Internet Porn Censorship

Poland has became the latest country to propose a national age verification law for porn.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, of the country's center-right Law and Justice Party, claimed that 60% of Polish boys between ages 13 and 16 had been exposed to pornography.

Morawiecki made the remarks to a meeting of the Family Council, a group of parliamentarians, policy experts and leaders of non-governmental organizations whose mission is to support, initiate and promote actions that will benefit traditional families.

Morawiecki did not specify what method might be used to check the ages of Polish people attempting to view online porn.

Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Bihar is blaming rising incidents of sexual crime against women in the state on porn. He has written to the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to ban all porn sites and inappropriate content available online. He wrote:

It will be my request to take appropriate action to ban all porn sites and inappropriate content available on internet immediately after giving due consideration to the serious issue, he wrote.

The incidents (of gang rape and crime against women) take place in some cases because of the impact of these sites.

People make videos of heinous acts (rape) against girls and women and get them uploaded on social media such as Whatsapp, Facebook etc. Such content, which seriously affect the minds of children and youths, have been found as factors responsible for crimes (against women).

Long-term use of such content negatively affect the mind of some people, which gives rise to social problems and increases the number of cases of crime against women.

The New Zealand Classification Office has been surveying popular porn on Pornhub and writes:

New research shows that while the most popular porn in New Zealand is not highly aggressive there is a concerning trend of people watching step-porn.

The Classification Office has released its analysis of the 200 most popular videos that New Zealanders watch on mainstream porn site Pornhub. Last year the Office released the first stage of its Youth and Porn research and further research is underway which will be released next year.

This separate analysis was done to break down and analyse the content of porn that is commonly watched in New Zealand.

Chief Censor David Shanks said:

While porn is supposed to be restricted to adults, our research shows a significant number of young people watch it too, and this analysis of popular videos on Pornhub helps us understand what they are seeing.

As regulators in this space we've been analysing explicit content for over 20 years. The porn industry's move online means that there is more porn available to a wider audience than ever before. Some of this content can be extreme and illegal.

Our break down of content indicates that New Zealanders generally prefer content that is not so extreme. Of the top 200 clips analysed, just 10% showed physical aggression, 3% showed verbal aggression and 9% contained derogatory language.

It was positive to find that extreme content does not seem to be what most New Zealanders are seeking out. However we were concerned to find some non-consensual behaviour in 35% of the popular clips assessed.

We also found that 46% of the most viewed videos featured 'step porn' narratives involving sexual activity between blended family members. In these scenarios, initial refusal or reluctance by one partner would often be shown as being overcome by persistence and pressure by the other.

Affectionate behaviour was spotted in around a quarter of the clips studied, and only 3% involved the use of condoms.

This analysis provides an important companion study for our initial NZ Youth and Porn research. That research established that porn is a fact of life for many young New Zealanders, and that they may view it for a variety of reasons, including to learn about sex. Many of the young people we surveyed expressed concern about how porn might impact sexual beliefs, expectations and behaviour.

It is clear from this latest work that porn provides a very poor model for young people who are developing their understanding of consent and of what a healthy sexual relationship looks like. They need a real counterpoint to the fictional and confusing stories that porn offers. Now it is more important than ever to give our young people the information and education they need in this space, David Shanks said.

The reality is young people are seeing porn -- it's time to start talking with them about it.

Update: Let's not get too prudish about pornography

16th December 2019. See article from newshub.co.nz by Jenesa Jeram

First, let's look at the content of porn: is it that bad? Three studies are cited relating to the aggression that is apparently rampant in porn.

The first , and purportedly most cited study, found that 88.2 percent of porn scenes contained physical aggression. The numbers seem big. But it depends on what you consider aggression.

Spanking (35.7 percent), gagging (27.7 percent), and open-hand slapping (14.9 percent) were the most frequently observed physically aggressive acts.

To be honest, I'm not clutching my pearls at this revelation. It's certainly not nice and lovely in a kittens-and-ponies kind of way. But I guess, considering all the handwringing, I was expecting something a lot uglier and a lot more violent (although even the thought of gagging makes me want to sympathy gag).

