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Natasha Kaplinsky, anti-porn campaigner and president of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), said in an exclusive paywalled article for the Sunday Telegraph, said that the Government needed not only to introduce tough age verification to protect children but also to take action to restrict young adults from accessing the welter of illegal violent and abusive porn available online.

Kaplinsky, who is also president of the UK's biggest children's charity Barnardo's, is calling for amendments to the Online Safety Bill, currently before the House of Lords, that would bring the legislative treatment of porn on the internet in line with the restrictions that the BBFC polices in the offline world.

Kaplinsky cited a recent parliamentary report which revealed illegal porn was readily accessible online including depictions of rape, incest and sexual violence. She said:

This was because the offline regulation of legitimate porn overseen by the BBFC was not mirrored online and the Government's Bill as written did not plug this loophole. This meant content that would be illegal to distribute offline will continue to be legally available online,

She claimed that this attempt at further internet censorship was not an attempt at censorship:

To be clear: this is not about limiting the freedom of adults to access legal pornographic material.

This is about the regulation of appalling content that eroticises rape and the violent abuse of women, or which promotes an interest in abusive relationships. There is a big difference. It is only logical that where content is unacceptable offline, we as a society should say it is unacceptable online too.

Presumably her reference to promoting an interest in abusive relationships is a reference to the plethora of 'step family' porn, but it must be noted that the BBFC has passed such material R18, eg see That's Right, She's My Step Sister...so What from bbfc.co.uk

Attempts to extend the censorship of porn online are expected next month when it comes before the Lords.

The Arkansas House has approved an amendment to SB 66, a Republican bill that would require age verification before entering a website offering pornography, over confusing language. SB 66 was introduced in January by state Senator Tyler Dees, who later admitted that his state initiative is only a steppingstone toward the ultimate goal of a federal mandate.

A vote in the Arkansas House sent the amended bill back to the Committee on House Rules for further consideration, the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported. Representative Mindy McAlindon told the paper that the amendment was needed to clarify distinctions between 'corporate entities' and 'third party vendors' in the bill.

SB 66 is a copycat version of Louisiana's Act 440, a new law enacted in January after being championed by a religious anti-porn activist Republican legislator.

Meanwhile Virginia lawmakers recently passed a bill with near-unanimous support that would require pornography websites to more stringently verify whether a person is 18 before allowing them access to the site. Websites would have to implement more advanced methods of their choosing to verify age, such as requiring users to submit copies of government-issued identification, biometric scans or use other forms of commercial age verification software.

Under the bill, a civil cause of action, or a lawsuit, could be brought on behalf of a minor who suffered damages from access to pornographic websites that didn't use age verification measures. No one spoke in opposition when the bill was debated during the session, but some people took to social media to express their concerns.

The bill now heads to Gov. Glenn Youngkin's desk for his signature.

The grandly named All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation (APPG-CSE) is a just a group of anti-porn MPs. It is not an official parliamentary committee tasked with monitoring policy on behalf of parliament.

Of course it does try present itself as something more important than it really is by referring to people its listens to as 'witnesses' in 'evidence' sessions and publishing its biased opinions as 'reports. Of course it never listens to any opposing views from sex workers, film makers, or of course from people who enjoy sex entertainment.

Anyway it has just published a moralist diatribe against porn titled: Pornography Regulation: The case for Parliamentary Reform

Predictably its observations and recommendations are simply to destroy the entire adult pornography business. The campaigners write:

On 27 February 2023, the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation launched the findings of its Inquiry on Pornography. The report, Pornography Regulation: The case for Parliamentary Reform, concludes that the epidemic of male violence against women and girls cannot be ended unless the Government confronts the role pornography plays in fuelling sexual violence.

The report highlights the scale and nature of contemporary online pornography, finding that the user base of pornography is highly gendered, with significantly more men watching pornography than women. Violence against women is prolific in mainstream pornography, and illegal content -- including videos of child sexual exploitation, rape and sex trafficking victims -- is freely accessible on mainstream pornography websites.

The report evidences a multiplicity of harms connected with the pornography industry. Pornography is found to fuel sexual violence and social and political harms against women and girls, as well as perpetuating racist stereotypes. Children continue to be exposed to online pornography on an alarming scale, which is an egregious violation of child safeguarding. Meanwhile, sexual coercion is found to be inherent to the commercial production of pornography, with producers commonly adopting exploitative and abusive tactics to coerce women into being filmed for pornography videos.

The inquiry concludes that existing legislation relating to pornography is piecemeal and wholly inadequate with respect to preventing and providing redress for harms perpetuated as part of the trade.

As a result of its inquiry, the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation has made the following recommendations to Government:

• Make the regulation of pornography consistent across different online platforms, and between the online and offline spheres.

• Criminalise the supply of pornography online to children, and legally require age verification for accessing pornography online.

• Address pornography as commercial sexual exploitation, and a form of violence against women, in legislation and policy.

• Legally require online platforms to verify that every individual featured in pornographic content on their platform is an adult and gave permission for the content to be published there.

• Give individuals who feature in pornographic material the legal right to withdraw their consent to material in which they feature being published and/or distributed.

• Hold exploiters to account by making it a criminal offence to enable or profit from the commercial sexual exploitation of others.

• Conduct a comprehensive review of laws on pornography and obscenity.

 

Offsite Comment: Moral Coercion And Twisted Facts From The UK Parliament's Censorial Fanatics

5th March 2023. See article from reprobatepress.com

Johnson's group took evidence during their from the usual suspects -- not just NCOSE but also Gail Dines, the anti-porn academic writer who is like Andrea Dworkin without the writing ability, and Laila Mickelwait, head of anti-sex work Christian lobbyists Exodus Cry. They did not, you'll be unsurprised to hear, take any evidence from current sex workers or anyone else who might contradict their pre-existing beliefs -- because let's face it, anyone who is part of a group looking at commercial sexual exploitation led by a notorious anti-porn politician is not exactly going in with an open mind.

See full article from reprobatepress.com