UK thinks that they have a plan how to stop children from accessing porn content, but does the plan actually work? Or it will be just the first step towards the fall of freedom online.

It all started in 2015, since then the UK government has been trying to put restrictions on porn sites. And July 15, 2019 will be the date it will come into action. The “porn ban” as it is often referred to, will make porn companies ask their users identify their age in order to access their sites. The plan has good intentions obviously, since porn sites has harsh content that shouldn’t be seen by children, but it also might be one of the biggest mistakes that UK has done.

Minister for Digital Margot James said “Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online. The introduction of mandatory age-verification is a world-first, and we’ve taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from inappropriate content. We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this.”

How will it work?

Everyone has seen that some pages or content on pages requires you to press a button if you are 18 and above. Well these buttons actually don’t do anything, they do not really identify your age. Under the new law porn websites will be required to implement age verification system. Verification system will require users to verify their email address and their age using a variety of options, for example credit card, driving license or similar identity card. There will also be an option to buy “porn passes” at local stores. It sounds easy at first, but there are many problems with it that makes this law a bad idea.

Will it work?

There are millions of porn websites, and not even porn sites, you can find adult content on Reddit, or forums, or many other places. The thing is you cannot catch all of them, people will find where to look for porn. Also all the people who know what a VPN is, can easily bypass this law, by simply changing their IP address to appear to be in another country somewhere out of the UK.

Also when you ban something for a kid, it doesn’t stop him from doing it, it just encourages them to find ways to bypass the ban. This ban will have the same consequences. It will be no surprise if kids and teenagers will start searching for solutions on the dark web (for example buying credit cards there) or looking in malware infected websites who will offer “a solution”. Cyber criminals will take advantage of this ban and take advantage of people who visit their pages. Dark web will not only sell them credit cards or fake IDs but will only offer some extremely violent and criminal content, that they would not see if not the porn ban (because they would not go to the dark web at first).

A huge database of porn interests

It’s hard to match up online behavior to identities. Facebook can do it since you need to log in and that gives the power to company to see exact peoples online behavior. The porn ban will help porn sites collect massive porn databases, which will show the real names of users and their porn interests. Doesn’t sound that good, nobody would want somebody snooping around their porn tastes. PornHub, the biggest Porn site in the world, it has 64 million visitors per day. Imagine if PornHub database is hacked, with all the names and interests, that would be a lot of embarrassment and shame. And hearing how big companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Mariotti are getting their data stolen, it is getting scarier.

We’re asking pornographers to protect children from porn

The government itself won’t be implementing the law, but will leave it to companies. Now one company that is working on implementing the age verifying system. This company is called MindGeek and they are creating AgeID, which will verify users age with credit cards, ID cards and other verifying documents. The thing that the company does not mention is that the MindGeek company are the owner of PornHub and other major porn sites. This means that pornographers will be protecting children from porn which sounds ridiculous. Also this means that biggest porn site will be given access to all the names of porn visitors and their behavior online.

“ Pornography is the canary in the coal mine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die. If this assault on liberty is allowed to go unchallenged, other freedoms will fall as a consequence “ — Myles Jackman

It was confirmed that British Board of Film Classification will become responsible for regulating age verification. This is a strange decision since BBFC is not a digital expert and the porn block could turn into even more restrictions. Some years ago the UK government has banned a long list of sexual acts in online films. The porn block doesn’t mean the same, but this could be the first step towards the government banning what they think is right and wrong in sex. People have the right to decide what is wrong and right in their sexual lives, if it doesn’t include illegal behavior, but what if some sexual acts that are acceptable now will become unacceptable for the government and banned. As Myles Jackman said: “ Pornography is the canary in the coal mine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die. If this assault on liberty is allowed to go unchallenged, other freedoms will fall as a consequence “. What if porn ban will give the power and encouragement for the government to make decisions about people’s sexual lives.

The government doesn’t actually have a real reason why they are doing so. It is mostly based on bias surveys that “show” that children are addicted to porn. The law will definitely come in action if people won’t do anything. And the future will show was this law a mistake or not.

If you are living in UK and do not want your data to be collected and your porn interests known, you can use Surfshark VPN to bypass this by just changing you IP address.