UK Government Survey Reveals Online Safety Act Could Make Porn Sites ‘Not Feasible’
LONDON — The U.K. government released on Wednesday an updated research report assessing the enactment impact of the controversial Online Safety Act (OSA), revealing adult industry concerns that a standalone provision directly targeting porn sites will render their operation in the U.K. “not feasible.”
The report, titled “Potential Impact of the Online Safety Bill,” buries this key concern of adult stakeholders among several other assessments by other industries that minimize the impact of the 2023 OSA, which is currently in a bureaucratic process of consultation — led by media regulator Ofcom — before its eventual enactment next year.
As XBIZ reported, the members of Parliament who drafted the act through several years of debate and under a persistent media-led anti-porn panic, consulted several anti-porn crusaders and activists, and declined meaningful consultation with adult industry stakeholders. Only during the current process of assessment for implementation, the U.K. government and Ofcom contacted industry stakeholders to ask for their input.
The anti-porn campaign during the drafting of the law resulted in a special “standalone provision that requires all service providers that publish or display pornographic content on their services to prevent children from accessing this content,” the report explained. The provision is separate from other OAS classifications targeting “online harms” and specifically target adult websites.
This standalone provision is part of what the report calls “numerous changes” effected “as a result of extensive engagement” after the initial impact assessment commissioned by the government in 2019. The report released this week updates the previous Online Harms White Paper (OHWP).
Following several items where respondents said that “no additional costs” were expected, the report revealed the response to the “standalone pornography provision”:
“Staffing/resourcing cost: One large pornography provider estimated it would cost around 10-20p per user verification. Using this cost they estimated this would cost the business about £500,000 per month for the UK alone. They felt this would not be feasible. The interviewee did not give detail about how this initial estimate was calculated.
“Reduction in users / revenue: This pornography provider also raised the issue of additional friction that would be introduced if a platform implemented age assurance technology i.e. additional steps or clicks to access the platform, which may put users off using their site and represent a loss in revenue as a result of a reduction of users, or drive existing users to alternative platforms that are not compliant with age assurance regulation.
“Note: this duty only relates to pornography publishers and only one pornography provider has been engaged in this research.”
The writers of the report appended two footnotes to the section, claiming that “pricing will vary materially depending on the type of age assurance solutions used and the volume as discounts would likely apply. For example, some AA providers offer solutions ranging from £0.01 per transaction;” and “It is important to note that the regulation sets out to apply consistently across organizations so this cost should not be one platforms will have to bear, but is nonetheless a cost platforms were concerned would apply.”
Report Will Strengthen Government Resolve, Despite Crucial Industry Concerns
The general conclusion of the impact assessment ignores the warning by the adult industry stakeholder that implementation will result in the disappearance of law-abiding adult sites from the U.K. and the exodus of porn viewers to rogue sites.
Instead, the assessment “estimates the Online Safety Act must prevent just 1.3% of online harms to offset the cost of the regulatory regime to business and government.”
This, the assessment adds, “is lower than 2.1% estimated in the final stage Bill impact assessment,” which will likely strengthen the government’s resolve to fully implement the Act in spite of crucial adult industry concerns.
“There is concern the bill will lead to a mass age-gating of the UK internet as web services seek to shrink their liability by forcing users to confirm they are old enough to view content that might be deemed inappropriate for minors,” TechCrunch reported when the legislation finally cleared the House of Lords in Sept. 2023.
“Online platforms are now going to have to make very difficult decisions with some platforms already promising to geoblock U.K. users altogether and to stop offering their services there,” industry attorney Corey Silverstein told XBIZ the following month, when the bill received royal assent.