Perhaps then, the problem isn't the aggressive acts per se, but the treatment of women. But as it turns out, in most cases, (95 percent of the time) women reacted to aggression with pleasure or neutrality.

...Read the full article from newshub.co.nz

The former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), former 'eSafety Commissioner', Alastair MacGibbon, has told the House of Representatives Standing Committee On Social Policy And Legal Affairs looking to age verification for online wagering and online pornography , that any form of online age verification would require a biometric component. He said:

I think biometrics -- with all of the problems associated with biometrics, and they are not a silver bullet -- is the only way you could really have an online system.

A scenario relying solely on Home Affairs' Face and Document Verification Services to provide proof of age would not work on its own, due to the ability for children to be able to take, for instance, a driver's licence and verify it with the system.

What will be harder for the child is to get my face in front of the camera and use it for the purposes of proof of age, he said on Friday.

I'm not advocating for it to be used as such ...BUT... it could be used as a way of saying, 'This face that's now in front of this camera is attached to a driver's licence and a passport in Australia, and that person is over the age of 18'.

He was not very sympathetic to porn viewers who may end up being victims of hackers, fraud, identity crime, or blackmail. He added

Australians need to accept that there is no such thing as a completely secure connected device, that there will be failures, and everything in life is about balancing value and risk.

You do run the risk that Australians who have a privacy concern will be forced into darker parts of the web to avoid online verification and that will be an unintended consequences any such scheme.

Well with an 'eSafety Commissioner' like that, I think Australian internet users should be getting a little bit nervous.

The annual No Nut November online event which is supposedly designed to encourage people to stop masturbating, at least for the month of November, appears to have been a massive failure, according to data research by the site Mashable.

The No Nut meme, along with the similar NoFap online movement (which advocates swearing off masturbation on a permanent basis) are basically anti-porn campaigns.

Consulting with the leading porn tube sites PornHub and xHamster, the Mashable reporters found that traffic during November either showed no tangible effect, or in xHamster's case, actually jumped by 10%. 

 xHamster Vice President Alex Hawkins speculated:

Trying to energize a whole population to not masturbate only results in them thinking about masturbating more.

Mashable also checked Google trending data to learn whether searches for the word porn showed any significant dips or rises in November. But for three straight years, Mashable found, porn as a Google search term held mostly steady during No Nut November.

In October last year, an Indian court had ordered the government to reinstate its earlier ban on 827 porn websites including PornHub and xVideos. Porn companies initially put up a fight, launching mirror URLs such as pornhub.net after pornhub.com became inaccessible. But a few months in, major internet service providers Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio also started blocking out the mirror URLs tool.

However Indians haven't been taking the censorship lying down. Mobile downloads of virtual private network (VPN) apps in India grew 405% to 57 million in the 12 months starting October 2018, as analysed by London-based Top10VPN, a website that reviews VPNs.

The vast majority of users in India are using free VPN services, which are in effect not free--they often fund operations by selling user data. But the use of paid VPN services remains limited in India.

But not all Indian users have caught on to VPNs. Nearly half of the visitors of the banned websites have merely shifted to other adult content sites that aren't blocked in the country, such as RedPorn and SexVid, according to research from the analytics firm SimilarWeb.

I always wonder if this response is one of the reasons why age verification for porn was cancelled by the British Government. The security services surely didn't want vast numbers of people to start using VPNs. They needed the AV services to be easy and safe enough for porn users to be willing to use. And in the end most of the methods on offer were anything but.

Hundreds of porn stars and sex workers had their Instagram accounts deleted this year, and many say that they're being held to a different standard than mainstream celebrities.

I should be able to model my Instagram account on Sharon Stone or any other verified profile, but the reality is that doing that would get me deleted, says Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild and one of the leading voices in the battle that adult stars are waging to stay on the platform.

Ms Evans' group has collected a list of more than 1,300 performers who claim that their accounts have been deleted by Instagram's content moderators for violations of the site's community standards, despite not showing any nudity or sex.

They discriminate against us because they don't like what we do for a living, Ms Evans says.

...Read the full article from bbc.com

A creepy software app lets evangelical Christians out themselves as porn addicts to their own church leaders and friends.

