|
|
I always love to see a new site come out and especially when it is a really cheap membership one.
The last new one I looked at was Caned On Line and as the name says it is devoted just to caning films and this had a very cheap membership. There is now a sister site to this called Best British Spanking and once again it does just what the name says, well almost. Here you will get to see just about all kinds of spankings and punishment films except caning films. Makes sense I guess!
It has only opened this week and you can get membership for as little as around £8 per month. Now that is not bad considering the quality of the films and pictures. There will be a new update every week, so that’s at least one new film every week.
Most of the films will come from other sites within the Strand Media group but there will also be some exclusive content. The film running times go from the usual around 10 mins and run up as far as 62 mins for the compilations. These compilations are on genre or on a particular lady and I think are great as an update.
I have had a look through the content there so far and I do see some old favorites, a couple of what I would say are classic films and then there are some which are totally new to me. For the price of the membership I really do not expect to get new films every week, but there are just so many good films available that there will always be something I dont know and have not seen.
So get along and have a look at this site, it’s clean in design, well put together and it gives you just what it says. All of the films are MP4 full size and there is a new free clip on the first page every week. I have posted some of the UPDate views from the site, to see them full size just click on them.
If you have a site you want promoting here just get in touch with me here.
It seems that the Tory governments misguided scheme to bring in age verification has run into some problems and has had to be postponed. Thanks to the hard work and lobbying of some of those in the industry the government has been made aware that this terrible and un-necessary piece of legislation would not work.
Thanks have to go in no small measure to Pandora Blake for the work she has done to make people and our poorly led government aware of the pitfalls of their decision to put the wrong people in charge of their information gathering censorship policy. They wanted to stop you from looking at porn. It’s as simple as that. On the back of the legislation they wanted to make way for one of the more questionable internet giants to gather all your personal details and do with them as they wished. There were no security checks in place, no due diligence was ever done and worst of all, no one was consulted.
Make no mistake though, the battle may have been won but knowing the track record of our government and their desire to control the internet and gather information any way they can, this will be revisited. I have been amazed at the complacency of some of those in the industry who would just sit back and have let this happen. Through these pages and on our twitter feed we asked for people to help, simple things like spread the links to the information and to those places where the fight was going on but no, it was just too much hard work for some. We had the same feedback from other activists as well. What does it take to make some people take some time out and look at what’s going on around them and to do something about the wrongs being done in their name?
It’s of no thanks to the industry in general that this happy situation of a postponement has been arrived at, it’s down to a very small number and lets all be thankful that there are people out there who will fight for the good of others.
The UK government has confirmed that a controversial compulsory age verification check for online porn visitors will no longer be introduced in April as planned.
In a statement, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it would now start “later in the year”.
“We need to take the time to make sure we get it right,” added a spokesman.
The regulator, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), has yet to explain how the process will work.
“This is a chance for the government to rethink the absence of safeguards for privacy and security, but it is frightening to consider that this policy was two weeks away from launch before it was pulled,” said the Open Rights Group’s legal director, Myles Jackman.
“[The government] needs to introduce powers to safeguard privacy immediately before this scheme causes real damage.”
Child protection
Several companies developing age verification tools for the new regulation had previously told the BBC they thought it was unlikely that the deadline would be met.
The new rule means online pornography viewers will have to prove that they are over the age of 18 to watch explicit material on porn sites.
It is part of the Digital Economy Act and is designed to prevent children “stumbling” upon explicit content.
Possible methods include credit card checks and passport authentication.
“The regulations still have to go out for consultation, and be discussed and approved by Parliament,” said James Clark, from AgeID, an age verification platform developed by MindGeek, which owns some of the world’s leading pornography sites.
“There are set timings for such processes, so the maths just don’t seem to add up for it to be ready by April.”
Another company – which asked to remain anonymous – said it was unlikely that anything would be ready before the Parliament’s summer recess, which begins on 20 July.
The BBFC told the BBC that it was aiming to share details about the verification process in about a month’s time.
Last July, Digital Minister Matt Hancock set an April 2018 deadline for the introduction of an age verification scheme.
Several software developers are working on tools to help the adult industry meet the requirement.
“We are all working a little bit in the dark and making our best educated guesses as to what will and won’t be acceptable,” said Warren Russell, from W2Global.
W2Global is building a tool called AVYourself, and already provides services to the financial services and gambling sectors.
“The real difficulty for providers is that the regulators have not yet released guidelines,” Mr Russell added.
We are printing in full the post from Pandora Blake as it clearly lays out the situation that will greet all of us come April if the government bring in their aget verification law. Unlike Pandora however we do not agree with anyone, government or private company having the right to censor the internet and most certainly not to also alow them unrestricted access to your private data and to be able to use it as they see fit.
The only outcome that is acceptable is the unrestricted use of the internet. Do not be swayed by the arguments that this is to protect children, it’s nothinbg oif the sort and we have rehearsed the arguments in previous articles. It is the parents job to look after their children, it always has been and always should be. Most kids are internet savvy by a very young age and will despite any restrictions find anything they are looking for in short order.
“I watched this Sky News report live yesterday on the bus on my phone with my headphones. It’s a trip to see your indie porn trailers used to illustrate a news story about the privacy dangers of age verification, even more so when you’re watching it on public transport. I’m on the train again now (lots of schlepping around London this weekend) so this is going to be a super quick scrappy post, but I just had to share this massive breakthrough into the mainstream media with the campaigning I’ve been doing around age verification.
