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The UK government announced Wednesday that its controversial porn age-verification laws will come into force on July 15.
The so-called "porn block" laws will require commercial providers of online pornography to verify that users are over the age of 18.
"Adult content is currently far too easy for children to access online. The introduction of mandatory age-verification is a world-first, and we’ve taken the time to balance privacy concerns with the need to protect children from inappropriate content. We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to be online, and these new laws will help us achieve this," Britain’s minister for digital Margot James said in statement.
Read more: Porn is being blocked across all of the UK. Here’s why people think it’s a terrible idea.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) announced that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) will be in charge of enforcing the new laws, and any sites which fail to comply will face, "having payment services withdrawn or being blocked for UK users."
The porn block laws have received a lot of pushback from privacy advocates, who have voiced concerns that the age-verification systems could mean huge ramifications for privacy and freedom of expression.
To quell these fears, the DCMS announced that the BBFC will offer a voluntary certification scheme called the Age-verification Certificate (AVC) which will be awarded to porn providers whose age-verification systems can prove high standards of data security. In its press statement, the DCMS said the certificate has been developed in tandem with the industry, with "input" from the government.
According to a statement from BBFC’s Chief Executive David Austin, users will be able to tell whether a site has been awarded the certificate because it will carry a green "AV" symbol.
This story is developing.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Isobel Asher Hamilton)