Use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs)
VPNs provide a simple, cheap (often free) way of masking which country / state a user is accessing a website from. Detecting and blocking the use of VPNs is something that is achieved by websites such as Netflix but this process requires constant updating of VPN connections as they are detected.
But….None of the current legislation requires VPN detection.!
Children widely use VPNs (VPN providers advertise to under 18s and even very young children on platforms such as TikTok and You Tube) . Their current use is predominately to access content that is not available in their own country, but this can and will be quickly used to access online porn. Children are tech savvy, when one 12 year old (or even younger) discovers this simple work around, the others will quickly learn and follow.
For an example of a VPN advert targeting children click here.
Passing the requirement to porn companies to enforce Age Verification potentially has significant negative consequences. If a porn company, or an Age Verification company associated with the porn company, undertakes Age Verification there is the possibility that they could then track the user’s sexual preferences on their website. If this happens, it would be a massive intrusion of privacy that could lead to bribery and extortion.
Inability to Enforce the Law
In every case, the government’s only enforcement mechanism against non-compliant companies is to pursue them through the courts and impose heavy fines. While this may have some effect on large, well-known platforms with identifiable corporate structures and headquarters, attempting to prosecute smaller porn sites based in jurisdictions like Russia is utterly unworkable — and frankly, farcical.
Each legal process will take time (months or years maybe?) and even when a case is successful, the company can simply move their content to a different legal entity and a new URL and carry on as normal.
Enforcing age verification on a company-by-company basis is impossible and risks riving larger, more accountable porn platforms out of operation. In their place, thousands of unregulated and anonymous sites will proliferate. Totally unregulated content distribution will prove even more harmful and potentially cause much greater damage to our children.
To prevent the spread of unauthorised intimate images a tool called StopNCII.org can be used to generate a unique “hash” (a digital fingerprint) for the image or video. This “hash” is then provided to participating websites to detect and block the content.
By the governments handing control of access to porn to what will end up being small, agile, impossible to legislate against companies, proliferation of unauthorised images will once again be unpreventable.