I filmed this report with Sky News a couple of weeks ago – you may remember the video diary I posted after the shoot. You can watch it online here:
Are porn companies taking advantage of new age regulations?
The problem with age verification isn’t so much that it will make MindGeek lots of money – I’m sure AgeID has been expensive to build – but that it risks compromising the sensitive personal data and private sexual preferences of millions of Internet users. I was encouraged to see Sky News so sympathetic to the arguments myself and other privacy campaigners are making. I thought it was a strong piece that gets to the heart of the problem.
The independent research the Sky News team did into the AgeID privacy policy was particularly chilling.
In the article accompanying the news report, correspondent Tom Cheshire shows that although MindGeek deny they will snoop on user’s private data, the AgeID Privacy Policy “details a wealth of information the site may collect.”
It includes name, postal address, nationality, date and place of birth, email address, mobile phone numbers and demographic information, as well as searches made on AgeID.
It notes that this information can be used by AgeID “to develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our Website and other sites”.
The policy also says: “We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services.”
MindGeek has suffered high profile hacks in the past, with millions of people’s personal information being stolen. A database of pornographic sites visited across the web for 25 million people in the UK would likely be a target for hackers.
Making these points in international media is a real win for privacy campaigners like myself who are concerned about the high stakes at play if people’s private porn viewing data is released into the public domain. As I explained in my latest blogpost,
I don’t endorse age verification. But with people’s lives at risk, especially people with more marginalised sexualities who risk suffering of homophobia and transphobia, I can’t in good conscience sit back and let the worst case scenario unfold.
It’s work like this – producing articles, lobbying Parliamentarians, speaking to the press, filming news reports and documentaries, and engaging with thought leaders – that is made possible by donations like yours. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.
If you can, would you please share the links to the Sky video and article, so they can spread as far as possible? If you felt like linking my Patreon and mentioning that you support me and why, that would be ace too. Thank you!”
FROM SKY NEWS
MindGeek, the biggest internet pornography company in the world has told Sky News it will not snoop on the sexual preferences of 25 million people in the UK under new age verification laws.
However, MindGeek also plans to collect a trove of information on users, including their names, addresses, date of birth, as well as their online activities on other websites.
From April, as part of the Digital Economy Act, anyone wishing to view pornography online will have to prove they are over 18 years old.
The mechanism for age verification is being left to the private sector. Among the companies developing solutions is MindGeek, which bills itself as a leader in ‘Web Design, IT, Web Development and SEO [search engine optimisation]’.
MindGeek also runs some of the most viewed pornography sites in the world, including PornHub, YouPorn and RedTube – the so-called ‘tube’ sites – as well as production studios including Brazzers.
MindGeek anticipates signing up 25 million users in the UK to its age verification system, AgeID.
The system will require users to sign up with an email address and password, then use a third party mechanism to prove they’re over 18. User will then use AgeID to access pornographic sites around the web; AgeID will log which sites are visited.
MindGeek will charge other pornography sites to use its solution. But because of its market dominance, campaigners fear it will end up the defacto age verification standard, handing even more power to the biggest porn provider around.
A spokesperson for MindGeek told Sky News: “AgeID has been built from the ground up with data protection, data minimisation and the principles of privacy by design at its core, whilst also complying with the GDPR.”
“This is why we do not store any personal data entered during the age verification process,” Mindgeek added.
“Due to the encrypted nature of AgeID’s login credentials, such data cannot be exposed in the unlikely event of a hack.”
However, the privacy policy for AgeID details a wealth of information the site may collect. It includes name, postal address, nationality, date and place of birth, email address, mobile phone numbers and demographic information, as well as searches made on AgeID.
It notes that this information can be used by AgeID “to develop and display content and advertising tailored to your interests on our Website and other sites”.
The policy also says: “We also may use these technologies to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services.”
MindGeek has suffered high profile hacks in the past, with millions of people’s personal information being stolen. A database of pornographic sites visited across the web for 25 million people in the UK would likely be a target for hackers.
Independent pornography producers in the UK are concerned about MindGeek’s potential dominance.
Pandora Blake, a producer of queer pornography, told Sky News: “MindGeek already have a monopoly on production via having bought out a lot of different production studios and distribution via the tube sites.
Lets hope we never need to go to these lengths in a supposedly free country. But if we do need to take on the forces of the censorious state then be prepared, it is actually easy to do to keep viewing.
IMPORTANT NEWS FOR ALL OUR SPANKING FANS
Please take a few moments to read this. It is important to you as a free thinking individual
You may not be aware of this but early next year the UK government, in your name, is planning to block access to all adult web sites or sites they or their agents do not approve of.
This could well include ours. What this means is that they will require you to register your personal details with an insecure web site to verify your age. In reality they are not interested in your age but in finding favour with the extreme elements within their party and society in general.
To take this one stage further, you may not be aware but they have already, with the help of your Internet Service Provider (ISP) started blocking web sites they do not agree with or which show spanking or other pornographic or adult art films. Please take a look at this article; https://www.blocked.org.uk/
You, like us may not be happy with this situation so what can you do? You can join and support https://www.openrightsgroup.org/
If you wish to continue to see your favourite sites then you can use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This is totally legal and above board and no one can trace your surfing or see what you are viewing.
There are many providers out there but be careful. Those offering this service for free very often install malware or other virus ware onto your computer. We recommend you use a paid for service, it is in reality very cheap and very secure and very easy to use and can be used for any site, anywhere on all your devices.
