20-25 Million UK Adults Risk Their Porn Habits Being Leaked Publicly

Derek Jarman’s notorious 1976 film ‘Sebastiane’ not only featured dialogue exclusively in Latin, it was also reportedly the first movie certified by the British Board of Film Censors (as they were then) to depict an erection. According to fellow British film-maker Alex Cox, Jarman claimed they "hid" the erection in question in order to smuggle it past the Censors; a claim which Cox states the former BBFC chief censor James Ferman completely refuted.

Forty years later and the British Board of Film Classification (as they are now, having replaced the totalitarian sounding ‘censorship’ with the more family friendly phrase ‘classification’) may face the more labour intensive erection inspection of ensuring that all commercial internet pornography consumed in the UK after April 2018 complies with the age verification requirements of the Digital Economy Act 2017.

This is because the DEAct prohibits “a person making pornographic material available on the internet” to anyone in the UK “on a commercial basis” unless that pornographic material is rendered inaccessible to children under the age of 18 by virtue of age verification software. The regulator will have the power to give notice to UK based Internet Service Providers “to prevent access to the ‘offending’ materials” by blocking material from appearing over those UK ISP’s. In free speech terms the groundwork for Hadrian’s Firewall has already been set in law.

Whilst the DEAct has now passed through Parliament, the age-verification regulator has yet to be designated (the BBFC are merely presumed to be the “regulator in waiting”) and the Act completely fails to address the users of age verification’s own privacy or data security. To put this in perspective, MindGeek (who reportedly own approximately 90% of the free adult “tube” sites on the internet such as PornHub) anticipate that twenty to twenty five million adults in the UK will sign up to MindGeek’s own age verification software “within the first month”.

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BACKLASH PRESS RELEASE: Embargoed to 12.01am Tuesday 4th October 2016

BACKLASH KINK OLYMPIXXX - CHANGING THE RULES FOR ADULT GAMES

SEXUAL LIBERTY CAMPAIGN CALLS FOR JOINT COMMITTEE ON SEX LAWS

BEGINS:

The feminist pornographer Pandora Blake and obscenity lawyer Myles Jackman have united civil liberties campaigners including the Open Rights Group and NO2ID in a protest against the risk posed to personal privacy and sexual freedom by the Digital Economy Bill currently before Parliament.

The Backlash Kink Olympixxx will feature surreal and satirical games including Fisting Volleyball, a Spanking Relay Race and Squirting Waterfight in a playful parody of the sexual acts that are legal to perform in real life, but illegal to represent, possess or publish under UK sex laws.

The Kink Olympixxx will be held outside Parliament between 12-2pm on Monday the 17th October 2016. There will be speeches from the organisers and civil liberties organisations including Backlash and the English Collective of Prostitutes.

Read more: BACKLASH KINK OLYMPIXXX - CHANGING THE RULES FOR ADULT GAMES

Written evidence submitted by Myles Jackman and Pandora Blake (DEB 61)

Who we are

1 This evidence is submitted jointly by Myles Jackman and Pandora Blake. Myles Jackman is a solicitor specialising in obscenity law, who obtained Not Guilty verdicts in two landmark obscenity trials in 2012, R v Walsh and R v Peacock. The same year, he was awarded the Law Society’s Junior Lawyer of the Year Excellence Award. Pandora Blake is an independent scholar and multi award-winning feminist pornographer, whose ethical porn site was unsuccessfully censored in 2015 by ATVOD under the AVMS Regulations 2014, and reinstated in 2016 after a successful appeal to Ofcom. Both have significant concerns around the impact of obscenity law on sexual minorities, and are active campaigners for civil liberties and sexual freedom.

Executive Summary

2 We have serious concerns about the impact of the age verification policy outlined in the Digital Economy Bill, regarding: the potential for loss of personal privacy; credit card fraud and identity theft; increased state surveillance; misuse of data by private companies; embarrassing data leaks; adults prevented from viewing legal materials; and serious and significant infringement of freedom of expression. We argue that this policy is unnecessary, disproportionate, unworkable, and unintentionally risks vesting more harm rather than good for the following reasons:

Read more: Written Evidence Submission to Digital Economy Bill Committee

Age Verification for Online Pornography and Privacy

Compulsory age verification poses serious privacy concerns that are not addressed within the Bill. Commercial pornographic websites may collect the exact identity details of their users, creating clear commercial opportunities for themselves.

Data collection creates inherent risks of data breaches and the lack of safeguards within the Bill creates opportunities for 'Ashley Madison' style data leaks revealing personal sexual preferences; since privacy protections are entirely absent from the Bill.

Amateur and smaller commercial websites will be unduly burdened by the Bill. Imposing the cost of age verification on them will make their existence as free and commercial entities untenable. This may also adversely affect sexual minorities by denying them the means to freely express their sexuality.

Read more: Age Verification for Online Pornography and Privacy