring legitimate resources, and 3) the filters can be easily bypassed by any halfwit utilizing a proxy or VPN. The solution on the porn front has long been better parenting and parental controls and not putting government in charge of policing porn consumption, but it’s a lesson some government leaders simply refuse to learn. In other words, you can probably expect this dumb idea to resurface down the road with a fresh coat of paint.

Filed Under: censorship, filters, porn filters, uk