One we can recommend is https://nordvpn.com/ It’s very simple, Join NORDVPN then you log in through your VPN, picking any country in the world. You can then surf the net safe in the knowledge that you will find the sites they have blocked and that your identity is secret and safe.
You still have time to protest to your MP, tell them you do not approve of this form of censorship, tell them you are an adult and want to make up your own mind what you look at and what web sites you visit.
WE RECOMED:
• Make a note of our full web site addresses, like http://www.strandvideo.com
• If you use a VPN to log into our sites, our security system asks that you do not keep changing from one to another.
• Stay with one network for the entirety of your browsing session.
• If you find you are being blocked at the moment, all new subscribers to BT, Virgin, Orange and some others may find this, contact them and tell them you want to have the block lifted and they will do so.
• For the latest news on the legal situation and for other spanking news add this site to your favorites list: http://www.spanking-news.com
I hope Pandora wont mind us copying her very important piece in its entirety, we have left in all her links and we do suggest you try to contribute a little to help Pandora in this fight. We only report here what others are saying but sometimes it is so very important that we give the full gist of the argument so we will have this post open for comments.
How to get a meeting with the DCMS
I was recently invited to meet with the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to discuss age verification.
I’ve been trying for a while to make this conversation happen. I’d previously connected with a couple of different members of the Child Internet Safety Team, the group responsible for implementing age verificiation – and then they moved onto other roles, leaving me without any active contacts. I first met with different representatives in collaboration with the UK Adult Producers trade association (UKAP), with the Open Rights Group – and more briefly at events organised by UKAP and the Adult Provider Network. Twice I was given email addresses and told to keep in touch, only to then have my emails ignored. No doubt they’re busy people.
Now, with the DCMS in prime position to shape up age verification and create a robust regulatory system in which data is protected and user privacy is respected, I was faced with another new Senior Policy Manager – the third since I started campaigning around age verification – who was refusing to engage.
I had to act strategically. In November I organised a roundtable on age verification, and invited the DCMS. They declined to attend. The next day I sent them a long list of questions, exposing the myriad cracks in age verification, and holding the DCMS to account for protecting privacy, security and freedom of expression. I waited for an answer – until I posted my piece revealing the catastrophic consequences should MindGeek attain a monopoly on age verification with their AgeID software, which could potentially track porn users across the internet. In that piece I called out the DCMS for refusing to answer my questions via email, or take responsibility for regulating the age verification market they have created. It worked. The next day I received a reply to my email, inviting me to a meeting to address my concerns.
Age verification: the questions we need answered
When the Senior Policy Manager of the Child Internet Safety Team sent his apologies for not attending the age verification roundtable, he included a paragraph of DCMS policy stating that age verification is an “important child protection measure” and that they “want to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online” – a line copied and pasted directly from government press releases. I decided to engage with this claim, and tackle all the ways in which the age verification policy outlined in the Digital Economy Act, is inconsistent, unworkable, and threatens to harm small businesses and individuals, particularly members of marginalised communities such as sex workers and LGBTQ people.
These are the questions I asked:
- Section 3 14.6 of the Digital Economy Act states that “For the purposes of this Part, making material available on the internet does not include making the content of an on-demand programme service available on the internet in the course of providing such a service.” Does this mean that on-demand programme services will not have to age verify users?
- The scope of the Act is not well defined. Sky’s content filter blocks over 4 million adult websites. How many websites can the BBFC classify?
- Under the definitions provided in the Act, “commercial pornography providers” could include amateur sex bloggers posting nude personal pictures to a small audience as part of a consensual adult lifestyle and freedom of sexual expression, if they make a little money (even £50/month) from advertising, sponsored posts or sex toy reviews. How will sites like this be able to afford the costs of age verification?
- Many independent escorts, to avoid working on the streets or for exploitative bosses, advertise their services online via self-hosted websites, which often contain nude pictures and video to promote their brand. Will these sites need to install age verification? If sex workers cannot afford to pay 25 pence per unique visitor (which adds up to hundreds of pounds a day for even relatively small websites), and therefore need to stop advertising online and go back to working for exploitative agencies or bosses, how does this make them safer?
- The word “security” is referenced by the Digital Economy Act only in terms of national security, not personal security. Are you aware that a law which forces citizens into the habit of sharing private details online is extraordinarily bad security on a national scale?
- Have you considered the vast potential for identity theft which widespread age verification will lead to, with ripe pickings for identity fraudsters to collect credit card details and other identifying information on fake websites with fake “age checks”? I’d be thrilled to learn how exactly you think this will make the internet “safe”. What grounds will the regulator have to sanction fraudulent or data harvesting “age verification” software?
- Section 3 25.1(a) requires the regulator to publish “guidance about the types of arrangements for making pornographic material available that the regulator will treat as complying with section 14”. Does this extend to providers of Age Verification software; and does the regulator therefore have the power to decide what age verification solutions will be considered compliant or not? On what basis will these decisions be made? Will the security and privacy strengths of AV solutions be taken into account when considering their compliance, or merely whether or not they correctly verify age?
- The Act completely fails to address the privacy and security of internet users – it does not use the word “privacy” once. MindGeek (the biggest online porn company, who own the majority of the “free” adult tube sites such as PornHub) anticipate that 20-25 million users will sign up to their age verification solution AgeID in the first month. Their sites PornHub, YouPorn, Digital Playground and Brazzers have all suffered security breaches in the past. Therefore, without any privacy safeguards in the body of the Act, this seems to pave the way for 25 million users’ sexual preferences to be leaked onto the Internet. Are you intending to produce a mandatory privacy standard which age verification technologies must comply with in order to be considered compliant? Will the regulator have authority to enforce this standard?
