Adult site age verification proposals - will they do more damage than they seek to prevent?

We live in a connected age - where Data is king

How will the proposed Age Verification of Adult content sites be workable?

Is it just a means of prurient intrusion and meddling,

when more pressing issues relating to private citizen's safety exist?

The proposal to introduce age verification is unlikely to be workable and should be rethought.

How will this sit with the British adult entertainment industry for example?

Is verification just the prudish whimsy of puritans with too much time on their hands?

The world has changed markedly since Lady Chatterley's lover was made legal to buy back in the 1960's. So should the age when people can observe certain content be lowered to reflect how society has moved on?

If we propose to give the right to vote at 16, should we then lower the age one can see 'adult content' too?

Political views you can vote for then, at a lowered age of 16 could have very far reaching effects, perhaps 'beyond the ken' of the young voter. If you are effectively going to bestow this level of maturity on young adults, what else are you going to change?

The proposal to introduce effectively censorship of 'adult content' sites by instituting an age verification system, will not prevent those from under 18 from seeing 'adult content.'

Back in the 1980's, WH Smiths still used to have the 'Top shelf' magazines of what we would consider today to be 'tame' publications, which were judged to be pornographic then, and only for sale to those over 18. Nowadays you can see far more explicit material on television than was in those publications.

In our day back in the 80's, the savvy U18's would just wait for the mags to be put in the bins behind the shop and pick their own out and then lend them around their mates. This shows how the 'system' did not work. None of us turned into sex maniacs as a result of our curiosity or what we saw.

Conversely, if you worked in a news agents doing a paper round you could often sneak one of these mags into your bag and view it later. Another example of how getting round the 'system' was done.

Indeed, some of these 'Top shelf' magazines beyond the 'attractive' visual content, contained interesting articles not concerned with sex, which discussed subjects about humans, humanity and our future, business, the environment for example, often written by top journalists of the day.

Fast forward about 30 or more years and the current U18 Millennials generation are far more technically savvy typically than those over 18.

They will simply, if they want to see this content, get around the verification which only applies to UK sites. They can get around parental controls, just as a 'for instance'.

What about social media sites? Adult material can be posted there. With so many posts a day on these sites, the industry cannot really monitor it.

How does this verification sit with sites like Amazon or Ebay? Could you get a debit card at well under 18 and buy things on that site without any verification checks?

Certainly you can buy 'mainstream' 18 videos and 'adult toys' on mainstream e-commerce platforms and certainly those videos made in Europe leave nothing to the imagination. You only have to check out the titles and click on the descriptions to see what they purvey.

Some European countries have videos rated at U18 which in other countries would be R18, so how does this work when a video can then be legally purchased in this situation because the verification for one country is more relaxed than another and the video is not reclassified for sale in the UK and is supplied from Europe, not the UK? The system falls down.

So, are these big retail sites going to be subject to this sort of verification, regardless of what you purchase on them, just to get on to them to do your on-line shopping? Would you then have to get age verification just to go on Amazon and buy a packet of pencils?

What would happen is that the parents would allow the use of their accounts to get around the bureacuracy, which potentially could lead to circumvention of the process and if they did not check what was purchased, the system then ultimately fails.

And below is another example of where verification falls down.

A male and female aged 16 can legally have sex, but they can't legally buy a video depicting sex if that video is rated '18'. That video for example, may not contain anything as explicit as what they do with each other, perhaps.

At this age, they can't legally drive either. Or buy alcoholic beverages. But they can have sex and / or get married, with parental consent.

'Verification' has potential dangers attached.

We have seen numerous examples of companies whose websites have been either hacked or had data stolen and sold on by employees to criminals and moreover, often sold on many times after.

The consequences of data theft these days, is certainly a very serious matter.

Data is valuable.

Data about people's viewing habits, interests and sites visited is gold.

Verification by its very nature will record everything.

This could have very damaging consequences.

If data is stolen, especially if you are a celebrity, a well-known public figure or have a prestigious and important job, you could be wide open to extortion, this may lead some to suicide, rather than be exposed and their shame coming to light in the media.

The obvious place this is leading to, is that the person with the 'right' data can use it illegally to maliciously and ruinously destroy people and also sell it on many times, causing likely more damage than if the situation was left alone and verification was not sought and this data not gathered.

So, what is in it for the authorities?

Money perhaps?

Verification will most likely not be free.

Now, we were assured in recent years that private data would not be interfered with, except when national security was involved and rightly so.

So what is to prevent 'verification data' about what sites you visit not being scrutinised later and kept and possibly used against you as inference of the person knowing what things interest you?

How can we trust the verification sites not to start data mining this 'gold' that they will be in possession of?

Most top E-commerce sites use behavioural algorithms to 'suggest' content you may be interested in.

So what happens on a shared computer, where a 'verified' adult uses it to visit adult sites and suggestions later pop up to visit similar adult content sites when the computer is being used by someone else, someone who may not be 18 or could be an older relative, or someone prudish, or a religious person whose beliefs do not accept the adult material being offered as 'acceptable' - you can see how this could happen?

To be honest, individuals as I see it will have no control over the 'guardians' of data or the data that they generate.

Individuals, like the 'bin divers of yore', will simply find ways to legally circumvent the process.

In conclusion, I am not advocating abandoning or lowering the age when people can see adult material, but, it is patently obvious that 'verification' is not the way forward and could create more problems than it would solve.