Internet Porn Censorship

The winners of the 2018 XRCO Awards have been announced.

The two biggest winners, by little surprise, were Angela White and Greg Lansky, who picked up three trophies each including Female Performer of the Year for White and Best Director (Non-Features) for Lansky.

...And the winning videos were:

• BEST RELEASE The Submission of Emma Marx: Evolved , New Sensations Erotic Stories
• BEST PARODY Justice League XXX: An Axel Braun Parody , Axel Braun/Wicked
• BEST COMEDY Bad Babes Inc , Adam & Eve Pictures
• BEST GONZO MOVIE Angela 3 , AGW/Girlfriends
• BEST GONZO SERIES Angela Loves ... , AGW/Girlfriends
• BEST GIRL/GIRL SERIES Women Seeking Women , Girlfriends Films
• BEST POV SERIES Bang POV , BangBros/Girlfriends
• BEST ETHNIC SERIES Interracial Icon , Blacked/Jules Jordan
• BEST ACTRESS Jill Kassidy, Half His Age: A Teenage Tragedy , Pure Taboo/Pulse
• BEST ACTOR Tommy Pistol, Ingenue , Wicked Pictures

See  full list of winners from avn.com

Republican Representative Diane Black of Tennessee recently claimed pornography, along with the deterioration of the family and violent movies, as a contributing factor to gun violence in schools.

Black made the remarks during a listening session with local pastors last week, according to audio obtained by HuffPost. She spouted:

Why do we see kids being so violent? What's out there? What makes them do that? Because, as a nurse, I go back to root cause. And I think it's a couple things

She then listed deterioration of the family and violent movies, before mentioning pornography. She continued:

Pornography. It's available. It's available on the shelf when you walk in the grocery store. Yeah, you have to reach up to get it, but there's pornography there.

All of this is available without parental guidance. And I think that's a big part of the root cause, that we see so many young people that have mental illness get caught in these places.

Age verification has been hanging over us for several years now - and has now been put back to the end of 2018 after enforcement was originally planned to start last month.

I'm enormously encouraged by how many people took the opportunity to speak up and reply to the BBFC consultation on the new regulations .

Over 500 people submitted a response using the tool provided by the Open Rights Group , emphasising the need for age verification tech to be held to robust privacy and security standards.

I'm told that around 750 consultation responses were received by the BBFC overall, which means that a significant majority highlighted the regulatory gap between the powers of the BBFC to regulate adult websites, and the powers of the Information Commissioner to enforce data protection rules.

Pornhub, the dominant force amongst the world's porn websites, has sent a challenge to the BBFC's porn censorship regime by offering a free workaround to any porn viewer who would prefer to hide their tracks rather then open themselves up to the dangers of offering up their personal ID to age verifiers.

And rather bizarrely Pornhub are one of the companies offering age verification services to  porn sites who want to comply with UK age verification requirements.

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Adults who want to watch online porn (or maybe by adults only products such as alcohol) will be able to buy codes from newsagents and supermarkets to prove that they are over 18 when online.

One option available to the estimated 25 million Britons who regularly visit such websites will be a 16-digit code, dubbed a 'porn pass'.

While porn viewers will still be able to verify their age using methods such as registering credit card details, the 16-digit code option would be a fully anonymous option. According to AVSecure's the cards will be sold for £10 to anyone who looks over 18 without the need for any further identification. It doesn't say on the website, but presumably in the case where there is doubt about a customer's age, then they will have to show ID documents such as a passport or driving licence, but hopefully that ID will not have to be recorded anywhere.

It is hope he method will be popular among those wishing to access porn online without having to hand over personal details to X-rated sites.

The user will type in a 16 digit number into websites that belong to the AVSecure scheme. It should be popular with websites as it offers age verification to them for free (with the £10 card fee being the only source of income for the company). This is a lot better proposition for websites than most, if not all, of the other age verification companies.

AVSecure also offer an encrypted implementation via blockchain that will not allow websites to use the 16 digit number as a key to track people's website browsing. But saying that they could still use a myriad of other standard technologies to track viewers.

