UK Internet Censorship

Natasha Kaplinsky, anti-porn campaigner and president of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), said in an exclusive paywalled article for the Sunday Telegraph, said that the Government needed not only to introduce tough age verification to protect children but also to take action to restrict young adults from accessing the welter of illegal violent and abusive porn available online.

Kaplinsky, who is also president of the UK's biggest children's charity Barnardo's, is calling for amendments to the Online Safety Bill, currently before the House of Lords, that would bring the legislative treatment of porn on the internet in line with the restrictions that the BBFC polices in the offline world.

Kaplinsky cited a recent parliamentary report which revealed illegal porn was readily accessible online including depictions of rape, incest and sexual violence. She said:

This was because the offline regulation of legitimate porn overseen by the BBFC was not mirrored online and the Government's Bill as written did not plug this loophole. This meant content that would be illegal to distribute offline will continue to be legally available online,

She claimed that this attempt at further internet censorship was not an attempt at censorship:

To be clear: this is not about limiting the freedom of adults to access legal pornographic material.

This is about the regulation of appalling content that eroticises rape and the violent abuse of women, or which promotes an interest in abusive relationships. There is a big difference. It is only logical that where content is unacceptable offline, we as a society should say it is unacceptable online too.

Presumably her reference to promoting an interest in abusive relationships is a reference to the plethora of 'step family' porn, but it must be noted that the BBFC has passed such material R18, eg see That's Right, She's My Step Sister...so What from bbfc.co.uk

Attempts to extend the censorship of porn online are expected next month when it comes before the Lords.

The government's Internet 'Safety' Bill is coming under a lot of pressure for its disgraceful intention to compromise internet security for all British people by removing secure encrypted communication used to keep out hackers, blackmailers, scammers and thieves.

Perhaps acknowledging the opposition from security experts the government is giving itself another 18 weeks to push it through parliament. Otherwise the bill would be in danger of being timed out.

The extension will be presented to parliament tomorrow.

The grandly named All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation (APPG-CSE) is a just a group of anti-porn MPs. It is not an official parliamentary committee tasked with monitoring policy on behalf of parliament.

Of course it does try present itself as something more important than it really is by referring to people its listens to as 'witnesses' in 'evidence' sessions and publishing its biased opinions as 'reports. Of course it never listens to any opposing views from sex workers, film makers, or of course from people who enjoy sex entertainment.

Anyway it has just published a moralist diatribe against porn titled: Pornography Regulation: The case for Parliamentary Reform

Predictably its observations and recommendations are simply to destroy the entire adult pornography business. The campaigners write:

On 27 February 2023, the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation launched the findings of its Inquiry on Pornography. The report, Pornography Regulation: The case for Parliamentary Reform, concludes that the epidemic of male violence against women and girls cannot be ended unless the Government confronts the role pornography plays in fuelling sexual violence.

The report highlights the scale and nature of contemporary online pornography, finding that the user base of pornography is highly gendered, with significantly more men watching pornography than women. Violence against women is prolific in mainstream pornography, and illegal content -- including videos of child sexual exploitation, rape and sex trafficking victims -- is freely accessible on mainstream pornography websites.

The report evidences a multiplicity of harms connected with the pornography industry. Pornography is found to fuel sexual violence and social and political harms against women and girls, as well as perpetuating racist stereotypes. Children continue to be exposed to online pornography on an alarming scale, which is an egregious violation of child safeguarding. Meanwhile, sexual coercion is found to be inherent to the commercial production of pornography, with producers commonly adopting exploitative and abusive tactics to coerce women into being filmed for pornography videos.

The inquiry concludes that existing legislation relating to pornography is piecemeal and wholly inadequate with respect to preventing and providing redress for harms perpetuated as part of the trade.

As a result of its inquiry, the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation has made the following recommendations to Government:

• Make the regulation of pornography consistent across different online platforms, and between the online and offline spheres.

• Criminalise the supply of pornography online to children, and legally require age verification for accessing pornography online.

• Address pornography as commercial sexual exploitation, and a form of violence against women, in legislation and policy.

• Legally require online platforms to verify that every individual featured in pornographic content on their platform is an adult and gave permission for the content to be published there.

• Give individuals who feature in pornographic material the legal right to withdraw their consent to material in which they feature being published and/or distributed.

• Hold exploiters to account by making it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of others.

• Conduct a comprehensive review of laws on pornography and obscenity.

 

Offsite Comment: Moral Coercion And Twisted Facts From The UK Parliament's Censorial Fanatics

5th March 2023. See article from reprobatepress.com

Johnson's group took evidence during their from the usual suspects -- not just NCOSE but also Gail Dines, the anti-porn academic writer who is like Andrea Dworkin without the writing ability, and Laila Mickelwait, head of anti-sex work Christian lobbyists Exodus Cry. They did not, you'll be unsurprised to hear, take any evidence from current sex workers or anyone else who might contradict their pre-existing beliefs -- because let's face it, anyone who is part of a group looking at commercial sexual exploitation led by a notorious anti-porn politician is not exactly going in with an open mind.

See full article from reprobatepress.com

One of our priorities for the second year of the video-sharing platform (VSP) regime is to promote the implementation of robust age assurance, so that children are protected from the most harmful content. In October 2022, we published our report on the first year of VSP regulation . The report highlighted that many platforms that specialise in videos containing pornographic material (or "adult VSPs") do not appear to have measures that are robust enough to stop children accessing pornographic material.

