Internet Porn Censorship

As part of its efforts to combat violence against women, the government of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced funding to test age/ID verification methods for pornography websites in a pilot program. This move came after Albanese and the national cabinet ruled in 2023 that mandatory age verification was not yet an option.

AUS $6.5 million has been allocated for a pilot of age assurance to test the technology's effectiveness. The pilot will identify available age assurance products and assess their efficacy, including in relation to privacy and security. The outcomes of this pilot will support the eSafety Commissioners' ongoing implementation of censorship rules under the Online Safety Act.

Australia's prime minister has also moved to ban deepfake and artificial intelligence pornography as part of a $925million bid to counter a  rise in violence against women. Sharing sexually explicit material using artificial intelligence will also be subject to serious criminal penalties.

Albanese noted community concerns about toxic male views online and young men's exposure to violent imagery on the internet.

 

Offsite Comment: The Australian Government Is Making Porn a Scapegoat for Rising Violence Against Women

5th May 2024. Thanks to Trog. See article from vice.com by Darcy Deviant

Here is an artlcie offering a very sensible counter argument to the usual porn is bad diatribes:

As a sex worker, the most concerning part of this conversation is the use of the sex industry as a political scapegoat for men's violence.

Let's be clear: the porn industry was never created to provide sex education to children. But let's also be honest: if your child is actively seeking out pornography, or so-called violent pornography, perhaps there's a gap in their learning about sex and sexuality that the education system or a guardian has failed to fill.

See article from vice.com

Georgia's state governor Brian Kemp has signed into law a bill that requires age verification on adult websites, a law which likely will cause the sites to shut down in the state.

Senate Bill 351 sponsored by Sen. Jason Anavitarte, aims at protecting children from cyberbullying and exposure to pornographic content, as well as regulates the usage of social media.

The law requires parental consent before allowing minors to create social media accounts. It also echoes a Texas law that would mandate age verification on pornography sites by requiring users to upload a government-issued photo ID before allowing them to view adult content. Any sites that do not enforce these rules would receive a $10,000 fine for each child who accesses content deemed harmful to minors.

When the British Government started work on online censorship laws I think it envisaged that age/ID verification would create a business opportunity for British start up companies to exploit the market so created. Unfortunately for them it looks inevitably set that the usual US internet giants will be the ones to profit from the requirements.

In fact Meta has been speaking of its ideas that operating system companies and app stores should be the ones to implement age/ID verification.

Meta is calling for implementing age verification across Europe and proposed a way to do it. The company wants to ensure that parents only need to verify the age of their child once and noted that the most effective way of achieving this would be to have operating systems or app stores complete the verification process.

The move would pass on the responsibility of age verification from social media platforms to firms such as Apple and Google. Other platforms have also in argued in favor of the solution, including Twitter and Match, the company behind dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid.

Meta delivered its statement during a hearing of an Irish parliament committee focused on children's rights this week. Meta has been taking different approaches to try and ease pressure from global censors on the age verification question. The company has been experimenting with facial age estimation technology from UK firm Yoti in several countries.

The Kansas state governor, Laura Kelly, has announced that she will not sign age verification legislation that was recently passed through the state legislature.

Instead, she will let the bill, Senate Bill (SB) 394 , automatically become law by letting it enter force on April 25. The bill levies age verification requirements on websites with users from Kansas IP addresses to check their identities through government identification or transactional data.

SB 394 empowers Attorney General Kris Kobach to enforce the law.

Kelly said in a statement:

While well-meaning in its efforts to protect children from content the legislature considers 'harmful to minors,' this bill is vague in its application and may end up infringing on constitutional rights, which is an issue being litigated in other jurisdictions over similar bills. For that reason, I will allow this bill to become law without my signature.

Kelly added that she could have vetoed the bill, but the Republican-held state legislature would have the necessary votes to overturn her veto.