- It has been repeatedly claimed that age verification only needs to know the user’s age, not their identity. Nonetheless, many of the currently available age verification technologies (eg VeriMe, Yoti, Experian, Equifax etc) require users to share identifying details such as their mobile number, real name or credit card details. When it comes to secure systems design, the most confidential data is not retained anywhere. What safeguards will be in place to ensure that age verification providers only see the minimal amount of data; blind data as much as possible; and do not needlessly retain sensitive user data, thereby making it vulnerable to security breaches, abuse or leaks?
- How do you resolve the discrepancy between the content regulations laid out in the Act (where pornography is permitted behind age checks as long as it is not “extreme” according to the definition provided by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008), and those laid out in the AVMS 2014, which prohibits any content beyond R18? The AVMS 2014 is still in force, even though Parliament ruled during the debates on the Digital Economy Act that the CPS guidance on the OPA is out of date with recent case law, and not fit for purpose. Why is there one rule for ODPS and one rule for everyone else?
- Section 3 15.2 of the Act defines “material” as “(a) a series of visual images shown as a moving picture, with or without sound; (b) a still image or series of still images, with or without sound; or (c) sound”. Given the definition of “pornographic” requires “that any classification certificate issued in respect of a video work including it would be an 18 certificate;” how will sound be classified? Have the CPS issued any guidance on the OPA relating to sound? Will you be producing guidance clarifying what sort of audio would be considered “pornographic” for the purposes of the Act?
- I understand that your second draft of the guidance for the age verification regulator is about to be presented to Parliament, and must be approved by both Houses. The regulator then needs to be appointed, and they then need to produce guidance which must also be approved. Age verification companies are not going to launch their products until after the regulator’s guidance has been published, as they want to ensure their products are compliant before they go to market. It therefore seems unlikely that any age verification solutions will be available for public consideration before January or February next year. Given Matt Hancock has announced the deadline for compliance as May 2018, how do you expect pornography site owners, most of which are one or two person outfits without a separate IT department, to research the relevant software and make informed decisions within this timeframe? Many site owners are eager to begin preparations, but they are unable to do so until the relevant guidance has been issued, which might not be for many months. Do you consider a two month turnaround to be realistic for one person who is not an IT expert to conduct a complete site overhaul?
- Although guidance about the scope of the legislation and what will be considered compliant has still not been issued, are you aware that since the Act passed we are already seeing a chilling effect, with small porn sites closing down for fear of being blocked? Do you believe that UK law should uphold diversity and freedom of expression, particularly when it comes to LGBTQ sexualities and other marginalised communities?
- MindGeek are producing their own age verification solution, AgeID, which as noted above will verify 25 million users in the first month. They are intending to license this out to other site owners, thereby creating an unimpeded traffic flow where users only have to age verify once, as long as they continue to browse sites using the AgeID system. This will disadvantage sites using other age verification solutions which would require the user to re-verify, as many users will be put off by having to go through the age verification process multiple times. Are you aware that this will gift the biggest porn company in the world with a monopoly that effectively makes them the gatekeepers of porn? MindGeek’s tube sites make money by allowing users to upload pirated (stolen) content made by producers like myself, and then monetising it via advertising; once age verification is in effect, if we want to stay in business we will effectively have to pay a “MindGeek tax” to our biggest competitor, who has established market dominance by pirating our content. Is this sort of extortion your idea of a “safe internet”?
I am extremely grateful to the amazing 114 people who support me with a small monthly pledge to do work like this. Become a patron and help me continue to lobby for privacy, freedom of speech and other adult liberties. Patrons get early access to campaigning news, including my article reporting the DCMS’ answers to my questions, which has just gone live. Pledge $1 or more to view it.
I spent the week end visiting Remington Steel the spanking producer and we got to talking about all the different ladies he has filmed over a very long career and a very long interest in all things spanking. I wanted to get a perspective on the merits of various of the models for an article I am writing for Spanking News.
I must admit, I did not get quite all the answers I was seeking and I did not get all my questions answered in just the way I thought I would. I suppose my silliest question was to ask him who his favorite spankee was! “Well”, he said, “where do you want to start and what do you mean by favorite. Do you mean the lady I most liked, the ones I could fall in love with, the ones who could take the hardest, the best actress the most popular with my clients and members, the one I got the most enjoyment from filming or the one I got the most enjoyment from spanking”. I stopped him there as I had come to the realization that it was a pretty daft question.
We decided that it would of course be impossible for after making over 3000 spanking films with the very best spanking ladies in the country he certainly would not be able to pick out one and almost certainly would not remember all of them. He did say however that contrary to what I would have thought he did have a preferred age group. The more mature ladies he thought were definitely his favorite.
Asked to give me some names he said that as it was coming up to Christmas he would send me a present or two in the form of pictures of some of the outstanding mature ladies.
Here today is the first of those ladies her name is Scarlet, these pictures are taken from the Spanking Sarah web site and from English-Spankers where she appeared in a number of films as both a spankee and a disciplinarian. And very good at that roll she was. Scarlet did also do a number of sex scenes to go with some of the films and they can be seen on the web site.
Most memorable for her amazing long legs and her love off all things sexy and spanking related. “She was” says Stern, “a real lady and a real pleasure to work with, I wish we had more films with her as they have always been very popular. She was one of the main starts in the Dothegirls Hall series”. So enjoy the pictures and a short video sample take a look at some of the films starring Scarlet.
Copied from ITC Forum. Take a look at the conversation on the forum.
