UK's New Age Verification Laws
Here's the full XBIZ article. Here's a snippet from it:
LONDON — The U.K. government today published its Digital Economy Bill, which includes a section that would create an age-verification regulator and impose financial penalties for noncomplying adult entertainment sites that stream content into the nation, as well as their payment service providers and advertisers.
The bill goes well past the borders of the nation and particularly targets the flood of foreign adult tube sites that don’t have age verification systems in place to guard against access to those under the age of 18. Those sites typically solely rely on advertising and not memberships to capture revenue streams.
The proposal also creates a federal age-verification regulator that could divvy out fines of up to £250,000, or 5 percent of a company’s revenue, when appropriate, to offending adult sites.
I haven't read the 151 page PDF yet, and won't get around to it until tomorrow. I'll follow-up once I've read it and can speak more intelligently on it.
Curious to hear everyone's thoughts.
Also, can ModelCentro (and CentroBill) provide any information on this issue? As both a CMS and a payment processor, this legislation should be very relevant to both companies. Has anyone been keeping up on this and can you provide any insight?
Comments
I've been attempting to keep track of the changes. It seems UK legislators have been taking slow, but rampant steps towards initially killing off native adult paysites' business, and now making the whole area no longer profitable for businesses from abroad. That is the big picture, in what I call "blonde terms" (the way I try to think), how I see it.
Naturally there's a legal professional that monitors these things for MC and AC. I'll have to see what he can say about this and if there's anything important I'll post it here.
There is yet time to explore and see what this is all about. Currently, status is:"It is expected to complete its passage through the House of Commons and move to the House of Lords in the fall.
If passed into law, the bill is expected to go into effect in the spring of 2017."
Awesome, thanks Natalie! I'm playing some 4th of July weekend catchup, but plan on going through the 145 propposed law when I get some time. I'll be sure to share anything I find noteworthy.