The full accepted article reads: "Disseminating pornographic content online without putting in place robust and effective age verification tools to effectively prevent children from accessing pornographic content online shall be punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 1 year."
It's not law yet, as the first reading is now sent back to the Council of the European Union, but I don't think it's very likely it will get a second reading.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-10-2025-011...
It seems worded poorly if you think of it as if the phrase was from a criminal law and not a law mandating and setting parameters for criminal laws.
At least that's how I read it, but it's confusing.
Oh look, now you've got me doing it to you. Drat.
That said, I think requiring ID is generally a bad idea regardless. Much better would be some standardized way for websites to tag the type of content in a header coupled with third party filtering solutions that could be applied at the network (ie firewall) or device level.
(In practice, sections 80 and 81 in the Online Safety Act carve out exemptions for “search” and “user-to-user” sites. For the former, presumably the exemption is because the actual porn is served from machines other than Google’s.)
Unfortunately we have among sex and other things still the mentality of 1900, except that today most 18 year old already lost their virginity, and he can't watch porn? Well...
I definitely would prefer my children to watch porn than get bullied - or worse - on social media.
There's also the fact that I vaguely trust Facebook or Reddit to do a credit card-based age check or whatever. No way I'm giving any of my details to porn sites.
Stupid dumb law.
> Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the intentional conduct referred to in paragraphs 2 to 8 is punishable.
(Emphasis being the change.)
So they only mean the intentional act of putting up pornography without age verification? Just feign forgetfulness, I guess. How is a negative act an intentional one? Or moreover; how do you prove it? I know neglect and gross neglect are things, so I assume they mean if you don't do it after being asked to.
PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...
ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
What seem to lack is the will power to use them. Or after seeing in the linked site:
*EU politicians exempt themselves from this surveillance under "professional secrecy" rules. They get privacy. You and your family do not. Demand fairness.
rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA
RTA stands for "restricted to adults". So the large websites, ie the entities that would actually be bound by any proposed legislation, are already proactively facilitating network operators and parents filtering them out. And apparently have been all along. Wild.
Foreign websites will be solved the great EU firewall that will inevitably come "to protect the rule of law" once these legislations are passed.
That's disingenuous and false. It's pretty common knowledge that pornography is not representative of real relationships, and because it's not actually emotionally satisfying, it takes regular consumers down a rabbit hole of increasingly extreme, vile and obscure content. Take a guess what that does to a developing teenager, essentially being educated by pornography. Not to say that it's not harmful to adults too, because it is.
But yes, government control, censorship and centralization of the internet is not the solution. Mandatory ID checks will not protect any kids, it will destroy the free and open internet.
That's not common knowledge or true. Most of the population watches porn. Where's the harm?
> pornography is not representative of real relationships
No shit. Next you'll be telling me that Batman isn't representative of real billionaires.
What happens over and over only reinforces they idea that they really want "everyone, empty your pockets and show your papers, NOW!" laws and just hide it with "it's the only way, trust us; for the children!". A pretty telling proof is they want to be exempt.
Speaking of which, the EU is also working on a "free speech" law for journalists and against them being arbitrarily banned by platforms. One would think this law could easily be extended to everyone since it is not at all trivial to determine who gets these benefits and who doesn't.
Most outlets today are some form of court reporter in one way or another. That trust in media is sinking is quite expected and in many cases reasonable too.
This effect can be clearly seen in that pornography websites promote this extreme, vile and obscure content, such as incest, exhibitionism, and even depictions of non-consensual interaction and physical abuse.[2] Obviously, these matters have no place in a healthy relationship, and it's pretty basic psychology that regular consumption of this content causes the normalization of such practices, especially in impressionable teenagers whom do not yet have legitimate experience in healthy, normal relationships.
A majority of adults watches pornography.[3] And we're dealing with a massive loneliness epidemic under younger generations, together with a significant rise in "hook-up culture" over forming serious relationships. Coincidence?
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5039517/
[2] Just go to one of those websites. I'm not going to do that, neither am I going to link to that here.
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1402222/us-adults-pornog...
I think there are good arguments for claiming porn is more harmful than actual sex at that age, or at least some types or porn.
I agree that if the aim of the legislation was really to stop kids watching porn it would be better served by making it mandatory for ISPs to provide filtered connections for households with minors and filtered SIM cards for minors.
I think people at Experian should have gone to jail, for example, for their incompetence and negligence in regards data breaches.
We will protect your sensitive personal documents so that only trusted government institutions and ones held to the highest standards of privacy (such as banks) may have access to it. This is to prevent abuse and identity theft.
Also please upload them to BigBootyXXX.com if you want to have a wank
Or, put another way:
if(maxTerm >= 1) {
// law implementation OK!
}[2] makes the big logic jump of assuming that someone who watches kinky porn fails to separate between fantasy and reality. It is the same line of reasoning as the disproven "videogames cause violence" paradigm and it is pushed by the same sort of people (personal hypothesis: they might be projecting). This could ironically point to a problem limited to at least some individuals failing to differentiate the two, but studies find that at the population level, a higher availability of porn correlates with lower rates of sexual assault. My personal reading is that it provides a safe outlet for sexual frustration and moderate desensitization reduces the chance that someone will, so to speak, get aroused over an exposed ankle.
On [3]... you're linking to a single data point, not a series nor a correlation; additionally, even if the correlation actually existed held, people's propension to form stable relationships is a preference, not a harm. It is also not related to minors, and it is not something that the state has any business sanctioning, much less with incarceration.
Where I'm from, it's a pretty common saying that sex is for prestige and a wank is for joy. Of course, a relationship doesn't primarily consist of your stepsister getting stuck in the dryer, running a 10-man train on your loved one, or whatever else. Even kids aren't that stupid.