“One of the very useful things everyone can do at the moment is to try to influence the way this legislation is enacted. If it does go into force then it will make the UK the only country outside the well known repressive states, to control by law what it’s peoples can look at on the internet. The consequences of this are frightening and go way beyond the searching out of pornography.
Once the state has established the fact that it can, without any primary legislation get away with closing down parts of the internet it will use it to silence dissent or the publication of anything not to their liking. Write to your MP, tell them you are not happy with this. Join https://www.openrightsgroup.org/ this is serious and the fact of the matter is that not many people outside the kink business know what is happening to them, so tell your friends!
If you have a web site in this country you are worried about, placing it off shore will not make it safe from this legislation if they chose to get at the sites through the ISP’s. It does however give that extra bit of piece of mind.
I think that a lot of site owners worldwide, the USA for example, have not realized that this blocking will include their sites as well. I have spoken to some of them and they think it applies only to the UK. Not so, any site that meets their criterion will be eligible to be blocked. I know from the stats of our sites and those of others I am knowledgeable about that the main customers for such sites are in the UK and the USA.
One of the frightening aspects of all this is that they are talking about handing control of all this to the BBFC. This is a private limited company with a profit not a safeguarding ethos. They in turn are looking at outsourcing to the worlds largest pirates, criminals. Do you want to give any of your details to people like this?
Nothing has happened yet, I am pretty sure when things do happen their will be legal challenges. This will be a time for everyone who has an interest in freedom to contribute to a fight.
I am not heartened by this prospect. I know that if I put out a spanking related tweet @realspanknews I get loads of re-tweets. If I put out something serious like this or if I ask for contributions to www.spanking-news.com so that we may share information the response is practically nonexistent. It’s complacency that can cost us dearly. There are lots of very erudite people contributing to this forum, reach out to other medium and get your voices across”.
Lets have your comments, send them to us we will publish them, show that you care. You have a voice here so use it. ukspankingnews@gmail.com
Subscribe to our newsfeed http://www.spanking-news.com/?feed=rss2
The one thing we should all be aware of when it comes to looking at the planed age verification legislation is that it has absolutely nothing to do with keeping our children safe from harm. There is no proof that harm comes from accessing pornography, kids have done it since it became available on cave walls and will continue to find it and explore it no matter what.
This is all about appeasing, distraction, and control. Appeasing the extreme elements in all governments, don’t think this is just a Tory thing, all governments have the same agenda and appeasing the ultra-orthodoxy of the vocal religious and social commentators. It helps to distract from other more serious problems the country is facing, if they wished to tackle the extreme they could start with extreme poverty, if they wish to protect children they could make sure they have food in them when they go to school, that they and their families don’t have to visit food banks, that as well as attending school they don’t have to provide care for sick parents because the state will not. They could protect them by giving them good quality social housing instead of having families living in tents and industrial units. But no, it’s better and cheaper to distract the public with unwanted and unasked for legislation against a legal industry.
Control is maybe the most sinister and the most insidious of all because it happens slowly and quietly in the background. One more little law but it establishes a very important point for any government, it means that once in place they have the perfect base from which to exert their control over any internet content they don’t like. They do it once they will do it again. So don’t think it’s about a few spanking or sexy web sites, it’s not, it’s much more insidious and important than that.
What can you do to help combat the threats that face us, the most important thing is to be aware of them so please join the Open Rights Group
Please let us have your views, send them to ukspankingnews@gmail.com we will publish them.
I hate people who rip off other people’s web sites or intellectual copyright but sometimes it just has to be done. Below I have repeated the latest E-Mail from The Open Rights Group. If you do not already subscribe I suggest you get your hand in your pocket and pay the miserable pittance it costs to help protect your rights.
The information contained below may shock some of you, try putting the names of some of your favourite websites into the Blocked search and see what your ISP is up to. The tell them NOT IN MY NAME NO!
Reprited with thanks to OPR
ORG’s censorship detection tool Blocked is rolling out a major upgrade, making it better than ever at documenting the damage done by inaccurate ISP filters. You’ll be shocked to see just how many ordinary websites are affected, it’s ridiculous!
Test the new Blocked!
Often switched on by default, these blunt filters harm countless businesses and damage free speech online. Local pub websites, LGBT support resources and counselling services are among the innocent pages caught in automated dragnets meant to block illegal content like child porn and extremist propaganda.
By reporting sites on Blocked you’ll help ORG gather evidence of thousands of wrongful blocks and raise awareness of this quiet disaster. We’ve added improved searching capabilities and made it easy to complain directly to ISP’s to hold them accountable. We count on user feedback to refine this tool, so if you notice any bugs or have suggestions for improvements please raise a ticket on our feedback page.
Blocked is made possible because ORG activists run probes on ISP networks throughout the UK and Europe. The more we have running the better, so we are always looking for people to help by running their own probes. We’ll send you the equipment and the set up is easy.
Test the new Blocked!
It is important to protect citizens and minors from Illegal or obscene content, but filters that throw out the good with the bad are not the answer. Help ORG document and expose wrongful censorship by reporting sites on Blocked!
Pretty shocking dont you think! What this means, is, well it’s only porn so it’s not serious, take another look, it’s not only porn though it’s serious enough if that’s all it was, no, what it will mean is that anytime the government see something they don’t like they can get your ISP to block it, so, once again, tell them NOT IN MY NAME NO!
Next year the government are planning to block, with the help of your ISP all websites they have decided they or their agents don’t like. Are you going to put up with that? Think about where it starts and where it ends, do you really want state sponsored censorship. I don’t.
