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Offsite Article: Age/ID Verified by Google...


Link Here14th January 2024
Full story: Ofcom Video Sharing Censors...Video on Demand and video sharing
Ofcom speaks of behind the scenes discussions for international age verification

See article from ofcom.org.uk

 

 

Pornography regulation, legislation and enforcement...

The UK government calls for evidence for its biased review seeking to further censor and control internet pornography


Link Here11th January 2024
The UK Government's Department for Science, Innovation, Technology and Censorship has called for evidence to inform the final recommendations of its 'Independent' Pornography Review. The government writes:

The government wants to ensure that any legislation and regulation operates appropriately for all pornographic content, and that the criminal justice system have the tools they need to respond to online illegal pornographic material, and exploitation and abuse in the industry.

The Independent Pornography Review involves a comprehensive assessment of the legislation, regulation and enforcement of online and offline pornographic content, and is overseen by Independent Lead Reviewer Baroness Gabby Bertin.

The review will take an evidence-based approach to develop a range of recommendations on how to best to achieve the review's objectives:

  • understand the prevalence and harmful impact of illegal pornography online, and the impact on viewers of other forms of legal pornography, including emerging themes like AI-generated pornography, and the impact on viewer's attitudes to violence against women and girls;

  • assess the public's awareness and understanding of existing regulation and legislation of pornography;

  • consider the current rules in place to regulate the pornography industry, comparing online and offline laws;

  • determine if law enforcers and the justice system are responding to illegal pornography sufficiently, and if change is needed;

  • find out how prevalent human trafficking and exploitation is in the industry, before recommending how to identify and tackle this;

  • use this knowledge to set out what more can be done to provide those who need it with guidance on the potential harmful impact of pornography.

To ensure the review's final recommendations are robust, it is important that a broad range of views and evidence are considered. This call for evidence invites:

  • members of the public

  • the government

  • subject matter experts

  • organisations

to contribute to the review.

The call for evidence closes on 7 March 2024.

 

 

Patreon of indiscretion...

EFF Asks Court to Uphold Federal Law That Protects Online Video Viewers' Privacy and Free Expression


Link Here7th January 2024

As millions of internet users watch videos online for news and entertainment, it is essential to uphold a federal privacy law that protects against the disclosure of everyone's viewing history, EFF argued in court last month.

For decades, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) has safeguarded people's viewing habits by generally requiring services that offer videos to the public to get their customers' written consent before disclosing that information to the government or a private party. Although Congress enacted the law in an era of physical media, the VPPA applies to internet users' viewing habits , too.

The VPPA, however, is under attack by Patreon. That service for content creators and viewers is facing a lawsuit in a federal court in Northern California, brought by users who allege that the company improperly shared information about the videos they watched on Patreon with Facebook.

Patreon argues that even if it did violate the VPPA, federal courts cannot enforce it because the privacy law violates the First Amendment on its face under a legal doctrine known as overbreadth . This doctrine asks whether a substantial number of the challenged law's applications violate the First Amendment, judged in relation to the law's plainly legitimate sweep. Courts have rightly struck down overbroad laws because they prohibit vast amounts of lawful speech. For example, the Supreme Court in Reno v. ACLU invalidated much of the Communications Decency Act's (CDA) online speech restrictions because it placed an "unacceptably heavy burden on protected speech."

EFF is second to none in fighting for everyone's First Amendment rights in court, including internet users (in Reno mentioned above ) and the companies that host our speech online. But Patreon's First Amendment argument is wrong and misguided. The company seeks to elevate its speech interests over those of internet users who benefit from the VPPA's protections.

As EFF, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the ACLU, and the ACLU of Northern California argued in their friend-of-the-court brief, Patreon's argument is wrong because the VPPA directly advances the First Amendment and privacy interests of internet users by ensuring they can watch videos without being chilled by government or private surveillance.

"The VPPA provides Americans with critical, private space to view expressive material, develop their own views, and to do so free from unwarranted corporate and government intrusion," we wrote. "That breathing room is often a catalyst for people's free expression."

As the brief recounts, courts have protected against government efforts to learn people's book buying and library history , and to punish people for viewing controversial material within the privacy of their home. These cases recognize that protecting people's ability to privately consume media advances the First Amendment's purpose by ensuring exposure to a variety of ideas, a prerequisite for robust debate. Moreover, people's video viewing habits are intensely private, because the data can reveal intimate details about our personalities, politics, religious beliefs, and values.

Patreon's First Amendment challenge is also wrong because the VPPA is not an overbroad law. As our brief explains, "[t]he VPPA's purpose, application, and enforcement is overwhelmingly focused on regulating the disclosure of a person's video viewing history in the course of a commercial transaction between the provider and user." In other words, the legitimate sweep of the VPPA does not violate the First Amendment because generally there is no public interest in disclosing any one person's video viewing habits that a company learns purely because it is in the business of selling video access to the public.

There is a better path to addressing any potential unconstitutional applications of the video privacy law short of invalidating the statute in its entirety. As EFF's brief explains, should a video provider face liability under the VPPA for disclosing a customer's video viewing history, they can always mount a First Amendment defense based on a claim that the disclosure was on a matter of public concern.

Indeed, courts have recognized that certain applications of privacy laws, such as the Wiretap Act and civil claims prohibiting the disclosure of private facts, can violate the First Amendment. But generally courts address the First Amendment by invalidating the case-specific application of those laws, rather than invalidating them entirely.

"In those cases, courts seek to protect the First Amendment interests at stake while continuing to allow application of those privacy laws in the ordinary course," EFF wrote. "This approach accommodates the broad and legitimate sweep of those privacy protections while vindicating speakers' First Amendment rights."

Patreon's argument would see the VPPA gutted--an enormous loss for privacy and free expression for the public. The court should protect against the disclosure of everyone's viewing history and protect the VPPA.

 

 

Coining it in...

Spain announces a plan to required age/identity verification for online porn viewers


Link Here16th December 2023
The government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez intends to implement age verification to access adult content on the internet across the board to prevent minors from viewing age-restricted websites. Spain's data regulator Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) is developing a process to require web users to utilize a digital ID card.

The Royal Spanish Mint will be directed to develop the digital ID technology following recommendations from the AEPD. One format floated by the agency is that a user will download an app on their mobile device, a QR code, or some other type of digital document verifying their age through a government ID, health or residence cards, a driver's license, or a passport. AEPD claims that this approach minimizes risks of a data breach since third parties--such as a private sector age verification software vendor or a regulated platform--will not be able to access a user's sensitive personally identifiable information.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee of sensitive personally identifiable information being safe in the hands of a government agency or private company. Consider a case that occurred in Louisiana, which was the first U.S. state to require an ID to view adult content. Seeking to comply with the law, the tube site Pornhub adopted an age verification solution that integrated with the state's digital identification app, LA Wallet.

Months after the deployment of LA Wallet by Pornhub, the company and the agency administering the digital wallet program were victims of a data breach. A local news report indicates that over 6 million records from the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles were exposed by hackers in June 2023. Names, addresses, ID numbers, social security numbers, height, weight and eye colors were exposed in a breach of a file transfer protocol.

Even with the best intention and risk mitigation, AEPD will not be able to completely prevent a breach of data. That is one major concern among critics of age verification.


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