It can lead to issues with your thing not being attracted to people you don't find attractive, since you're not desperate, but the opposite is, in my opinion, worse. Many good men and women have fallen for dogshit relationships with mediocre sex out of fear of no sex(ual outlet).
They did not state that porn is not harmful.
> I don't think anyone has demonstrated any actual harms from porn
Why should they need to reference a study to show the veracity of that statement?
!!!
Where are you from?
I have no hesitation saying that the newspaper that pushed it doesn’t give a single damn about the kids - they have a serious hatred of Meta in particular but also Google. The whole thing was concern trolling because they were angry that they are going to get cut off from the last shakedown they lobbied for (called the media bargaining code).
Also banks were one of the most vulnerable. I’ve often wondered why. My first reaction is "because their code comes from coders who only want to work at a bank," but I don’t want to be unfair. Perhaps it’s "from people comfortable with lots of bureaucracy". Either way, when I was a pentester, banks were one of our main types of clients, and their code was often bad. So it’s doubly ironic to claim banks are exemplars of how to do privacy.
Why? Porn in magazine or movie form used to be age-restricted. Assume for a moment that was the correct, or at least a reasonable and permissible policy.
Why should it suddenly not be the appropriate policy, only because it's on the internet? Why do you say that laws do not or should not apply when you sprinkle a bit of "internet" over it?
It reminds me of the crypto-bro argument that, don't know, money laundering and tax evasion and offering securities without appropriate disclosure is illegal and tightly regulated, but if you do it with "blockchain", then it is perfectly fine. What sort of mindset is that?
Without thinking about it too deeply, that does sound reasonable. Was that ever discussed? Why was it not, or was rejected?
>except that today most 18 year old already lost their virginity, True when we were kids. But bizarrely less true today.
You can't play whack a mole with the internet. People will always find a way to move smut or whatever on the internet. It takes no time at all to spin up more and more sites, and there's a million ways around them (vpns, etc).
All it does it just push people to more and more fringe sites, when moderation is likely to be lax and the content more extreme. Ideally it wouldn't be viewed at all, but it's just how the internet is.
It also sets a terrible precedent for censorship- in the UK, we've already seen, on Reddit for example, subreddits dedicated to quitting addictions being age gated, and it'll only get worse.
There is age verification that preserves privacy.
We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas?
"The European Commission is developing a harmonized, EU-wide approach to age verification, accompanied by a comprehensive age verification blueprint that is intended to facilitate practical adoption across all Member States and can be customised to the national context. Built upon the robust European Digital Identity Wallet framework, this user-friendly and privacy-preserving age verification solution enables individuals to demonstrate their eligibility for age-restricted online services, such as those restricted to adults, without disclosing more personal information than absolutely necessary"
So basically, the intention is to provide a solution where users do not need an account or to provide their passports to BigBootyXXX.com. The site just asks if this session or user is of legal age and the age verification system will respond with a TRUE/FALSE
hell, a ton of articles are already ghost written by automated tools, and a lot of "bias" is simply not reporting on certain things.
But, I care about reality, not moral outrage about taboo violations*, so I'd only advocate "do something about [2]" if I believed [2] actually did contribute to a real problem. Combatting ineffective promotion is not on my priorities list. As far as I can tell, [2] is a real problem: though I'm always open to new evidence. (And when people like me take over the world, and it turns out our interventions don't make the problem go away, I like to think I'd have the integrity to reconsider my views in light of that evidence.)
*: That's not to say I don't feel outrage about taboo violations. Some taboos exist for a reason, even if that reason is not immediately obvious. (Of course, some need discarding with prejudice, but Chesterton's Fence applies.)
Its the mindset of neckbeards who don't realize its not the 1990’s anymore, that the landscape has changed significantly and people cannot protect themselves let alone their children from it.
Implementation obviously matters and it is indeed a delicate situation, but that does not negate the need for solutions.
This isn’t complicated. If it’s the law companies should comply. Fines won’t make a difference to corporate behaviour but this Might.
Its not in wide use, and I think most people do not know its an option and it has no lobby group pushing for it so I am sure politicians do not know about it.
>This isn’t complicated.
Not only is it complicated, it is deliberately complicated expressly for the purpose of making it impossible for justice to occur.
It works like this:
1. You contact an age verification provider (e.g., national eID schemes, banks, or mobile operators) and provide proof of identity, which they will verify possibly against government databases or whatever, etc. Once they confirm your age they will issue you with a bunch of Age attestations. At this point you don't even know where you will use these, so that info literally cannot be sent to the provider. The attestations are a JWT-like envelope with a payload conceptually equivalent to `{"nonce": "LARGE_RANDOM_HEX_STRING", "age_over_18":true}`, signed with the provider's public key. (The actual implementation is more complex).
2. This is stored in a local app, which will guarantee each attestation only gets used once (to avoid linking user across relying sites). There is no special authentication of the app in the protocol with the replying site, so you can write your own. The Commission provides an open source reference app. There is a standard protocol for communicating with verification providers, however it is not mandatory, so using the reference app might not support all verification providers, but should support a variety.
3. When you want to visit some site needing age verification, and you already have a verified account, you just sign in, otherwise, that site will use a standardized protocol to request proof from the app. The app will provide just the attestation token. The relying site does not get any info about your identity, other than the attestation token. Plus of course, the relying party must accept any age verification provider approved by the commission, not just its preferred one. The EC's solution also supports the app providing the relying site a Zero-Knowledge Proof of having such a token, which makes it possible for the relying site to learn the user's identity even if colluding with the age verification provider.
Also because it is an undemocratic technocracy (warranted polemic) and the average citizen cannot sue before the EU judiciary, the national courts have to kill it. Of course such a process will take years...
Doesn't exist. Everything written about it is in the future tense.