Porn site fined £1m over age checks has never responded to Ofcom
Ofcom has told the BBC that it has never heard from a porn company. It has been fined £1 million for failing to comply with the UK Online Safety Act. Since starting its probe in July, it said it had been emailing AVS Group Ltd, but had no response at any time - so the company had been fined an additional £50,000. The Act makes it a legal requirement for websites that host pornographic content to include what the regulator finds to be a highly effective age guarantee
to discourage children from being able to freely access explicit content. According to Ofcom, AVS must now provide highly effective age verification within 72 hours or face an additional fine of £1,000 per day.
Ofcom also announced that one key social media company
was going through compliance re-designation with its enforcement team, in addition to the AVS fine. The regulator has not revealed the platform, but it does indicate that if it does not see sufficient improvement soon, it will take legal action. The fine, according to Ofcom, indicated that the tide on online safety
was starting to turn.
Oliver Griffiths, Ofcom's online safety group director, said.This year has seen significant shifts for people, with new initiatives across many websites and apps now shielding children from harmful content,
he said. Ofcom has already started fines to certain businesses for failing to implement proper age verification, including deepfakeWe need to see a lot more from tech firms next year, and we'll use our full powers if they fall short,
nudifyapplications. However, online message board 4Chanhas has so far refused to comply with a £20,000 fine levied by Ofcom over the summer.
The Online Safety Act is being introduced in phases, and is designed to avoid recent activities that Ofcom described as
according to Ofcom. Since age checks for porn websites were introduced in July, more age checks were introduced, but several people have pointed out that these could be easily avoided with a virtual private network (VPN), which redirects internet traffic. Pornhub's parent company told BBC News that it had seen a 77% decline in UK visitors since the age verifications were introduced in. The fines wereuncontrolled, unaccountable, and often unwilling to prioritize people's safety over profits,
nothingto tech companies, according to Baroness Beeban Kidron, the founder of the 5Rights Foundation.
Business disruption is everything,she said.
We need a whole different view of the regulator's intensity and tenacity,They aren't really doing what Parliament asked them to do if we're able to use the legislation.
The BBC has contacted TubeCorporate, the adult content publishing platform behind AVS group Ltd's websites, for a response. The firm's address is located in Belize, and it appears to be the registered address of a large number of firms: although they do not have physical offices there, they do have physical addresses. Tougher rules on making the internet safer for women and girls were also released this year, with Ofcom promising to identify and shame platforms that did not comply. According to critics, the Act must be toughened to make the internet safer, especially for women and girls.the regulator says. We have the rule and we're using it.
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