Digital Economy Bill — House of Lords, 2017-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
Brian Paddick (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have Amendment 69A in this group. Before I discuss that I wish to address a few remarks to the other amendments in the group. I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, about enforcing fines on people who are not within the United Kingdom. However, I do not understand how his Amendment 58 would be any more effective if the payment service provider or the ancillary service provider is also outside the UK. Perhaps when he addresses the Committee shortly, he will also indicate to me, because I am a little confused, the difference between his provision in paragraph (a) of proposed new subsection (2) in his Amendment 65, where enforcement of the age verification regulator’s decision on the payment service provider or ancillary service provider is implemented by way of an injunction, and the proposals suggested for a similar process under Amendment 66 On Amendment 69A, as I mentioned on an earlier group, there are increasing amounts of adult material available on the internet that is not commercial in any sense. Much of it is taken from commercial websites but there is no reference to which website the material has come from, and therefore no suggestion that it is intended as a lure or as providing a link to a commercial site To take up issues just raised by my noble friend Lady Benjamin, increasingly there is pornographic material that might be described as "home videos", either those produced by what might be described as exhibitionists or others where innocent members of the public, including some celebrities in recent years, are deceived into performing sexual acts to their computer camera not knowing that they are being recorded for subsequent posting on to publicly available websites. There is also the issue that Liberal Democrats have been very strong in trying to tackle: those instances of "revenge porn" where disgruntled exes post compromising videos online. From what I can see, that type of material is not covered by the Bill, as there is no commercial aspect and no ancillary services involved. There is confusion about what "ancillary service providers" means. In his remarks on an earlier group of amendments, the Minister talked about pornographers to whom ancillary service providers provide their services. In the case of self-generated or home-grown obscene material, though, there is no pornographer that the website is providing a service to, at least in one sense. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, spoke about the fact that there are some social platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, which are very good at taking down inappropriate material: they have strict rules about obscene material posted on their platforms. However, there are particular difficulties here with platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. Although 99% of the content is innocent and of no harm to children, or anyone else, there are Twitter feeds and Tumblr pages that have adult material on them. Those are not simply links to porn sites, but actual videos on the actual pages or Twitter feeds. While most have a warning on the front page—NSFW, or not suitable for work, or 18+ only—that is usually also the page that has already got pornographic images on it. Even on Twitter, it may not be clear that the media content is pornographic until one has accessed those images. Clearly, there is difficulty in enforcing age verification on those platforms when the overwhelming majority of the material contained on them is not adult material What I believe needs to be explored is making a tool available to those who want to use social media for adult material, so that when the Tumblr page or Twitter feed is accessed, the user is diverted to a page that warns what lies behind and provides an option to divert away from the adult material. That alternative page could be a government-specified warning about the impact that pornography can have on young people, advising where support can be given and so on: the equivalent to the warning messages that are now printed on cigarette packets, for example. Alternatively, the Government could by regulation insist that such a tool was made available to ensure such a warning page is placed on accounts, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, mentioned just now, so that people are alerted that such pages or Twitter feeds have adult content on them. It falls short of requiring age verification or blocking such accounts, which I am sure Twitter and Tumblr would resist, but it would still address an important issue In its useful briefings on this aspect of the Bill, the NSPCC says there is a particular problem with children who accidentally stumble across adult material. This would go some way to addressing that issue. The NSPCC says a particular problem is pop-up advertisements from commercial pornography sites, which regrettably this amendment does not address—nor is that addressed by any other part of the Bill. Will the Minister tell the Committee whether there is any move by the Government to address that issue It is one thing for the BBFC to block a porn site that does not have age verification; it is quite another to suggest—as the Minister said on an earlier group of amendments—that we block a platform such as Twitter, if it fails to do the same for a handful of feeds that contain adult material. I accept that the amendment as drafted is probably far too wide in the powers it gives to the Secretary of State, but it is important that we do not ignore non-commercial adult material, which in increasingly a problem on the internet.