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The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has held discussions with the government over extending its role to include the monitoring of online pornography.
At the inaugural meeting of the Independent Pornography Review taskforce – which brought together politicians, police and charities to discuss how to regulate harmful content on the internet – the BBFC’s president, Natasha Kaplinsky, said the organisation hoped to take on the task.
“Legislation has existed for many years to protect the public from violent and abusive pornographic content offline, but online the law has not kept pace,” Kaplinsky said.
She said the BBFC had been classifying offline pornographic content for 40 years and now wanted to extend its remit, taking on a statutory role online. “We stand ready to better protect audiences online by taking on the formal role of auditing online pornography,” she said.
The Conservative peer Gabby Bertin recommended that the BBFC should audit websites earlier this year when she published a review into harmful pornography, commissioned by former prime minister Rishi Sunak.
She has established a taskforce of 17 people to examine how to bring parity to the regulation of online and offline pornography, reflecting the fact that the vast majority has long been viewed online, where it is subject to relatively little regulation.
“We can’t let the taboo around this issue mean that the industry carries on going unregulated,” Lady Bertin said, launching the first session.
She added that better monitoring of pornography online was crucial, given that it is viewed by an estimated 13.8 million UK adults every month, but stressed that the taskforce’s work was “not remotely a moral crusade”.
“When you have such a huge number of people watching this kind of content, you have to make sure that it’s regulated. It would be unthinkable for the tobacco industry, the drinks industry or the gambling industry to have no proper scrutiny. This has to come to an end for the pornography industry,” she said.
The Online Safety Act made the regulator Ofcom responsible for ensuring social media and pornography sites have effective age verification mechanisms.
Ofcom also monitors whether sites distributing user-generated pornography are protecting UK viewers from encountering illegal material involving child sexual abuse and extreme content (showing rape, bestiality and necrophilia, for example). However, other forms of harmful pornography that are regulated offline are not subject to similar restrictions online.
Research conducted by the BBFC found that one in three adult users had been exposed to violent or abusive content online in the past three months, seeing material depicting physical violence, non-consensual activity, and adults role-playing as children.
This material would not have been classified as legal for viewing in cinemas or allowed to be sold on physical formats (videos or DVDs) by the organisation, but it does not reach the threshold of illegal content online, so is not part of Ofcom’s remit.
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It is a criminal offence under the Video Recordings Act to distribute a pornographic video work that has not been classified by the BBFC.
“This content is violent, it’s degrading, it’s abusive, it’s misogynistic,” Bertin said. “We know what a detrimental effect it is having on society. It is starting to really play out in how young people have sex, view themselves and view each other.”
Labour MP Jess Asato, one of the taskforce members, echoed the need for greater regulation and commended the government for its commitment last week to criminalising pornographic content featuring strangulation.
“Young women feel under pressure to play out the scripts their male partners learn from pornography and are pressured into painful and dangerous sex acts,” she said. “Of particular concern to me is content that appears to depict sexual activity with children, featuring adult performers using props such as lollipops and teddy bears. This normalises the sexual abuse of children.”
David Austin, the chief executive of the BBFC, said his organisation had had “very constructive” conversations with the government over the possibility of taking on an extended role, but would not give details of how it would confront the huge task of monitoring harmful pornographic content online.
A government spokesperson said that the recent decision to ban pornography depicting acts of strangulation came in response to Bertin’s review, adding: “Violence against women and girls is a national emergency, which is why our government is committed to halving it within a decade. Tackling extreme pornography is a vital part of this mission.”
