Last Tuesday the Government approved a roadmap to end minors’ access to Internet porn pages, something that, until now, no country that has tried has achieved. No one has found a system that does not come face to face with the main obstacles: not compromising the privacy of users who consume this type of content and technical complexity. On the other hand, the most drastic solution, censoring these types of pages – blocking their access for all its citizens – would put European democracies on a par with China, a risk that no one is willing to take. It would also be a bad solution, since anyone with a VPN installed on their device, pretending to be connecting from a country where access to online pornography is not prohibited, could bypass that censorship. In fact, any age verification system that is implemented must consider this possibility to be 100% effective.
Another problem is that all the initiatives that have been proposed do not take into account pornographic content generated by the users themselves on, for example, social networks. For this reason, the solution presented in Spain is not only valid for porn websites, but also to prevent young children from entering social networks, whose minimum age is set at 14 years.
The first declarations of intention by the British Government to force porn sites to verify the age of their users date back to 2015. A system was then proposed that would involve, with the help of internet providers, purchasing an age verification document. at a kiosk or with the help of banks using credit cards, which was already used to control access to betting houses. Finally, in October 2019, the British Secretary of Culture, Nicky Morgan, announced that this idea was being abandoned due to technical difficulties – the chosen system was easily salvageable – and criticism from online privacy defenders.
In February 2022, the Minister of Culture announced a new attempt and at the end of 2023 the Online Safety Law was approved, which includes the obligation for porn sites to verify the age of their users, something that the Spanish model also does, under the threat of economic sanctions of up to 10% of its global turnover. At the same time, the independent telecommunications regulator of the United Kingdom, Ofcom, launched up to six different methods for this purpose. Among them, again, resorting to banking entities, mobile networks and the use of credit cards, which in the United Kingdom only those over 18 years of age can have, always with the consent of the Internet user. Others are more controversial and involve asking for identification through a recent photograph or the use of facial recognition systems that determine your age.
In November 2019, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, gave pornography portals six months to implement a robust, default parental control system to prevent children from accessing their content. Otherwise, he said, he would be forced to legislate on the matter. And that’s what happened.
In February 2023, the French Government announced a system similar to the Spanish one. Since September of that same year, to access porn content online it would be necessary to download a mobile application that would contain a digital certificate in which the age of majority would be verified. When the user wanted to enter a porn page, they would be asked for a password, just as happens when performing banking operations.
In October 2023, the National Assembly was still processing the law to secure the digital space, which was finally approved on the 17th of that month. This law gives Arcom, the French telecommunications regulator, the power to block sites that do not verify age without judicial proceedings. In addition, it commissions this institution to prepare a “technical reference”, a concrete solution that allows the age of Internet users to be verified and protects personal data, about which nothing is yet known.
Also in September 2023, it announced that it intended to promote measures to prevent minors’ access to porn. Since November 21, all SIM cards in the name of a minor have parental controls applied to them that restrict access to porn websites, gambling websites and those that show violent content. The problem is that there are many minors who use a card in their parents’ name.