Australia rejects stricter age verification rules for access to porn, shunning global trends
0In the US, UK and across Europe rules around age verification to access porn sites are tightening. But the Australian government has just bucked the trend by saying it won’t force porn sites to implement age verification – yet.
Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland suggested that concerns about privacy, plus any age verification processes needing to be robust and hard to circumnavigate, meant that it was not currently appropriate to force sites to adopt age verification in the country.
In the US, Pornhub, one of the world’s biggest porn sites, has blocked access in states such as Virginia and Mississippi, in reaction to tougher age verification rules being introduced there. France and Germany are steaming ahead with age verification measures, and the UK’s Online Safety Bill, expected to be passed soon, is designed to make it tougher for minors to access online porn, among a raft of other unrelated measures.
The Australian government said that rather than passing porn age verification laws, it would introduce a new industry code based on educating parents about how to prevent their children accessing porn, including the use of filtering software. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the government agency for online safety, has been charged with working with the porn industry to create the code.
Jamie F
Scottie's Playtime 
I wouldn’t celebrate just yet. Australian administrations have had a history of trying to censor the internet – more so be the centre right coalition than than by the left of centre Labour, but both are guilty. They have given up for the moment in mandating ID for porn sites because they don’t have an effective means of enforcing ID regulation on offshore sites, which most “adult sites” are. However Australia has more internet censorship than New Zealand and most other western democracies. It is rated as “under surveillance” by Reporters Without Borders and has a mandatory filtering scheme to block some pornographic and illegal content. Australia also does not have explicit constitutional protection for free speech and can regulate internet services under its “communications power” including mandatory takedown notices or filtering/censoring of content.
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Hi Barry. Thank you for the information. What bothers me is the very same people pushing hard to restrict porn or anything sexual from the internet are the same ones demanding the right to extreme racism and hate online. They want hate, racism, and bigotry but scream in horror that adults might enjoy seeing other adults nude or having sex. They are sickening. But it is them insisting everyone live according to their church doctrines, according to the regressive 1950s moral views they have. Best wishes. Scottie
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