The BBFC is assigned the task of deciding whether to accredit different technologies and it will be very interesting to see if they approve the AVSecure offering. It is easily the best solution to protect the safety and privacy of porn viewers, but it maybe will test the BBFC's pragmatism to accept the most workable and safest solution for adults which is not quite fully guaranteed to protect children. Pragmatism is required as the scheme has the technical drawback of having no further checks in place once the card has been purchased. The obvious worry is that an over 18s can go around to other shops to buy several cards to pass on to their under 18 mates. Another possibility is that kids could stumble on their parent's card and get access. Numbers shared on the web could be easily blocked if used simultaneously from different IP addresses.

We asked the BBFC to tell government that the legislation is not fit for purpose, and that they should halt the scheme until privacy regulation is in place. We pointed out that card payments and email services are both subject to stronger privacy protections that Age Verification.

The government's case for non-action is that the Information Commissioner and data protection fines for data breaches are enough to deal with the risk. This is wrong: firstly because fines cannot address the harm created by the leaking of people's sexual habits. Secondly, it is wrong because data breaches are only one aspect of the risks involved.

We outlined over twenty risks from Age Verification technologies. We pointed out that Age Verification contains a set of overlapping problems. You can read our list below. We may have missed some: if so, do let us know.

The government has to act. It has legislated this requirement without properly evaluating the privacy impacts. If and when it goes wrong, the blame will lie squarely at the government's door.

The consultation fails to properly distinguish between the different functions and stages of an age verification system. The risks associated with each are separate but interact. Regulation needs to address all elements of these systems. For instance:

• Choosing a method of age verification, whereby a user determines how they wish to prove their age.

• The method of age verification, where documents may be examined and stored.

• The tool's approach to returning users, which may involve either:

  • attaching the user's age verification status to a user account or log-in credentials; or

  • providing a means for the user to re-attest their age on future occasions.

• The re-use of any age verified account, log-in or method over time, and across services and sites.

The focus of attention has been on the method of pornography-related age verification, but this is only one element of privacy risk we can identify when considering the system as a whole. Many of the risks stem from the fact that users may be permanently 'logged in' to websites, for instance. New risks of fraud, abuse of accounts and other unwanted social behaviours can also be identified. These risks apply to 20-25 million adults, as well as to teenagers attempting to bypass the restrictions. There is a great deal that could potentially go wrong.

Business models, user behaviours and potential criminal threats need to be taken into consideration. Risks therefore include:

Identity risks

• Collecting identity documents in a way that allows them to potentially be correlated with the pornographic content viewed by a user represents a serious potential risk to personal and potentially highly sensitive data.

Risks from logging of porn viewing

• A log-in from an age-verified user may persist on a user's device or web browser, creating a history of views associated with an IP address, location or device, thus easily linked to a person, even if stored 'pseudonymously'.

• An age verified log-in system may track users across websites and be able to correlate tastes and interests of a user visiting sites from many different providers.

• Data from logged-in web visits may be used to profile the sexual preferences of users for advertising. Tool providers may encourage users to opt in to such a service with the promise of incentives such as discounted or free content.

• The current business model for large porn operations is heavily focused on monetising users through advertising, exacerbating the risks of re-use and recirculation and re-identification of web visit data.

• Any data that is leaked cannot be revoked, recalled or adequately compensated for, leading to reputational, career and even suicide risks.

Everyday privacy risks for adults

• The risk of pornographic web accounts and associated histories being accessed by partners, parents, teenagers and other third parties will increase.

• Companies will trade off security for ease-of-use, so may be reluctant to enforce strong passwords, two-factor authentication and other measures which make it harder for credentials to leak or be shared.

• Everyday privacy tools used by millions of UK residents such as 'private browsing' modes may become more difficult to use to use due to the need to retain log-in cookies, increasing the data footprint of people's sexual habits.

• Some users will turn to alternative methods of accessing sites, such as using VPNs. These tools have their own privacy risks, especially when hosted outside of the EU, or when provided for free.

Risks to teenagers' privacy

• If age-verified log-in details are acquired by teenagers, personal and sexual information about them may become shared including among their peers, such as particular videos viewed. This could lead to bullying, outing or worse.