All good things must come to an end and so it goes with the film appearances of our lovely lady spankees. I was privileged at the week end to be invited to witness the last films being made featuring Allison, one of the more popular mature housewife spanking models.
During the filming she was interviewed about her life in the business and about the films she has made over the years. Now this is a lady who is not really into spanking, indeed she started her life in the business making sex films and progressed to higher things from there. She says she really does not enjoy being spanked at all but she knows that she needs the feel of a hard hand on her bottom from time to time.
Asked about her likes, she did say she quite liked to be over the knee of a strong guy, held tight and have her panties removed for a spanking. It was just that she did not like the spanking. So why keep doing it? Well, the after spanking feeling was quite nice and she did confess to having reached a climax on more than one occasion whilst being spanked so, well maybe that’s reason enough.
The shoot was fascinating, shot on a GoPro of all cameras with just natural light in the lovely room used for the filming, the was done to give the least intrusive effect, little editing as there is only one camera position and a very natural look to the film. More like watching a wife being disciplined by her husband in the privacy of their own home.
The films will be out on Redstripe Films in the New Year but till then I do have the few stills taken from the shoot for you to enjoy.
Thanks Allison for all the years and all the happiness you have given so many people, me included.
Oh the joys of being a spanking blogger, you get all sorts of invites and once again Sarah Stern invited me to a shoot and I was delighted to find the delectable Susanne Smart was working with Sarah, Mr. Stern, Katie Didit & Kodders.
As usual I had an amazing day and it amazes me just how much work goes into the making of the spanking films featured on Sarahs Site. It’s a long day, they started at around 10.00 and did not get through till around 16.00 with just the occasional stops for café and sandwiches.
They were filming another series of Unladylike Manor and the only disappointment that I had was that Sarah did not feature in any of the films but the lovely Susanne and Katie Didit were a great compensation. As usual in this series, Katie plays the housekeeper and Susanne the luckless maid. The first scene was to be a spanking scene and it was not long before Susanne found herself over Mr. Sterns capable knees. He spanked her first of all over her tight black knickers, good, full sized ones, not those silly little ones we see so much of these days. The knickers came down and I was looking full onto the beautiful bare bottom of Susanne the maid, her uniform skirt framing her perfectly. Now this lady can take a good hard spanking and I can tell you this is just what she got. This continued till she was bright red and I do have to say, she did not seem too eager to get off the comfortable knees she was laying across, I rather think she was finding the whole thing quite enjoyable.
Next a complete scene change as Mr. Stern Initiates Susanne into his latest mad idea, a sect formed to save fallen ladies. Well, someone has to pick them up I guess and Stern seems the ideal guy. There is of course an initiation process to be gone through and he uses Susanne to work out just what that should be.
I am not able to give away to much here but as you will see from the pictures it does involve, a bizarre costume or two, some leather paddles, a martinet and a nasty cane. I found it utterly amazing how Susanne, who I am sure wont mind me saying is not the youngest model in the business, gets so much obvious enjoyment from the filming and the extreme amounts of pain she takes and at the same time is able to remember and to improvise all the dialog to keep the thing moving along at a great pace.
During one of the breaks she told me the reason she does the films is that she loves being able to get away from reality for a day and go into another world where as well as the hard work she also gets a certain satisfaction from the mechanics of making the films, the pain which she enjoys and the knowledge that here will be a very good few films at the end of it all.
The films will now go for editing and post production and will be available on Sarah’s site early next year I believe. If you have not seen any of the previous episodes they are on the site so I do urge you to take a look at them and catch up with the story.
I once again had the good fortune to be invited to witness a day’s shooting with the amazing Spanking Sarah. I would welcome invites from other producers, I do give you good publicity! so please contact me and give me some dates.
This was a great day and a very quick shoot with a lovely young lady called Ambrosia. She seemed quite nervous but over a cup of tea she began to relax and she told me this was her second shoot with Sarah and Mr. Stern. She reckoned that Sarah had by far and away the stronger arm, I was invited to try it out but declined, I had to sit for a long drive home.
It was planned to shoot four films and Sarah said she could get that done in about half a day. The setup was very professional, very modern lighting, small and powerful and a two camera set up. The camera man and director Remington Steel said that they no longer used the broadcast cameras they used to as the new smaller ones were easier to set up and move around the quite small location. Assistant camera man Kodders seemed to be a bit of a sound expert and set up an amazing array of recording devices, he wanted he said to get the very best sound, every swish and thwack as he said.
The shoot had a central theme about a girl who sets out to work in a brothel but finds that she is not quite up to what her first customer requires from her. The customer calls Miss Stern, the madam into the room and makes a complaint and well I’m sure you can guess what happens. Yes the poor girl gets a good dose of the paddle and although I was at the other end of the room I am sure I could feel the wind from the paddle strokes.
Not satisfied with that Sarah gets out a rather nasty looking cane and pointed to a very workmanlike spanking bench ordered poor Ambrosia over it. The young lady then had to take a real good hard caning. Boy, it was hard and it was accurate. It did look to me as though Ambrosia was in tears so I had a chat with her as soon as I could. I thought she would need time to recover but no, she was bubbling away and said she just loved it and although the cane was not her favorite she was more than happy with her session under it.
Sarah and the rest of the crew seemed happy with the whole shoot, it had taken around three and a half hours and they had made four films. Hard work, fast work but a real fun day. Everyone was easy going and knew what they had to do and I took a quick look back at some of the footage and I think it will be a great little film.
