Age Verification is all over the news today because the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media and Sport) announced that Age Verification would begin in the UK on the July 15th. Understandably there are a lot of sex bloggers worried about what they should do and if maybe they should delete their blogs because they couldn’t survive any potential fines that breaching AV could mean.

I am here to tell you to take a deep breath and count to ten.

First read up on AV at Backlash (Yes I know you will get an SSL warning I have asked them to fix that)

But I will summarize here

1. How does the BBFC determine if it is porn:  Age verification will be required for content classifiable as 18 or higher and published ‘primarily for purposes of sexual arousal’ (which conveniently excludes 18-rated mainstream entertainment media such as Game of Thrones), and all content classifiable as R18.
2. What kind of things might be porn: Digital Economy Act defines pornographic content as still images, video with or without audio, and audio-only.
3. What amount of count might make a site deemed pornographic: Greater than 1/3rd as defined by the BBFC (This is no clarification on what this means)
4. How else could it be deemed pornographic? If you advertise it as a porn site. (Your site is not a porn site, it is a journal of your erotic explorations)

Go and read this by Pandora Blake to learn even more.

The AV people are not coming for you, at least not yet and what you should do right now is pretty much the same thing you have been doing up to this point, wait and see. Reliable sources have told me that they are after the big tube sites and plan to target this high traffic sites and are not remotely interested in sex bloggers. That might change down the line but for now the advice is sit tight and see what shakes down. Also there is a possibility that given the mistakes made today in the breach of data when making this announcement and the increasing coverage of privacy issues in main stream media that this whole scheme might end being postponed again.

And additional thought as I have realised that some bloggers think they have this covered already. Those pop up messages that some of you have on your blogs that requite people to put in a birth date or self declare being Over 18 do not count as Age Verification in this context.

mdknight

Eroticon Technical Director