The app, Covenant Eyes , recognises when a user is viewing a porn site. The app then takes a screen shot of the site and emails it to a list of acquaintances, clergy, and anyone else the user has designated as someone willing to help with that person's porn addiction.

The app, which also filters and blocks porn sites.

Last October, Nepal's government blocked 25,000 porn sites, but a new report shows that the effort was inevitably futile.

A year ago the government introduced stiff fines of approximately $4,200 on ISPs that failed to adequately block porn sites.

But now a new report by the Nepalese news site Annapurna Express shows that little has changed. Nepalese porn surfers have actually been watching even more porn than a year ago, Annapurna Express reported, based on data provided to it by xHamster. In fact, according to research by the Nepalese news site, internet users based in Nepal visit porn sites more often than they visit any of the country's news portals.

In another unsurprising finding, the site found that the porn ban has done nothing to curb rising levels of sexual violence in Nepal. In the year since the ban, reported rape cases in Kathmandu have climbed from 145 to 225.

Its a perennial silly story that gets repeated around the world, that Net Nanny type software reports how many attempts to access porn are made by government ministers, or their staff, or whatever.

Journalists are quit to jump to the conclusion that people are trying to watch Pornhub whilst at work.

In the latest example New Zealand's prime minister has ticked off public servants after it was revealed that staff at several ministries had their access to explicit material blocked hundreds of times. Documents showed, among staff from other ministries, Department of Conservation staff have been blocked from accessing pornography websites 148 times since January 29.

In reality 148 times is hardly any, 15 times a month for the whole staff. And of course there is an easy explanation for those 148 times. Sites like Melon Farmers are often classed as porn by internet filters as the reason for blocking them from children. Fair enough Melon Farmers frequently references porn and may indeed not be suitable for children...but it is not a porn website. Those 148 access attempts could easily explained by blocked access to Melon Farmers.

In fact I would argue that 148 blocked access attempts in 10 months rather proves that the staff in question are NOT spending their time watching porn.

A 2018 porn parody of The Great British Bake Off has been given a bit of a bump following the end of the latest Channel 4 series.

The Great British Bonk Off features Mary Cherry and Paul Hardywood for the send up of the culinary favourite. The parody was originally released in late 2018 but has been given a new lease of life following the end of the most recent TV series, which was won by David Atherton.

There's nothing that Channel 4 or Love Productions can do as the show's protected. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act was amended in 2014 to allow protection for those who use material if it's for parody purposes. So, porn companies like Zaucey, who made The Great British Bonk Off, are able to continue to make their x-rated send ups.

Other shows and events who have been given the XXX makeover include a Brexit-based porno called Hard Brexxxit; Poledick, a Poldark parody and Gogglecocks, a Gogglebox send-up.

Global consumer giants Kraft Heinz and Unilever have come under fire for advertising on the world's massively popular porno website, Pornhub.

Both companies launched huge advertising campaigns on Pornhub in the last year.

Unilever, which makes Dove soap, Marmite and Hellmann's mayonnaise, ran a campaign for it's grooming company Dollar Shave Club which sends members razors in the post. It joked that Pornhub viewers won't need to visit the site so often if the use the advertiser's grooming products.

The company reportedly spends roughly £6billion a year on marketing and Dollar Shave Club's creative director, Matt Knapp, said the company chose to advertise on the porn site because it has guys backs'.

Yesterday Unilever vowed it would never advertise on the site again after miserable PC campaigners questioned the company.

Meanwhile spokesman for Kraft Heinz played down the significance of its activity on Pornhub, but did not explicitly say it would not advertise on the site again. He said:

The Devour frozen-food brand, which is only sold in the US, had a one-day promotion solely as part of the brand's Super Bowl activation. The brand was explicitly talking about #Foodporn, which has become a cultural phenomenon on Instagram.

Pornhub has 110million daily visits and is the most popular pornography site in the UK. It is surely an attractive site for advertisers who are targeting campaigns toward men.

Several popular camgirl sites have exposed the email addresses and other sensitive information of millions of users and sex workers after a backend was left wide open.

VTS Media, a company based in Barcelona, runs the affected sites, out of which amateur.tv is one of the most popular cam sites in Spain, according to traffic-ranking service Alexa. Others include placercams.com and webcampornoxxx.net.

