UK’s Age Verification Requirement ‘Delay’ Becomes Permanent

If you’ve followed the news about the United Kingdom’s plan to require adult websites to institute age-verification protocols, then you know the launch date for those requirements has been subject to several delays, the most recent of which pushed back the launch date from July to approximately six months later.

Evidently, sometime between announcing that six-month delay in July and this week, the UK government had second thoughts about implementing the age verification requirement at all. In a statement issued today, Secretary of State for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Nicky Morgan said 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.”

Despite the decision to scrap age verification requirement, Morgan said in her statement that 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,” Morgan added. “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.”

Morgan said the UK government also is 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,” Morgan added.

Morgan also averred that her department will “continue to engage with members of Parliament on the provisions of the online harms regime to ensure the most comprehensive online harms proposals which deliver on the objectives of the Digital Economy Act.”

The decision to drop the age verification requirement for adult sites likely won’t go over so well with the companies that have worked to create systems which could comply with the UK government’s stated aims and goals for such systems – but it’s music to the ears of critics who said the age verification systems could be privacy nightmares just waiting to happen.

“Age verification for porn as currently legislated would cause huge privacy problems if it went ahead,” Open Rights Group Executive Director Jim Killock told the BBC. “We are glad the government has stepped back from creating a privacy disaster, that would lead to blackmail scams and individuals being outed for the sexual preferences.”

Killock also speculated that this might not be the last – or the worst – we hear from the UK government with respect to how it intends to go about protecting children online.

“It is still unclear what the government does intend to do, so we will remain vigilant to ensure that new proposals are not just as bad, or worse,” Killock said.