As of January, fresh requirements for pornographic services available in the United Kingdom under the fresh Online Safety Act of 2023 come into force. Will the pornographic lobby prove stronger than the British legislature? It seems fortunately not.
The debate on the request to block access to net pornography for children and young people has been in Britain for many years. The British wanted to set an example to the planet and were the first to introduce a actual age verification on pages with specified content. It failed as the 2017 Digital Economy Act, which was to impose specified verification on pornographic sites, was never applied in this respect. In the meantime, another countries have dealt with the subject.
Since January, however, fresh requirements for pornographic services available in the United Kingdom have come into force – now under the fresh Online Safety Act of 2023. Will the pornographic lobby prove stronger than the British legislature? It seems fortunately not.
There were besides announcements in Poland of changes in the law for the better, which for unknown reasons failed for nothing. present the minister of household and social policy in the government of Prime Minister Morawiecki speaks openly about the reasons for this. Marlena Maląg admitted that "unfortunately the influences of various environments have caused this bill to be blocked".
However, there is now a fresh opportunity: at the minute there is simply a collection of signatures under the civilian draft law on the protection of minors from pornographic content on the Internet. They will be collected by mid-December, as the deadline for submitting at least 100,000 signatures to the Sejm on 23 December. According to representatives of the civilian committee, supporting this initiative is the best gift for Polish children and teenagers they can get for Christmas.
The NASK survey published in 2022 shows that as many as a 4th of Polish teenagers are dependent on viewing specified content, and many technological studies show how destructive it can be for the improvement of young people to depend on pornography. Researchers frequently compare them to hard drugs, hence the slogan “Stop Pornography Drugs” utilized to collect signatures in Poland (details and collection cards are available on the website Stop Narcotics Pornography.pl).
Shocking statistic of watching pornography in children and teenagers
It's no different in Britain. Reports published in January and May by the Commissioner for Children's Affairs Rachel de Souza show that the average age of the British child's first contact with pornography is 13 years (in Poland it is little than 11 years). As many as 27% of British children see pornography for the first time at 11 and 10% at 9. “Young people have talked about the unbearable force to watch acute pornography, even if they do not want it, where humiliating acts and force against women are frequently presented,” wrote Rachel de Souza in the report.
A teen survey conducted for the intent of this study revealed that nearly half (48%) of the boys who were questioned had deliberately watched pornography twice or more in the 2 weeks preceding the study, compared to 31% of the girls. 1 5th of the boys (21%) deliberately watched online pornography all day or more frequently during these 2 weeks, compared to 7% of the girls. From the above-mentioned NASK study published in 2022, unfortunately, we know that in Poland the statistic look similar.
In order to tackle this phenomenon, the British legislator has just taken into account the request to introduce mandatory age verification before accessing websites containing pornographic content in the Online safety Act adopted in 2023.
The public consultation on guidelines published in December by the Media Surveillance Office of Ofcom will proceed until 9 January 2025, so we do not yet know the final requirements to be imposed on pornographic services. However, we know that from July 2025 all specified services will gotta have effective age verification mechanisms already implemented. To those services that do not comply with Ofcom requirements or for which the Office considers that the age verification mechanisms they have introduced do not meet the criteria of effectiveness and opposition to fraud, access to the UK as a full will be threatened. In addition, the owners of these websites will be subject to financial penalties of up to 10% of their yearly revenues worldwide and will be prohibited from carrying out any economical activity in the UK.
Unless we know the final version of the requirements that will be set by Ofcom, we know their first version and we know that the requirements will evolve as technology develops. We besides know that Ofcom's requirements are rather akin to those published in October this year by its French counterpart, Arcom, under the French Act of May 2024, which protects and regulates digital space. And so, Ofcom sets out in its first guidelines, as examples of methods which he will be able to consider effective, the usage of bank information, photograph evidence (with user authentication in front of the computer), credit cards (with the exclusion of cards that minors may besides own), electronic wallets, information about the removal of the age filter by the mobile telephone operator (which is only possible for adult users) and an assessment of the face age of the individual standing in front of the computer (via automated systems utilizing artificial intelligence). In order to guarantee a reliable verification of age, Ofcom gives an example of facial designation with a margin of mistake +/- 7 years, where for those with a maximum age of 25 years the strategy needs a second proof of age, e.g. by means of a photograph document.
Any tips provided on the website with pornographic content, and facilitating the omission of the age verification process, will consequence in Ofcom uncovering specified a service to be a breach of the Online safety Act, imposing a punishment on it and ordering British net providers to block it.
It is besides worth noting that, as in France, data safety and privacy protection of users are an integral part of the requirements published by the supervisory authorities, in accordance with the laws adopted. This means, among another things, that queries sent to banks or mobile operators, for example, cannot uncover what the enquiry concerns. Data cannot be collected and age verification should be carried out at each fresh entry to a peculiar website with pornographic content.
As far as Europe is concerned, a akin law as in the UK was adopted not only in France but besides in Italy (in 2023), where Agcom's media surveillance office published akin guidelines in September, giving pornographic services six months to implement mechanisms for effective age verification. On the another side of the Atlantic, the work to effectively verify the age already exists in a twelve states of the United States, and others are going to do the same. In neighboring Canada, lively discussions are taking place. In Australia a bill was adopted in November this year prohibiting the usage of social media by children under 16, which will besides force owners of specified platforms to introduce age verification mechanisms. As regards pornography, under the Australian Online safety Act 2021, the age verification work enters into force next year, as in the British case.
Will Poland be next? This is what Polish citizens can decide by signing a civilian draft law on the protection of minors from pornographic content on the Internet, utilizing cards for the collection of signatures available on the halt Narcotics website Pornography.pl.
The more signatures, the more emphasis will be on Polish politicians, so that this time they will not succumb to the “impacts of different environments”, which Minister Maląg says. Public opinion polls show that as many as 90% of Polish citizens sign on the request to block access to online pornography for children. Time to act, then!
