LONDON — 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.