Today Ofcom is opening an enforcement programme into age assurance measures across the adult VSP sector.

Our objectives for this programme are:

• to assess the age assurance measures implemented by notified adult VSPs, to ensure they are sufficiently robust to prevent under-18s from accessing videos containing pornographic material;

• to identify whether there are other platforms in the adult VSP sector that may fall in scope of the VSP regime but:

  • have not yet notified their service to Ofcom, as required under the VSP framework (see more below); and

  • may not have appropriate measures in place to protect under-18s from pornographic content; and

• to understand from providers of adult VSP services the challenges they have faced when considering implementing any age assurance measures. This will also help us build a picture of what measures work and are proportionate to expect from different VSPs, in line with our strategic priority of driving forward the implementation of robust age assurance.

The programme will seek to determine the scale of any compliance concerns in respect of notified and non-notified adult VSPs. We will then decide whether any further action (including enforcement) is needed, and how best to address potential harm.

The Online Safety Bill is currently going back to Report Stage in the Commons on 16 th January, and is widely expected to be in the Lords for the end of the month, or beginning of February. We anticipate it could complete its legislative passage by June.

At the end of last year, a widely publicised change to the Online Safety Bill took out the so-called "legal but harmful" clauses for adults. The government has claimed this is protecting free speech.

However, in their place, new clauses have been shunted in that create a regime for state-mandated enforcement of tech companies' terms and conditions. It raises new concerns around embedded power for the tech companies and a worrying lack of transparency around the way that the regulator, Ofcom, will act as enforcer-in-chief.

Whatever they say goes

It is not a good look for free speech. It does not alter the underlying framework of the Bill that establishes rules by which private companies will police our content. On the other hand, it does create a shift in emphasis away from merely "taking down" troublesome content, and towards "acting against users".

For policy geeks, the change removed Clauses 12 and 13 of the Bill, concerning "content harmful to adults". The clauses regarding harmful content for children, Clauses 10 and 11, remain.

The two deleted clauses have been replaced by five new clauses addressing the terms of service of the tech companies. If their terms of service say they will "act against" content of "a particular kind", then they will follow through and do so. This will be enforced by Ofcom.

The new clauses emphatically refer to "restricting users' access" as well as taking down their content, or banning users from the service. The language of "restricting access" is troubling because the implied meaning suggests a policy of limiting free speech, not protecting it. This is an apparent shift in emphasis away from taking down troublesome content, to preventing users from seeing it in the first place. It is an environment of sanctions rather than rights and freedoms.

There is no definition of "a particular kind" and it is up to the tech companies to identify the content they would restrict. Indeed, they could restrict access to whatever they like, as long as they tell users in the terms of service.

The political pressure will be on them to restrict the content that the government dictates. It will not be done by the law, but by backroom chats, nods and winks over emails between the companies, Ofcom and government Ministries.

Joining the dots, Ofcom has a legal duty to "produce guidance" for the tech companies with regard to compliance. Ofcom takes direction from the two responsible Ministries, DCMS and the Home Office. A quick call with expression of the Minister's concerns could be used to apply pressure, with the advantage that it would skirt around publicly accountable procedures. "Yes, Minister" would morph into real life.

Restricting access to content

The new clauses do attempt to define "restricting users access to content". It occurs when a tech company "takes a measure which has the effect that a user is unable to access content without taking a prior step" or "content is temporarily hidden from a user". It's a definition that gives plenty of room for tech companies to be inventive about new types of restrictions. It does seem to bring in the concept of age-gating, which is a restriction on access, requiring people to take the step of establishing their identity or age-group, before being allowed access.

The new provisions also state that tech companies "must not act against users except in accordance with their terms and conditions", but the repetition of restrictive language suggests that the expectation is that they will restrict. There is no recognition of users' freedom of expression rights, and they may only complain about breach of contract, not breach of rights.

These restrictive clauses should also be seen in light of another little twist of language by the Bill's drafters: "relevant content". This is any content posted by users onto online platforms, but it is also any content capable of being searched by search engines, which are in scope of the Bill. The mind boggles at how much over-reach this Bill could achieve. How many innocent websites could find themselves demoted or down-ranked on the basis of the government whim of the day?

"Relevant content" is applicable when users seek to complain. But how can users complain about their website being down-ranked in a search listing when they don't have any confirmation that it has happened? The Bill makes no provision for users to be informed about "restricted access".

The change fails to take account of the potential cross-border effects, that will especially affect search functions. The Bill limits its jurisdiction to what it calls "UK-linked" content or web services. The definition is imprecise and includes content that is accessible from the UK. Online platform terms and conditions are usually written for a global user base. It's not clear if this provision could over-reach into other jurisdictions, potentially banning lawful content or users elsewhere.

Failure of policy-making

It reflects a failure of policy-making. These platforms are important vehicles for the global dissemination of information, knowledge and news. The restrictions that online platforms have in their armoury will limit the dissemination of users' content, in ways that are invisible and draconian. For example, they could use shadow bans, which operate by limiting ways that content is shown in newsfeeds and timelines. The original version of the Bill as introduced to Parliament did acknowledge this, and even allowed user to complain about them. The current version does not.

Overall, this is a failure to recognise that the vast majority of users are speaking lawfully. The pre-Christmas change to the Bill puts them at risk not only of their content being taken down but their access being restricted. Freedom of expression is a right to speak and to be informed. This change affects both.