LONDON — As the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill navigates the committee stage in the House of Commons, the Labour MP who chairs the Home Affairs Committee is actively lobbying to make the government proactively police “whether adult entertainers have properly consented to appear in pornographic films” even if there are no reports suggesting they have not.
MP Dame Diana Johnson (Labour, Kingston upon Hull North), who also chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, or APPGCSE, made a statement encouraging the political appointees at media regulator Ofcom to be “more proactive in investigating issues around consent in the online pornography industry, rather than ‘wait for complaints to be made,’” U.K. political news site PoliticsHome reported today.
As XBIZ reported, the controversial bill was unveiled last month by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government and introduced in Parliament the same day.
The government focused on “pornography” as the main supposed “online harm.” The Tory MPs claimed the bill “will protect children from harmful content such as pornography and limit people’s exposure to illegal content, while protecting freedom of speech.”
March’s lengthy announcement about the proposed legislation declared that the bill’s main mission is for “Parliament to approve what types of ‘legal but harmful’ content platforms must tackle.”
The U.K. is a constitutional monarchy with no written constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment or codified Section 230 protection for the monarch’s subjects.
The PoliticsHome report noted that the evolving movement to stigmatize online adult content and mandate government censorship and arbitrary oversight for what legislators consider “commercial pornography websites” is the result of a targeted campaign by so-called “children’s charities” and the same APPGCSE that Dame Diana Johnson chairs.
Johnson told PoliticsHome she does not think the legislation goes far enough “on the matter of protecting women’s bodies from sexual exploitation.”
Proactively 'Cracking Down' on All Adult Content
She added that she wants government to “crack down” on ensuring adult entertainers are of age and have properly consented to appear in online videos.
“We've heard evidence where people who have previously been in the pornography industry have questioned really whether they were able to give consent,” she stated. “There is also an issue about what happens if someone decides to withdraw their consent,” she added. “Does the website have a duty to take down any material that’s on there if a person says ‘I withdraw my consent from this?’”
The PoliticsHome report also interviewed adult performer and noted sex worker rights activist Jason Domino, who is also a representative with the United Sex Workers union. Domino questioned the top-down approach and return to government policing of sex work espoused by Johnson.
“Why are the voices of the trade union of sex workers not involved in this policy currently?” Domino said. “Ofcom has no experience at this point of dealing with this topic, and there are many politicians who also have no experience at all, particularly when it comes to matters of people's privacy.”