• Child abusers can use access to age verified accounts as leverage to create and exploit a relationship with a teenager ('grooming').

• Other methods of obtaining pornography would be incentivised, and these may carry new and separate privacy risks. For instance the BitTorrent network exposes the IP addresses of users publicly. These addresses can then be captured by services like GoldenEye, whose business model depends on issuing legal threats to those found downloading copyrighted material. This could lead to the pornographic content downloaded by young adults or teenagers being exposed to parents or carers. While copyright infringement is bad, removing teenagers' sexual privacy is worse. Other risks include viruses and scams.

Trust in age verification tools and potential scams

• Users may be obliged to sign up to services they do not trust or are unfamiliar with in order to access specific websites.

• Pornographic website users are often impulsive, with lower risk thresholds than for other transactions. The sensitivity of any transactions involved gives them a lower propensity to report fraud. Pornography users are therefore particularly vulnerable targets for scammers.

• The use of credit cards for age verification in other markets creates an opportunity for fraudulent sites to engage in credit card theft.

• Use of credit cards for pornography-related age verification risks teaching people that this is normal and reasonable, opening up new opportunities for fraud, and going against years of education asking people not to hand card details to unknown vendors.

• There is no simple means to verify which particular age verification systems are trustworthy, and which may be scams.

Market related privacy risks

• The rush to market means that the tools that emerge may be of variable quality and take unnecessary shortcuts.

• A single pornography-related age verification system may come to dominate the market and become the de-facto provider, leaving users no real choice but to accept whatever terms that provider offers.

• One age verification product which is expected to lead the market -- AgeID -- is owned by MindGeek, the dominant pornography company online. Allowing pornographic sites to own and operate age verification tools leads to a conflict of interest between the privacy interests of the user, and the data-mining and market interests of the company.

• The online pornography industry as a whole, including MindGeek, has a poor record of privacy and security, littered with data breaches. Without stringent regulation prohibiting the storage of data which might allow users' identity and browsing to be correlated, there is no reason to assume that data generated as a result of age verification tools will be exempt from this pattern of poor security.

Re Guidance on Age-Verification Arrangements

I agree with the BBFC's Approach as set out in Chapter 2

Re Age-verification Standards set out in Chapter 3

4. This guidance also outlines good practice in relation to age-verification to encourage consumer choice and the use of mechanisms that confirm age but not identity.

I think you should point out to porn viewers that your ideas on good practice are in no way enforceable on websites. You should not mislead porn viewers into thinking that their data is safe because of the assumption that websites will follow best practice. They may not.

5c. A requirement that either a user age-verify each visit or access is restricted by controls, manual or electronic, such as, but not limited to, password or personal identification numbers

This is a very glib sentence that could be the make or break of user acceptability of age verification.

This is not like watching films on Netflix, ie entering a PIN and watching a film. Viewing porn is more akin to browsing, hopping from one website to another, starting a film, quickly deciding it is no good and searching for another, maybe on a different site. Convenient browsing requires that a verification is stored for at least a reasonable time in a cookie. So that it can be access automatically by all websites using the same verification provider (or even different verification providers if they could get together to arrange this).

At the very least the BBFC should make a clearer statement about persistence of PINs or passwords and whether it is acceptable to maintain valid verifications in cookies.(or age verifier databases). The Government needs adults to buy into age verification. If the BBFC get too fussy about eliminating the risk that under 18s could view porn then the whole system could become too inconvenient for adults to be bothered with, resulting in a mass circumvention of the system with lots of information in lots of places about how and where porn could be more easily obtained. The under 18s would probably see this too, and so this would surely diminish the effectiveness of the whole idea. The very suggestion that users age verify each visit suggests that the BBFC is simply not on the right wavelength for a viable solution. Presumably not much thought has been put into specifying advance requirements, and that instead the BBFC will consider the merits of proposals as they arise. The time scales for enactment of the law should therefore allow for technical negotiations between developers and the BBFC about how each system should work.