This data exposure does not come at the hands of any sort of hack or exploit, instead, just an oversight by the company, TechCrunch reported. The administrative backends were left open, without a password, for several weeks. This allowed anyone to access the network's database, which included usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, browser user-agents, private chat logs, login timestamps, and even failed login attempts, which stored attempted passwords in plaintext.

The backend also contained data related to the videos that registered users were watching and renting. Users who broadcasted sexual content to viewers on these sites also had some of their personal information revealed.

With millions of users affected, this is one of the largest data exposures for adult sites since Ashley Madison's massive breach in 2015, and rather highlights jsut how dangerous it is to hand over personal details to porn sites, and just image how much worse it would have been if UK age verification were in place, the date would include names and addresses, birthdates ad passport numbers.

More than £2m of taxpayers' money was spent preparing for the age verification for porn censorship regime before the policy was dropped in early October, the government has revealed.

The bulk of the spending, £2.2m, was paid to the BBFC to do the detailed work on the policy from 2016 onwards. Before then, additional costs were borne by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, where civil servants were tasked with developing the proposals as part of their normal work.

Answering a written question fromthe shadow DCMS secretary, Tom Watson, Matt Warman for the government added: Building on that work, we are now establishing how the objectives of part three of the Digital Economy Act can be delivered through our online harms regime.

It is not just government funds that were wasted on the abortive scheme. Multiple private companies had developed systems that they were hoping to provide age verification services.

The bizarre thing was all this money was spent when the government knew that it wouldn't even prevent determined viewers from getting access to porn. It was only was only considered as effective from blocking kids from stumbling on porn.

So all that expense, and all that potential danger for adults stupidly submitting to age verification, and all for what?

Well at least next time round the  government may consider that they should put a least a modicum of thought about people's privacy.

It's not ALL about the kids. Surely the government has a duty of care for adults too. We need a Government Harms bill requiring a duty of care for ALL citizens. Now that would be a first!

The focus of Age Verification has been on the censorship of general porn websites since the Digital Economy Act was passed in April 2017. However there is a smaller subset of adult Video on Demand websites that have been under the cosh, under the auspices of the EU's Audio Visual Media Services directive, since several years earlier. 

Don't ask what's difference between a general porn website and a Video on Demand website subjected to AVMS Rules. The EU law governing this is pitiful and it is impossible to determine this difference from the law as written. ATVOD, the first official porn censor to have addressed this issue, must have wasted thousands of pounds trying to refine the laws into something that may make sense to the business affected. They failed, and so then Ofcom wasted thousands more arbitrating on this impossible task and writing some incredibly long explanations to justify their decisions.

Peter Johnson was the chief censor at ATVOD and he put in motion the morality campaign against porn in the name of age verification. He put in place onerous rules, requiring strict age verification for access to porn. The rub was that the rules only applied to British business, and this effectively put an end to the British adult internet trade. UK companies simply could not compete with overseas websites that are free and open to access. Nearly all British businesses had to either close, move their operations abroad, or sell out to foreign companies.

For example Simply Broadband was very successful up and coming business that could have become a major competitor with its knowledge of British pron favourites. The company was promptly sold abroad. Another major loss was the European branch of Playboy TV that operated from the UK at the time. The company simply moved somewhere else.

Eventually Ofcom saw where this was going, Ofcom sacked ATVOD and took on the censorship role itself. A few small niche websites were saved, but the vast majority of the UK business had already been lost to foreign interests.

And of course no kids were being protected by the AVMS rules. Foreign tube sites rules the roost, and if anything they gained from British competitors being snuffed out.

Presumably it was this observation that led to the introduction of porn censorship via age verification in the Digital Economy Act. This time round the Age Verification would also apply to foreign companies.

Recalling that there still a few British businesses that are still subject to age verification requirements via Ofcom's AVMS regime, Ofcom decided that it needed to update the AVMS rules to reflect the changes expected through the Digital Economy Act. Ofcom more or less proposed to adopt the DEA rules into its own codes. Ofcom launched a public consultation in September 2018 to square away its proposed rules with the remnants of the British adult trade.

In fact, rather confirming the mass extinction of British business, only two VoD companies responded to the the consultation. Portland TV (who run the softcore Television X channel) and Virgin Media who runs a Video on Demand service which includes a few 18 rated softcore porn films.

