The U.K. government is trying to implement age-verification for online porn providers—but a pair of activists are fighting the measure.
Obscenity lawyer Myles Jackman and feminist pornographer Pandora Blake initiated a resistance campaign called ResistAV: Legal Challenge that’s currently raising funds on CrowdJustice, the Register reports. They believe that in the proposed law’s current form, an age-verification measure could compromise user privacy by enabling porn website users’ personal data to be collected, open to hacking, or sold to third-parties.
The age-verification system would be different than what web users may experience currently. They would not just have to confirm their date of birth but verify it. The U.K. government isn’t providing the software to do this check but rather relying on third-parties, which is the major concerning point for privacy and porn advocates.
The age-verification law is intended to help kids from coming across inappropriate sexual content online, but Jackman and Blake argue that the law doesn’t currently specify how limit age-verification software stores that data or exactly what information users will have to provide. This could potentially lead to data misuse or data breaches if personal identifiers are collected, stored improperly, or sold.
“Without specific privacy controls embedded in the legislation, there is a very real risk of U.K. adults’ porn habits being outed. The government’s ill-conceived age-verification regime puts up to 25 million U.K. adults at risk,” the campaigners told the Register.
The duo is requesting approximately $13,000 to cover legal fees to challenge the new measure, which was initially supposed to go live earlier this year. The launch date was pushed back, however, when a regulator overseeing the law hadn’t yet issued its guidance. Now the measure is expected to go live later this year, which gives Jackman and Blake more time to campaign against it.
H/T the Register
