Today, the Open Rights Group published our response to the BBFC consultation on age verification for online pornography. The response is a clear call for the BBFC to notify the Government about the dangerous and unsustainable nature of the policy.

On the 23rd April 2018, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) closed its consultation on guidelines for age verification providers.

Under the Digital Economy Act 2017, websites must actively verify that their UK-based users are above the age of 18 before allowing them to view pornographic content. This means using age verification technology and, as the age verification regulator, it is the BBFC’s job to issue guidance dictating how these age verification systems should work.

The Open Rights Group submitted a response to the BBFC’s consultation highlighting a number of issues with the proposed age verification system. Today they are publishing the full 22-page document that we submitted to the BBFC, principally authored by myself.

While compiling this response, I also assisted the Open Rights Group in running a web campaign which called for supporters to submit their own responses to the consultation. A staggering 550+ supporters used our online tool to submit their own responses.

The full PDF document of our response can be downloaded here.