5d. the inclusion of measures that are effective at preventing use by non-human operators including algorithms

What a meaningless statement, surely the age verification software process itself will be non human working on algorithms. Do bots need to be protected from porn? Are you saying that websites should not allow their sites to be accessed by Google's search engine bots? Unless there is an element of repeat access, a website does not really know that it is being accessed by a bot or a human. I think you probably have a more specific restriction in mind, and this has not been articulated in this vague and meaningless statement

7. Although not a requirement under section 14(1) the BBFC recommends that age-verification providers adopt good practice in the design and implementation of their solutions. These include solutions that: include clear information for end-users on data protection

When have websites or webs services ever provided clear information about data protection? The most major players of the internet refuse to provide clear information, eg Facebook or Google.

9. During the course of this age-verification assessment, the BBFC will normally be able to identify the following in relation to data protection compliance concerns: failure to include clear information for end-users on data protection and how data is used; and requesting more data than is necessary to confirm age, for example, physical location information.

Excellent! This would be good added value from the BBFC At the very least the BBFC should inform porn viewers that for foreign non-EU sites, there will be absolutely no data protection, and for EU websites, once users give their consent then the websites can do more or less anything with the data.

10. The BBFC will inform the Information Commissioner's Office where concerns arise during its assessment of the age-verification effectiveness that the arrangement does not comply with data protection legislation. The ICO will consider if further investigation is appropriate. The BBFC will inform the online commercial pornography provider(s) that it has raised concerns with the ICO.

Perhaps the BBFC could make it clear to porn users, the remit of the ICO over non-EU porn sites, and how the BBFC will handle these issues for a non-EU website.

Re Data Protection and the Information Commissioner's Office

The world's major websites such as Facebook that follow all the guidelines noted in this section but end up telling you nothing about how your data is used, I don't suppose porn sites will be any more open.

3b Where an organisation processing personal data is based outside the EU, an EU-based representative must be appointed and notified to the individual

Will the BBFC block eg a Russian website that complies with age verification by requiring credit card payments but has no EU representative? I think the BBFC/ICO needs to add a little bit more about data protection for websites and services outside of the EU. Porn viewers need to know.

General

Perhaps the BBFC could keep a FAQ for porn viewers eg Does the UK vetting service for people working with children have access to age verification data used for access to porn sites?

The BBFC is consulting on its procedures for deciding if porn websites have implemented adequately strictly such that under 18s won't normally be able to access the website. Any websites not complying will be fined/blocked and/or pressurised by hosting/payment providers and advertisers who are willing to support the BBFC censorship.

Now I'm sure that the BBFC will diligently perform their duties with fairness and consideration for all, but the trouble is that all the horrors of scamming, hacking, snooping, blackmail, privacy etc are simply not the concern of the BBFC. It is pointless to point out how the age verification will endanger porn viewers, it is not in their remit.

If a foreign website were to implement strict age verification and then pass over all the personal details and viewing habits straight to its blackmail, scamming and dirty tricks department, then this will be perfectly fine with the BBFC. It is only their job to ensure that under 18s won't get through the ID checking.

There is a little privacy protection for porn websites with a presence in the EU, as the new GDPR rues have some generic things to say about keeping data safe. However these are mostly useless if you give your consent to the websites to use your data as they see fit. And it seems pretty easy to get consent for just about anything just be asking people to tick a box, or else not be allowed to see the porn. For example, Facebook will still be allowed to slurp all you personal data even within the constraints of GDPR, so will porn websites.

As a porn viewer, the only person who will look after you, is yourself.

The woeful flaws of this bill need addressing (by the government rather than the BBFC). We need to demand of the government: Don't save the children by endangering their parents.

At the very least we need a class of critically private data that websites simply must not use, EVER, under any circumstances, for any reason, and regardless of nominal user consent. Any company that uses this critically private data must be liable to criminal prosecution.

Anyway there have been a few contributions to the debate in the run up to the end of the BBFC consultation.

