Category: Articles

Both the UK and Australian Governments are advancing their agendas to ensure that adult content sites ensure their users are 18 years old or over.

In the UK, the planned Online Safety Bill will be expanded to legally require “robust checks” are made by websites. Chris Philp, the digital minister, said “We are now strengthening the online safety bill so it applies to all porn sites to ensure we achieve our aim of making the internet a safer place for children.” Under the plans, the UK’s Ofcom will be able fine sites up to 10 per cent of their annual worldwide turnover or can block them from being accessible in the UK if they fail to act. The legislation had initially only targeted commercial porn sites that allow user-generated content, now all commercial porn sites are to be included within the scope of the proposed new rules. Age verification should be a implemented on any website displaying pornographic content and the sites should not process or store data that is irrelevant to the purpose of checking age.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, intends to present the roadmap to the federal government by the end of the year that outlines that age verification trials are now under way in Australia for online gambling and alcohol sales, and are projected to be expanded to include online pornography as the federal government looks to restrict sexually explicit content on the internet from underage children.

A U.K. parliamentary committee, chaired by Damian Collins MP, commented that “A lack of regulation online has left too many people vulnerable to abuse, fraud, violence and in some cases even loss of life,” he claimed. His U.K. parliamentary committee has spent six months analyzing the government’s proposals for “online safety” reforms.

At the beginning of December 2021, the UK Government commented in The Times newspaper that it is ready to revive an age verification scheme for online adult content — a plan previously shelved in favor of the pending Online Safety Bill.

The Times was told that an age verification plan was now “being looked on with approval by Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, and Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary.”

“Their support follows work by Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, who has sent a report to ministers recommending that age verification become compulsory on all porn sites,” The Times added.

According to tech news site TechCrunch, the committee’s report endorsed the government’s push “to go beyond industry self-regulation by enforcing compliance with a set of rules intended to hold tech giants accountable for the content they spread and monetize — including via a series of codes of practice and with the media regulator, Ofcom, given a new major oversight and enforcement role over Internet content.”

“The era of self-regulation for big tech has come to an end,” committee chair Damian Collins declared.

AgeGO offers an age verification solution for adult websites that respects all privacy laws for individuals, it is easy to implement and offers several verification methods including passport, driving licence, mobile phone and credit card. Contact us for more information.

18 May 2021, Dublin, Ireland. AgeGo has been awarded Best Age Verification Technology Solutions (Western Europe) by the 2021 Irish Enterprise Awards. Created by EU Business News, the Irish Enterprise Awards are now in their fourth year and showcase exemplary Irish businesses.

A company representative Fonzé commented, “We are very proud to have been selected for this award. Since launching AgeGO two years ago, we have continually improved our technology to create the most comprehensive age verification solution on the market today. Our age verification methods lead the industry and our technology is able to verify a user’s age anonymously while staying fully GDPR compliant because no personal data is stored.”

Awards Coordinator Katherine Benton commented: “Congratulations to AgeGO. It is with great pride that we showcase the best of the best from across the entirety of Ireland carrying out business within the EU.”

AgeGO and all the winners in the various Irish Enterprise Awards categories can be viewed at EU Business News.

In early March 2021, France’s media regulatory agency, the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) wrote to several large traffic volume adult content websites asking that they implement an age verification system by 16 March. Letters were sent to Pornhub.com, xHamster.com, XVideos.com, XNXX.com, Tukif.com, JacquieEtMichel.net, JacquieEtMicheltv.net and JacquieEtMicheltv2.net.

With the deadline now passed and if nothing is done after a fifteen day period, then the president of the CSA can call the President of the Judicial Tribunal of Paris to issue a judicial order to the companies telling them to ‘put an end to the access to this service.’ The offending individual risks three years imprisonment and a fine of €75,000, with the fine amount being multiplied by five to €375,000 for companies.