I have some stills taken from the film itself below so enjoy. I think the film should be out on the 14th of the month over at Spanking Sarah
This excelent article is taken from the blog by feminist pornographer and activist Pandora Blake. She has been at the fore front of the fight against censorship of allkinds. We recomend her far seeing articles to all who have an interest in the spaking and adult scenes. We support the Open Rights Group and would ask that you take a look at their website and if possibel contribute.
Since the Digital Economy Act passed in April, age verification is coming to the UK – and the government have announced a deadline of April 2018. Thanks to the combined campaigning efforts of myself and various groups, we managed to get an amendment passed which averted the worst case scenario regarding prohibited content. But with web blocking still in place as a potential sanction, and no safeguards for user privacy, the Act still represents bad news for UK internet freedom.
I’m not the only one concerned about this. The Open Rights Group are also worried about the consequences of this badly-worded new law. This month I’ve had meetings with Executive Director Jim Killock and Legal Director Myles Jackman about age verification and what we can do about it. ORG have a long history campaigning for digital rights, and I’ve been a member for over ten years. We’ll working together over the coming months to campaign on age verification and privacy, alongside my work with Backlash and as an independent voice.
I joined ORG in meeting Chris Ratcliff from the Digital Policy Alliance, the cross-party group consulting to the Government on the age verification policy, and also with a representative from the DCMS (the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport – the ‘digital’ has been recently added), the branch of the civil service who are responsible for implementing it. The meetings were useful in allowing me both to make my concerns known, and ask questions to improve my understanding of the situation. Although I learned a lot, overall it seems that as far as age verification is concerned, there are still more questions than answers.
The process of implementing AV
All websites visible by UK viewers have to have AV installed by April 2018. For a new tech policy to be implemented this is an incredibly short time frame. This problem becomes worse when it’s revealed that none of the details are yet in place that will tell people how AV is going to work, or what they need to do to comply.
The Act being passed is just the first stage; there’s now a schedule of events that need to take place before anyone can comply. Even having talked to the DCMS, made careful notes, and re-read the text of the law just now, I’m still a bit confused about exactly what the process is. But my best current understanding of the schedule is as follows:
This all adds up to a lengthy bureaucratic and Parliamentary process, and frankly I find it doubtful that it will be complete before the end of the year. That doesn’t leave people much time at all to comply with an April 2018 deadline.
The DCMS told me in person that the first step is for them to draw up guidance for the regulator. I can’t find reference to this in the law, unless it’s the guidance mentioned in 14 (2) specifying the “circumstances in which material is or is not to be regarded as made available on a commercial basis”. As I understand it, the DCMS need to lay out how the regulation is going to work, what the regulator’s powers and responsibilities will be, which sites will fall under the scope of the law, and what process the regulator will have to follow in order to be in line with the law. This needs to be approved by Parliament, which is currently in its summer recess; therefore this step can’t be completed until after Parliament reopens in the Autumn.
It doesn’t make sense for the new age verification regulator to be designated until after the guidance has been approved specifying what their role will be; otherwise the regulator won’t know what they’re signing up for. The British Board of Film Classification have been tipped as the regulator-in-waiting, but they don’t have any authority until they’re officially appointed.
A lot of people have questions about how the regulation is going to be enforced and what they need to do to comply. But until the guidance has been published and the new regulator has been appointed, no-one can answer them. This is pretty inconvenient for people who are keen to crack on with implementing age verification.
These uncertainties around the regulatory guidance and the identity of the regulator are massive obstacles when it comes to figuring out how age verification is going to work in practice. It’s absolutely ludicrous that people are expected to comply with age verification by next April when there are still months of bureaucracy ahead before we know exactly what will be considered compliant. Installing age verification on a website is not an overnight process: many site owners are going to have to overhaul their websites considerably, moving all material classifiable as 18 or above behind age checks, shopping around for the best and most affordable age verification solutions (which is tricky when very few age verification systems have been launched yet, and most are still in development), and installing the requisite software. All of it is going to take time, effort and money. And yet, we might only find out what’s required a couple of months before the deadline.
Sites which install age verification systems which the regulator doesn’t consider compliant will be penalised just as badly as sites which don’t bother to install AV at all – making it all the more important that this information is published in time.
The notification process, sanctions and penalties
The law has a whole section on financial penalties, and yet I had it from the DCMS in person during our meeting that there are “no plans to give the regulator the power to issue fines”. Seemingly this is because the BBFC don’t have the experience or resources to apply fines, and it doesn’t look like a second “enforcement regulator” (as was mooted during the Parliamentary debates) is going to be designated. But until the guidance has been published, we can’t know for sure. This is a massive issue for UK site owners, and official, published guidance on exactly what penalties are at stake is needed as soon as possible.
It seems that the notification process will be as follows:
- The AV regulator identifies a site as falling within their scope, and classifies it to establish that the content on it would be considered 18 or higher.
- The AV regulator assesses the AV systems in place on the site, if any.
- If the site has insufficient AV in place, or if the AV used is not considered compliant by the regulator, or the regulator notifies the site owner and gives them a deadline to comply.
- If the site owner has not complied by the deadline, the regulator may contact the site’s payment services providers (eg credit card processors) to ask them to withdraw services from the site, thereby cutting off the site’s source of income. The regulator may also contact ‘ancillary service providers’ such as server hosts, domain name registrars, and advertisers who provide income to the site owner.