The Digital Economy Act -- The Truth: AgeID

20th April 2018. See  article from cbronline.com

AgeID says it wants to set the record straight on user data privacy under pending UK smut age check rules. As soon as a customer enters their login credentials, AgeID anonymises them. This ensures AgeID does not have a list of email addresses. We cannot market to them, we cannot even see them

[You always have to be a bit sceptical about claims that anonymisation protects your data. Eg if Facebook strips off your name and address and then sells your GPS track as 'anonymised', when in fact your address and then name can be restored by noting that you spend 12 hours a day at 32 Acacia avenue and commute to work at Snoops R Us. Perhaps more to the point of PornHub, may indeed not know that it was Damian@Green.com that hashed to 00000666, but the browsing record of 0000666 will be stored by PornHub anyway. And when the police come along and find from the ID company that Damian@Green.com hashes to 0000666 then the can simply ask PornHub to reveal the browsing history of 0000666.

Tell the BBFC that age verification will do more harm than good

20th April 2018. See  article from backlash.org.uk

MindGeek's age verification solution, AgeID, will inevitably have broad takeup due to their using it on their free tube sites such as PornHub. This poses a massive conflict of interest: advertising is their main source of revenue, and they have a direct profit motive to harvest data on what people like to look at. AgeID will allow them to do just that.

MindGeek have a terrible record on keeping sensitive data secure, and the resulting database will inevitably be leaked or hacked. The Ashley Madison data breach is a clear warning of what can happen when people's sex lives are leaked into the public domain: it ruins lives, and can lead to blackmail and suicide. If this policy goes ahead without strict rules forcing age verification providers to protect user privacy, there is a genuine risk of loss of life.

Update: Marc Dorcel Issues Plea to Participate in U.K. Age-Verification Consultation

20th April 2018. See  article from xbiz.com

French adult content producer Marc Dorcel has issued a plea for industry stakeholders to participate in a public consultation on the U.K.'s upcoming age-verification system for adult content. The consultation period closes on Monday. The studio said the following about participation in the BBFC public consultation:

The time of a wild internet where everyone could get immediate and open access to porn seems to be over as many governments are looking for concrete solutions to control it.

U.K. is the first one to have voted a law regarding this subject and who will apply a total blockage on porn websites which do not age verify and protect minors. Australian, Polish and French authorities are also looking very closely into this issue and are interested in the system that will be elected in the U.K.

BBFC is the organization which will define and manage the operation. In a few weeks, the BBFC will deliver the government its age-verification guidance in order to define and detail how age-verification should comply with this new law.

BBFC wants to be pragmatic and is concerned about how end users and website owners will be able to enact this measure.

The organization has launched an open consultation in order to collect the public and concerned professionals' opinion regarding this matter here .

As a matter of fact, age-verification guideline involves a major challenge for the whole industry: age-verification processor cannot be considered neither as a gateway nor a toll. Moreover, it cannot be an instrument to gather internet users' data or hijack traffic.

Marc Dorcel has existed since 1979 and operates on numerous platforms -- TV, mobile, press, web networks. We are used to regulation authorities.

According to our point of view, the two main requirements to define an independent age-verification system that would not serve specific corporate interests are: 1st requirement -- neither an authenticated adult, nor his data should belong to any processor; 2nd requirement -- processor systems should freely be chosen because of their efficiency and not because of their dominant position.

We are also thinking that our industry should have two requests for the BBFC to insure a system which do not create dependency:

• Any age-verification processor scope should be limited to a verification task without a user-registration system. As a consequence, processors could not get benefits on any data user or traffic control, customers' verified age would independently be stored by each website or website network and users would have to age verify for any new website or network.

• If the BBFC allows any age-verification processor to control a visitor data base and to manage login and password, they should commit to share the 18+ login/password to the other certified processors. As a consequence, users would only have one age verification enrollment on their first visit of a website, users would be able to log in with the same login/password on any age verification system to prove their age, and verified adults would not belong to any processor to avoid any dependency.

In those cases, we believe that an age-verification solution will act like a MPSP (multiple payment service provider) which processes client payments but where customers do not belong to payment processors, but to the website and where credit card numbers can be used by any processor.

We believe that any adult company concerned with the future of our business should take part in this consultation, whatever his point of view or worries are.

It is our responsibility to take our fate into our own hands.

The New Zealand moralist campaign group Family First have been campaigning for new laws to censor pornography.