In fact Virgin Media was pretty miffed that the new rules meant that 18 rated porn material had to be brought into the age verification regime. In particular it noted that it was not easy for set top boxes to be adapted for age verification, not to mention the fact that customers electing to use such boxes were probably not those most computer literate types who would be happy to mess round with apps to get their age verified.

Ofcom decided to more or less rewrite the AVMS rules to reflect the BBFC censorship regime, and the updated rules are given below. However thankfully Ofcom made it clear that the rules would not come into force until the Digital Economy Act rules came into force. So presumably these updated rules are now also canned.

So the few remaining British porn companies can heave a sigh of relief, at least until the next moral panic, maybe the Information Commissioner's Age Appropriate Design rules to be announced towards the end of next month (November 2019).

Ofcom's censorship proposed rules for British Video on Demand services

Rule 11: Harmful Material: Protection of Under-18s (Specially Restricted Material)

An ODPS must not contain any specially restricted material unless the material is made available in a manner which secures that persons under the age of 18 will not normally see or hear it.

“Specially restricted material” means—

(a) a video work in respect of which the video works authority has issued a R18 classification certificate;
(b) material whose nature is such that it is reasonable to expect that, if the material were contained in a video work submitted to the video works authority for a classification certificate, the video works authority would issue a R18 classification certificate; or
(c) other material that might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral
development of persons under the age of 18;
(d) a video work—

• (i) in respect of which the video works authority has issued an 18 certificate, and

• (ii) whose nature is such that it is reasonable to assume that its principal purpose is to cause sexual arousal, or

(e) material whose nature is such that it is reasonable—

• (i) to assume that its principal purpose is to cause sexual arousal, and

• (ii) to expect that, if the material were contained in a video work submitted to the video works authority for a classification certificate, the video works authority would issue an 18 certificate.

In determining whether any material falls within (b) or (e), regard must be had to any guidelines issued by the video works authority as to its policy in relation to the issue of classification certificates.

Guidance on ‘Specially restricted material’:

In considering any particular case, Ofcom’s approach in the first instance will be to determine whether the content in question falls within the definition of ‘specially restricted material’.

Content which complies with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, or that has been classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in any category except ‘R18’ or as a ‘sex work’ at ‘18’, would not normally be considered as material that “might seriously impair” and would not normally be subject to the requirements of Rule 11.

R18 and R18-equivalent material, sex works at 18 and material equivalent to sex works at 18, and any other material which might seriously impair under 18s is subject to the requirements of Rule 11. All ‘material’ in the ODPS, including still images and other non-video content is subject to this requirement.

By ‘sex works’ we mean works whose primary purpose is sexual arousal or stimulation. Sex works at ‘18’ includes sex works that contain only sexual material which may be simulated. The R18 certificate is primarily for explicit works of consenting sex (including non-simulated sexual activity) or strong fetish material involving adults.

The R18 certificate and the 18 certificate are issued by the British Board of Film Classification in respect of video works being supplied on a physical video recording such as a DVD. There is no requirement for material being provided on an ODPS to be classified by the BBFC, but Ofcom must have regard to the BBFC Classification Guidelines when determining whether material on an ODPS is R18-equivalent (i.e. if it was contained in a video work submitted for classification it is reasonable to assume that the BBFC would issue an R18 certificate). Ofcom must also have regard to the BBFC Classification Guidelines when determining whether material on an ODPS is equivalent to sex work material at 18 (i.e. it is reasonable to assume that its principal purpose is to cause sexual arousal and if it was contained in a video work for classification the BBFC would issue an 18 certificate).

For more information on the R18 certificate and the 18 certificate for sex works, and the type of content likely to be awarded  these certificates, see the British Board of Film Classification’s website: www.bbfc.co.uk .

We note that the BBFC has regulatory duties to assess whether ‘pornographic material’ is not normally accessible by under 18s on online commercial services available in the UK (excluding the ODPS regulated by Ofcom). In outline, ‘pornographic material’ includes both R18 equivalent material, and 18-equivalent material with a principal purpose of sexual arousal. In assessing whether content falls within the definition of ‘specially restricted material’ under Rule 11, Ofcom will have regard to any advice issued by the BBFC on its approach to assessing whether content is ‘pornographic material’, including advice on what content can be displayed without age-verification.