French legal experts also mentioned an intermediate step before total shutdown: having the CSA and a judge ask search engines to “dereference” or “deprioritize” the seven websites so they no longer show in search results.

The push has come about following an initiative by President Emmanuel Macron’s government regarding an amendment to Article 23 after France’s parliament passed a law last year against domestic violence that includes provisions obliging pornographic websites to install age verification, without specifying what technical means they should take. The law also gives the President of the CSA the power to send a formal notice to any company or person whose online activity allows minors to have access to pornographic content. 

Despite the passed deadline the sites appear to still be active in France. It is unclear at this point if the judicial authorities have been contacted by the CSA to report the apparent non-compliance. The sites in question are posting notices on their homepages trying to inform the public of the French government’s threats.

AgeGO offers an age verification solution for adult websites that respects all privacy laws for individuals, it is easy to implement and offers several verification methods including passport, driving licence, mobile phone and credit card. Contact us for more information.

The French Parliament unanimously agreed in July 2020 to introduce an Age Verification (AV) requirement aimed at preventing minors from accessing pornographic websites.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, had made a commitment months ago to implement such a system.

According to news site Politico, Macron made the protection of children against adult content online a high-profile issue well before the coronavirus crisis hit. In January, tech companies, internet service providers and the adult movie industry signed a voluntary charter, pledging to roll out tools to help ensure minors don’t have access to pornographic content. The new French law, gives sites discretion to decide how to perform age verification. Requiring users to enter a credit card number seems to be one of the most popular options, the news site reported.

In order to enforce the law, the French audiovisual regulator CSA will be granted new powers to audit and sanction companies that do not comply, sanctions could go as far as blocking access to the websites in France with a court order, if the site does not comply within 15 days after a first warning from the audiovisual regulator CSA, the regulator will be able to ask the Paris Court of Justice to send an order to telecom operators to block the access to these sites from France.

The Australian parliamentary committee has compiled a report that recommends creating an “e-safety commissioner” in order to develop a procedure for mandatory age verification (AV) within the next 12 months, making it mandatory for Australian citizens to submit to an identity verification service run by the federal government.

The report, entitled ‘Protecting the Age of Innocence,’ was issued by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs in Canberra.

According to sources Australia’s AV procedure would involve minimal retention of personal information, so as to not create a honeypot of sensitive data and the retained data must be stored securely, but the committee did not recommend using a facial recognition service under development.

Additionally, the committee recommended that more regulation could be considered to capture social media sites, and did not rule out potentially bringing back mandatory internet filtering

Committee members acknowledged the U.K.’s stalled efforts at AV and called for a further review of the issue, observing the public may not trust a system that could potentially increase risks and have unintended consequences around data security and privacy.

View a PDF of the parliamentary committee report here.

Germany is looking at safeguarding children who are viewing online content and social media, which could also include age verification to protect them from online pornography. 

A recent survey published by Germany’s children’s rights organization Kinderhilfswerk (DHKW) states that that are not enough safeguards for children on social media, video and games portals, with 55% of parents saying that their children had been hurt by ‘excessive’ consumption, mobbing, violence and pornography.

93% of parents want harsher penalties for domestic and foreign platforms under Germany’s child protection laws and 97% said that a good system of age verification was important in the choice of social media services, online content and games for their children. 88% said they scanned for age suitability for films, apps, games and streaming services, when overseeing their children’s digital consumption usage.

Only 37% said that they knew who to consult about negative experiences and only 66% were inclined to consult prosecutory services, notably the police.

Late last year, Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey submitted a draft “juvenile media protection” bill. Katja Mast, deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary party, told the German news agency DPA that such a modernization was agreed within the coalition Government. Giffey’s bill will be submitted to a Bundestag parliamentary debate before Summer 2020.

DHKW president Thomas Krüger, commented, “We need a comprehensive system of child and juvenile media protection orientated around the real usage behaviors of children and teenagers. Providers of messenger services and video platforms are insufficient.”