It's a well intentioned piece of legislation that brings the internet in line with the real world. Most people would object to children having access to a sex shop on the High Street. Why should the digital marketplace be any different?
The law may well be leaky and not achieve its objectives completely, but it is much better than doing nothing or leaving companies to self-regulate. There has been an awful lot of criticism and people pointing oit the negatives. Come up with a better solution then.
@Elessar It is possible to get there by stages. The majority of women work in Norway which means that most families have both parents working. But in Norway genuinely affordable kindergarten (barnehage) is available everywhere and and all of them have to be run by a person qualified in barnehagepedagogikk. I don't now how to translate that because it's not exactly a teaching qualification because barnehage doesn't have formal teaching. But a barnehage is much more than daycare, it teaches the children both to cooperate and to be independent, to dress and undress as necessary for going out in all weathers, lay tables, etc. My three sons attended half time from the age of about three until they went to school even though my wife was not working outside the home. They learned Norwegian with no formal teaching within six months and after less than a year they were indistinguishable from the natives.
My point is that the provision of such facilities cannot be left to private enterprise; even if a barnehage is privately run it is held to the same standard as those run by the kommunes and the cost to the parents is the same regardless of who runs it.
@DeWayfarer In case some casual reader gets the wrong impression I think I should mention that the Norwegian word kommune translates as local authority or town council in British English. It doesn't have a direct connection with the colloquial English meaning of the word commune.
@SpudMuffin Genuine concerns, but the rules are not aimed just at pornogrpahy. They are also intended to protect young people from sites promoting illgality, violence, self-damage, even suicide.
Why not, if it stops kids seeing harmful stuff? It probably won't stop some tech-savvy teenagers getting round it, but if some youngsters are prevented from getting onto suicide or porn sites, good.
@FreddieUK I'll tell you why not. Number one, it won't work for its stated purpose, because...
Number two, this is the beginning of censored internet for everybody. That means that the governments of our supposedly free countries get to decide what we're allowed to read. You comfortable with that?
@FreddieUK It doesn't stop them, though... all it does is make already illegal forms of pornography more attractive - and THAT'S NOT covered by this legislation because it's already illegal in other laws.
Furthermore, you still don't need ID to look at GIF's of the exact same content that you now need ID to watch properly. The only thing is that you just don't have sound.
If you sit around on SW without any filters on... someone will be along sooner or later with some porn videos for you to watch, too.
@NerdyPotato Exactly. Nowadays when some banks allow you to make an account and even take loans just based on a photo of an ID, I'd be damn careful where I would send it.
All Australians will soon be subjected to mandatory age checks across the internet. Search engines are next in line for the same controversial age-assurance technology behind the teen social media ban, and other parts of the internet are likely to follow suit.
At the end of June, Australia quietly introduced rules forcing companies such as Google and Microsoft to check the ages of all logged-in users.
@AthrillatheHunt Oh, you will. At the risk of committing the slippery slope fallacy, it's a short, slippery slope to Big Brother deciding what you, a 55 year old American, are allowed to see.
Seems unenforceable. And overly restrictive. A slipperly slope next is the state defines what is or isnt "too adult". Then censorship. Then books banned. Then goodbye freedom. Hello Trump world.
@exchrist I'm in total agreement. This is the first step to banning any information about the lgbtq, simply by calling it too adult. Their eventual goal is to make it illegal to talk about men kissing men and women kissing women
@GuyWithOpinions just checking a box or entering your birthday is easy to get around indeed, but that's already required by law. This is about requiring to send a copy of your ID, which will also not be an absolute guarantee, but much harder to falsify. And also increases the risk of identity theft.
The question behind it all really, is what are the few, giant, greedy American companies who have monopolised the Internet done, or failed to do, to mean such rules becoming necessary?
