reason.com Wrote:"People generally are fearful of entering in any personal data to access adult content," Steve Winyard, of the blockchain payment platform AVSecure, told a "State of the Industry" panel. That's why platforms like his are built on a blockchain, so individual data is kept private.

"AVSecure's blockchain solution acts as a repository of encrypted tokens that represent age-verified consumers," explains AVN.

In any event, platforms would not be wise to ignore it, suggested Harmik Gharapetian, vice president of sales and marketing at payment-solutions company Epoch. "You are going to lose your traffic from the UK if you don't have a solution."

Quote:However, the tool will be effective only for those who go directly to porn sites rather than use search engines or follow social media hashtags that include pornographic content.

Engadet Wrote:If there isn't a major viable alternative, one porn distributor may effectively determine how everyone else checks ages. And it's not clear what constitutes an "independent" studio. Is there a fixed metric, or will Mindgeek use subjective criteria? While there's no immediate indication that it intends to abuse its first-mover advantage (it could have charged everyone), there's a lingering concern that it may have the power to decide which porn sites succeed -- and that the government may have trusted too much of its regulatory power to a private firm.

Pandora Blake Wrote:Several times during the debates people said things like "It's high time porn producers, who profit from making adult material available, start taking responsibility for keeping children safe". It seems to me that the fact it will cost us money is very much part of the point - punishing us for distributing naughty content in the first place.

Alan Wrote:Could you explain a bit more about what you mean by "I can't keep my site open in the UK", Pandora? Does "open in the UK" mean operating in this country or available to UK customers?

Pandora Blake Wrote:The latter - in order to distribute content that is 18, R18 or higher to UK customers, I'll need to install age verification software, and at the moment there isn't a solution which I can afford (and which I trust to not misuse the data of my site visitors). So my plan is to put up a worksafe version of the site explaining what's happened, and redirect UK visitors to that. Of course if you were using a VPN, no-one would be able to tell which country you were visiting from.

Quote:The Strategy also reflects the Government’s ambition to make the internet safer for children by requiring age verification for access to commercial pornographic websites in the UK. In February, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) was formally designated as the age verification regulator.

Our priority is to make the internet safer for children and we believe this is best achieved by taking time to get the implementation of the policy right. We will therefore allow time for the BBFC as regulator to undertake a public consultation on its draft guidance which will be launched later this month.

For the public and the industry to prepare for and comply with age verification, the Government will also ensure a period of up to three months after the BBFC guidance has been cleared by Parliament before the law comes into force. It is anticipated age verification will be enforceable by the end of the year.