Guidance on Age Verification:

Provided the material is not illegal or otherwise prohibited (see Rule 14), content which Ofcom considers to fall under this Rule (i.e. ‘specially restricted material’) may be made available on an ODPS, provided access is controlled in a manner which secures that people aged under eighteen ‘will not normally see or hear’ such material.

In assessing age-verification arrangements under Rule 11, Ofcom will follow the BBFC’s principle-based approach for assessing the compliance of age-verification solutions on online commercial services available in the UK. Ofcom recognises that the BBFC’s principles were designed in relation to online services, and that age-verification solutions on ODPS in practice may vary across different platforms. However, the same principles apply on ODPS regardless of the platform on which the service is delivered.

The criteria against which Ofcom will assess whether an age-verification solution secures that ‘specially restricted material’ is not normally seen or heard by those under 18 are set out below:

• a. An effective control mechanism at the point of registration or access to the specially restricted material by the end-user which verifies that the user is aged 18 or over at the point of registration or access

• a. [note repeated (a) is in original document] Use of age-verification data that cannot be reasonably known by another person, without theft or fraudulent use of data or identification documents or be readily obtained or predicted by another person

• b. A requirement that either a user age-verify each visit or access is restricted by controls, manual or electronic, such as, but not limited to, password or personal identification numbers. A consumer must be logged out by default unless they positively opt-in for their log in information to be remembered

• c. The inclusion of measures which authenticate age-verification data and measures which are effective at preventing use by non-human operators including algorithms

The following are features which Ofcom does not consider, in isolation, comply with the age-verification requirement under this Rule:

• a. relying solely on the user to confirm their age with no cross-checking of information, for example by using a 'tick box' system or requiring the user to only input their date of birth

• b. using a general disclaimer such as 'anyone using this website will be deemed to be over 18'

• c. accepting age-verification through the use of online payment methods which may not require a user to be over 18. (For example, Ofcom will not regard confirmation of ownership of a Debit, Solo or Electron card or any other card where the card holder is not required to be 18 or over to be verification that a user of a service is aged 18 or over.)

• d. checking against publicly available or otherwise easily known information such as name, address and date of birth

When considering the compliance of age-verification solutions with Rule 11, we will have regard to the BBFC’s assessments of age-verification used by online adult services to ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements, as published on its website.
Ofcom recommends that ODPS providers adopt good practice regarding data protection in the design and implementation of age-verification solutions. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is responsible for enforcing data protection legislation and providers should have regard to its guidance in this area.

Where they are required, age-verification solutions must be fit for purpose and effectively managed so as to ensure that people aged under eighteen will not normally see or hear specially restricted material. Ofcom will consider the adequacy and effectiveness of age-verification solutions on a case by case basis and keep them under review in the context of ODPS. Responsibility for ensuring that any required age-verification solution is in place and is operating effectively rests at all times with the person with editorial responsibility for the ODPS. The ‘Guidance on who needs to notify’ document explains how to determine the person with ‘editorial responsibility’ for the ODPS.

Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, issued a written statement cancelling the government's current plans to require age verification for porn. She wrote:

The government published the Online Harms White Paper in April this year. It proposed the establishment of a duty of care on companies to improve online safety, overseen by an independent regulator with strong enforcement powers to deal with non-compliance. Since the White Paper's publication, the government's proposals have continued to develop at pace. The government announced as part of the Queen's Speech that we will publish draft legislation for pre-legislative scrutiny. It is important that our policy aims and our overall policy on protecting children from online harms are developed coherently in view of these developments with the aim of bringing forward the most comprehensive approach possible to protecting children.

The government has concluded that this objective of coherence will be best achieved through our wider online harms proposals and, as a consequence, will not be commencing Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 concerning age verification for online pornography. The Digital Economy Act objectives will therefore be delivered through our proposed online harms regulatory regime. This course of action will give the regulator discretion on the most effective means for companies to meet their duty of care. As currently drafted, the Digital Economy Act does not cover social media platforms.

