{"id":2487,"date":"2019-04-21T08:35:34","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T07:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spanking-news.com\/?p=2487"},"modified":"2019-04-21T08:56:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T07:56:30","slug":"age-verification-wont-block-porn-but-it-will-spell-the-end-of-ethical-porn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.spanking-news.com\/?p=2487","title":{"rendered":"Age verification won\u2019t block porn. But it will spell the end of ethical porn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thanks to Girl On The Net<\/a> we hope she wont mind us sharing this <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thanks to THE GUARDIAN<\/a> The best British News Paper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Porn is not illegal. Please write this down on a sticky note and put it on your fridge at some point before 15 July this year, when the <\/strong>UK government will begin blocking porn sites<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> It\u2019s important to remember that porn is not illegal, because although the aim of the new law on age verification is to prevent under-18s from accessing adult content, the actual effect will be far broader than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online\npornography age checks to be mandatory in UK from 15 July<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UK\ngovernment is concerned about youngsters accidentally seeing porn, so for a\nlong time it\u2019s been exploring how to implement robust age verification checks.\nNot just a tick-box to say \u201cI am over 18\u201d (which, let\u2019s face it, doesn\u2019t work)\nbut forcing adults to prove<\/em> they are adults. In practical terms this\nmeans that you\u2019ll either have to type in identifying details to prove your age\n(credit card number, drivers\u2019 licence, passport) or visit a shop and show them\nyour ID to purchase a one-off \u201cporn pass\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not keen on having to register personal details to watch porn?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re not alone. There are huge privacy concerns \u2013 not only\ndoes it encourage users to be freer with this sensitive data, any database that\ncollects this info will be a tempting target for hackers. Just last week a hacker\nwas jailed for six years<\/a> for blackmailing porn site users, and\norganisations such as the Open Rights Group have already sounded alarm bells\nabout the huge\nproblems with the way AV will be implemented<\/a>. It turns out the government\nis perfectly capable of highlighting these problems without their help, though:\nthe Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in an act that looked\nlike deliberate self-parody, announced the new date in an email that it sent to\nhundreds of journalists<\/a> \u2026 exposing all their email addresses because it\nforgot to use the bcc: feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will be many who think a porn block sounds like a\ngreat idea. After all, isn\u2019t porn abusive and misogynistic anyway? Those who\nadvance this argument usually have Pornhub in mind, so I\u2019m sorry to break it to\nyou but even after the ban, tube sites are going nowhere. MindGeek \u2013 which owns\nmany sites including Pornhub \u2013 will be offering its own solution, AgeID, for\npeople to verify their age, and for other porn sites to verify their users too.\nThe sites that will suffer most under this law are the ones that can\u2019t afford\nto implement age verification measures and will therefore be blocked: independent\nporn sites, often ethical producers who are going it alone because they want to\noffer something different from mainstream sites. When these sites die, the only\noptions left will be those that could<\/em> afford to implement age\nverification \u2013 so hand over your data to the big boys, cough up for a \u201cporn\npass\u201d, download a VPN or head to the dark web. If you do the latter, welcome to\na world where you can also access actually<\/em> illegal content such as child\nabuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above sites might be easy to\ncategorise, but the same is not true of all erotic content. Hilariously, the\ngovernment had to exempt sites such as Twitter (there\u2019s loads of porn on\nTwitter!) from its ban, but other sites that want to remain compliant must\nnavigate murky and confusing rules. I write porn (although let\u2019s call it\nerotica \u2013 nudge nudge, wink wink!) and I also record audio porn<\/a> for people with\nvisual impairments. Audio is explicitly included under the new law, while text\nis not. So does this mean my work is \u201cporn\u201d if it\u2019s read aloud, but \u201cnot porn\u201d\nif it\u2019s just text? There\u2019s also a rule about whether \u201cmore\nthan a third<\/a>\u201d of the content on your site is porn, so perhaps we\u2019ll start\nseeing a proliferation of porn sites that offer news, analysis and amateur\ndramatics alongside sexy videos. Perhaps we\u2019ll see fewer people watching porn\nat all, because they are understandably afraid to register. Maybe we\u2019ll see\nmore people accessing illegal<\/em> content via the dark web, because that\u2019s where they had to go\nin order to circumvent the government\u2019s porn ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The age verification law won\u2019t just harm people like me, who use the internet as an outlet for sexual expression and a means of making a living \u2013 it will harm people like <\/strong>you<\/strong><\/em>, who enjoy sexual content. <\/strong>The government can only succeed in doing this if we accept their premise that sexual content is shameful, so it\u2019s important for us to remind them it\u2019s not. Write it on a sticky note: porn is not illegal. Humans have sex. We masturbate. Providing it is consensual, it is legal. And it\u2019s not something to be ashamed of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Girl on the Net<\/a> is a sex blogger, feminist and big fan of ethical porn Taken from the best British Newspaper The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All STRAND WEBSITES are offering sound advice on the use of VPN’s which from a user point of view will be far sager than subscribing to one of the governments age verification systems. All your details will be private, no one will be able to see which sites you visit, no one is going to have information to hack into and use for comercial gain. Take a look at <\/strong>our info page here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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