Family First national director Bob McCoskrie is calling for an expert panel to consider health and social issues supposedly created by pornography, and somehwhat presumptively, how to solve the problems identified.

More than 22,000 people signed McCoskrie's petition, and this week he spoke to the Governance and Administration Select Committee at Parliament, where he said porn was feeding the health crisis of the digital age.

Parliament's Governance and Administration Select Committee is currently considering the petition and whether to set up an 'expert' panel.

Chief censor David Shanks seems to have been caught up in the pre-censorship momentum. He said more needs to be done to understand porn use, and the effects. Then NZ can get to work tackling the issue. He added that New Zealand needs to take a societal approach to tackling the pervasive effects of porn, including further regulation.

As far as regulation goes, Shanks said New Zealand could consider making similar moves to the United Kingdom, where anyone wanting to watching online porn had to go through an official age verification process. An ISP-level ban, where pornography viewers had to opt in to viewing pornographic content, could also be part of the solution.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification, headed by the chief censor, was dedicating its major research project for the year to the prevalence, and effects of porn.

Justice Minister Andrew Little said he was aware of the issues surrounding pornography use, and he was open to suggestions on what regulatory approach New Zealand could take to tackle problems. However, there was no specific legislation in the pipeline at the moment.

Golden age star, Cara Lott has died after a long bout of kidney disease aged just 56 years old.

Cara's filmography is extensive, totaling more than 180 adult videos between 1981 and 2009, for companies ranging from the top producers at the time (VCA, Vivid, Caballero, CDI, Las Vegas Video, Arrow, Leisure Time/Venus 99) to lesser-known ones such as Atom, Select-A-Tape, Cadre and Bel-Air. In fact, it appears that at one time or another, Cara had worked at least once for almost every producer who put out a videotape in the 80s and early '90s. Dialogue was never her strong suit, and all-sex videos were her preferred genre.

She was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2006.

Examples from her films 1984-87

• Club Taboo (Video) Constance 1987
• Party Doll (Video) Dolly 1987
• Pay the Lady (Video) Leslie Ann Wilkerson 1987
• Star Cuts 40: Cara Lott (Video short) 1987
• The Color of Honey (Video) Barbie 1987
• The Pleasure Machine (Video) 1987
• Good Lust Charm (Video) 1986
• Aerobics Girls Club (Video) Rusty 1986
• Dirty Harriet (Video) 1986
• Ladies in Heat (Video) 1986
• Nasty Habits (Video) Lesbian in flashback (uncredited) 1986
• Up to No Good (Video) Phantom 1986
• The Ginger Effect (Video) Rebecca 1985
• Dirty Pictures (Video) 1985
• Double Down (Video) 1985
• Physical II (Video) Nancy 1985
• Sex Shoot (Video) Joanie C. 1985
• The Heat Is On (Video) 1985
• Desperately Seeking Suzie... (Video) 1985
• It's My Body (Video) Fran 1985
• Midslumber's Night Dream (Video) 1985
• Sizzling Suburbia (Video) Vicky 1985
• Spermbusters (Video) 1985
• Tailhouse Rock (Video) 1984
• Daddy Doesn't Know (Video) Sheri Osborne 1984
• Hot Spa (Video) 1984
• I Like to Be Watched (Video) Carla 1984
• Where the Girls Are (Video) Laurie Rush 1984
• Shave Tail (Video)

Porn Star Legends: Cara Lott is a 2013 US adult film (Porn Star Legends)

Legendary starlet Cara Lott is a foxy blonde with a dancer's body and an insatiable appetite for sex. She's got sexual exuberance and erotic intensity- everything it takes to be a star worthy of induction into the AVN Hall of Fame. She also appeared in such mainstream film productions as Body Double and 52 Pick-up. Cara appears here in seven sizzling scenes of pure classic porn.

See worldwide VoD at Hot Movies  

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked around 0.4 million porn websites and 9,846 proxy sites as well.

The figures were revealed when Additional Attorney General Nayyar Rizvi reported to the Supreme Court (SC).

His report also revealed that PTA has blocked several illegal satellite programming and content relayed by local cable operators.