- Payment and ancillary service providers are not obliged by law to fulfil the regulator’s requests – whether they do so is voluntary. (This is because many of these services will be provided by overseas companies, who are not under the legal authority of the UK age verification regulator.) However, credit card companies and billing providers have previously expressed their willingness to co-operate, as it is in many of their terms and conditions that material on the sites they provide billing for must be legal in their country of origin.
- If these measures fail, the regulator may notify any UK Internet Service Provider and require them to prevent UK internet users from accessing the non-compliant website(eg by adding the site to a block list). The ISP has a duty to fulfil this requirement which is enforceable in civil proceedings.
- Even if AV is in place, if the site contains any extreme pornographic material, the regulator may contact ISPs and require them to block the site.
With web blocking looming large as a sanction, and no information yet available about how to comply, this is a pretty worrying situation for most website owners. A lot of people are asking me what they need to do to stay within the law, and not only can I not answer those questions, no-one else can either – at least not until the regulator has been appointed and the requisite guidance has been produced.
Proportionality
The Act gives the regulator a fair amount of discretion in how it goes about enforcing age verification. For example, section 26 (1) of Part 3:
The age-verification regulator may, if it thinks fit, choose to exercise its powers […] principally in relation to persons who, in the age-verification regulator’s opinion—
(a) make pornographic material or extreme pornographic material available on the internet on a commercial basis to a large number of persons, or a large number of persons under the age of 18, in the United Kingdom; or
(b) generate a large amount of turnover by doing so.
How many websites will the AV regulator include in their scope? The BBFC only have a few staff members available to regulate online porn. In order to regulate each website, they first need to classify it to determine whether it “makes material available which would be classified as 18 or higher”. The BBFC need to analyse each site to determine not only its commercial status, but also how they would classify it before they know whether it falls under their jurisdiction or not. This is no small task.
Perhaps as a result of these limited resources, the chief executive of the BBFC, David Austin, has said that only tens of sites would be targeted:
“We would start with the top 50 and work our way through those, but we would not stop there. We would look to get new data every quarter, for example. As you say, sites will come in and out of popularity. We will keep up to date and focus on those most popular sites for children.”
Given their small taskforce, it would seem sensible for the BBFC to prioritise, and start with the sites which are demonstrably most visited by under 18s. But there’s nothing in the law to compel the AV regulator to take this proportionate approach. The previous online porn regulator, ATVOD, certainly didn’t; they seemed to disproportionately target femdom sites, particularly those owned by people critical of the organisation, regardless of how few under-18s were accessing those sites.
The Open Rights Group submitted a Freedom of Information request to see the correspondence between Mindgeek and the BBFC, which showed that Mindgeek have been putting pressure on BBFC via private emails to regulate all the four million sites on Sky’s adult content block list, and block any sites that are non-compliant by the deadline by default. It would be great for Mindgeek if every other adult site on the web were regulated, because their tube sites almost certainly will be, and they don’t want to be the only ones. Blocking the competition is an easy way to increase market dominance. Under the ATVOD regime there were noted examples of site owners reporting their competitor’s websites so that their competitor would get regulated and they wouldn’t, giving themselves a business advantage. If this kind of game-playing was permitted by the AV regulator, it would be an unjust and ineffective implementation of the law.
Mindgeek’s request sounds silly because it is. There’s no way they can co-opt the UK AV regulator to block the entire adult internet. Smaller sites which don’t rely on a known brand URL can easily change domain names and IP address to avoid detection, or setting up multiple mirrors. New sites start up every day, and catching them all is a Pokémon game the regulator can’t win.
With web blocking on the table, the stakes are high. I know first hand how damaging it is to have your business taken offline. Even after winning my appeal, the harm caused by a ten month downtime was not survivable. One of the conditions for appointing an AV regulator is that arrangements for appeals must be in place, and handled by a person “sufficiently independent of the age-verification regulator”. So that, too, needs to be pinned down before the regulator can be appointed; until then, we don’t know who will be handling appeals or how they will work.
I’m fear that we might end up in a situation where small business owners acting in good faith try to comply, but perhaps misunderstand the rules or don’t implement them in the right way – maybe simply don’t have the technical know-how to do it, or the money to afford someone to help them. Without guidance enforcing a proportionate approach, we risk these sites getting blocked; while other site owners who are being savvy and conniving get away with avoiding regulation, even if their sites are easier to find, and more accessed by under-18s.
There is a chance to prevent this. If the DCMS were to produce guidance that requires the regulator to take a proportionate response, and focus their attention on the most visited websites most accessed by under-18s in order to have the most impact, that would improve matters a lot. My meeting with the DCMS reassured me that they understand these concerns, but it’s now up to them to produce some sensible guidance.
Glossary
ATVOD – Authority for TV on Demand, previous (and somewhat disgraced) UK online porn regulator
AV – Age verification
Backlash – a campaign group defending freedom of expression for consenting adults
BBFC – British Board of Film Classification, the body responsible for classifying films for legal publication (ie rating them as 12, 15, 18, etc)
DCMS – Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, a department of the UK civil service, a bureaucratic branch of government. Previously Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
DEAct – Digital Economy Act 2017
DPA – Digital Policy Alliance, a cross-party corporate and parliamentary think tank
ISP – Internet Service Provider, the company responsible for providing services that allow people to access a given website
ORG – Open Rights Group, a digital rights campaign group
Tags. age verification, AVMS, BBFC, censorship, DCMS, Digital Economy Act, Digital Economy Bill, Digital Policy Alliance, digital rights, Mindgeek, obscenity, Ofcom, Open Rights Group, porn, porn law
|
|