The government's commitment to protecting children online is unwavering. Adult content is too easily accessed online and more needs to be done to protect children from harm. We want to deliver the most comprehensive approach to keeping children safe online and recognised in the Online Harms White Paper the role that technology can play in keeping all users, particularly children, safe. We are committed to the UK becoming a world-leader in the development of online safety technology and to ensure companies of all sizes have access to, and adopt, innovative solutions to improve the safety of their users. This includes age verification tools and we expect them to continue to play a key role in protecting children online.

The BBFC sounded a bit miffed about losing the internet censor gig. The BBFC posted on its website:

The introduction of age-verification on pornographic websites in the UK is a necessary and important child protection measure. The BBFC was designated as the Age-verification Regulator under the Digital Economy Act 2017 (DEA) in February 2018, and has since worked on the implementation of age-verification, developing a robust standard of age-verification designed to stop children from stumbling across or accessing pornography online. The BBFC had all systems in place to undertake the role of AV Regulator, to ensure that all commercial pornographic websites accessible from the UK would have age gates in place or face swift enforcement action.

The BBFC understands the Government's decision, announced today, to implement age-verification as part of the broader online harms strategy. We will bring our expertise and work closely with government to ensure that the child protection goals of the DEA are achieved.

I don suppose we will ever hear the real reasons why the law was ditched, but I  suspect that there were serious problems with it. The amount of time and effort put into this, and the serious ramifications for the BBFC and age verification companies that must now be facing hard times must surely make this cancelling a big decision.

It is my guess that a very troublesome issue for the authorities is how both age verification and website blocking would have encouraged a significant number of people to work around government surveillance of the internet. It is probably more important to keep tabs on terrorists and child abusers rather than to lose this capability for the sake of a kids stumbling on porn.

Although the news of the cancellation was reported today, Rowland Manthorpe, a reporter for Sky News suggested on Twitter that maybe the idea had already been shelved back in the summer. He tweeted:

When @AJMartinSky and I  broke the news that the porn block was being delayed again, we reported that it was on hold indefinitely. It was. Then our story broke. Inside DCMS a sudden panic ensued. Quickly, they drafted a statement saying it was delayed for 6 months

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed legislation that institutes penalties for nonconsensual, sexually explicit digital videos, tagged deep fakes.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 602, targets companies and individuals who create and distribute the videos in California without the consent of the individual being depicted.

The issue is particularly pertinent in California as Hollywood and US TV stars are very much those targeted by the deep fakers.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is a union representing many of the film and TV stars.

SAG-AFTRA has commended California Newsom for signing the legislation into law. The group said that the legislation was meaningful recourse for the victims, many of whom are members of SAG-AFTRA. The group's president Gabrielle Carteris said:

We are absolutely thrilled that Gov. Newsom stood by the victims, most of whom are women, of nonconsensual pornography by signing AB 602 into law. I  want to thank the governor; the bill's authors, Assembly member Marc Berman and Sen. Connie Leyva; and all the California lawmakers who unanimously voted for this legislation. AB 602 is a victory for all Californians. Deepfake technology can be weaponized against any person. Every person deserves the basic human right to live free from image-based sexual abuse.

Update: A second deep fake bill protects politicians from having words put in their mouths

7th October 2019. See article from technologyreview.com

Governor Gavin Newsom in fact signed two bills into law that limit what people can do with deep fakes. The second law makes it illegal to make and distribute a malicious deep fake of a politician within two months of an election.

Presumably the lawmakers are worrying that politicians can be depicted as saying thing that they did not in fact say.

However this bill seems a little ahead of its time as deep fakes are not really being used for this reason so far. A new report by DeepTrace, a company that builds tools to spot synthetic media. The company says that it has identified 14,678 deepfakes on the internet but most of them weren't created to mess with elections. In fact 96% of the deepfakes were still plain old fake porn.

House of Commons, 3rd October 2019.

The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nicky Morgan):

THon. Members will be aware of our ongoing work to keep people safe online and our proposals around age verification for online pornography. I  wish to notify the House that the standstill period under the EU's technical services and regulations directive expired at midnight last night. I  understand the interest in this issue that exists in all parts of the House, and I  will update the House on next steps in due course.