CANBERRA, Australia — The office of Australia’s top online censor, unelected eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, has released a new roadmap for implementing age verification in accordance with the country’s Online Safety Act.
The new eSafety position paper, titled “Development of Phase 2 Industry Codes under the Online Safety Act,” states that its regulations “will be binding on industry participants regardless of their participation in the development process” and claims that “the co-regulatory approach gives providers a unique opportunity to help shape these regulations.”
“While eSafety is not aware of any online pornography providers being part of the direct membership of the Notice Recipients, it strongly encourages them to engage with Australia’s co-regulatory process and contribute to developing the Phase 2 Codes,” Inman Grant’s office states in the document.
Despite this, The Guardian’s Australia desk confusingly headlined its report on Inman Grant’s latest attempt to regulate adult content “Porn sites and Meta among those tasked with drafting Australia’s online child safety rules.”
Inman Grant told The Guardian that “requiring technology companies in different sectors to work on the code would mean that there isn’t a single point of failure.”
“The larger porn sites actually have fairly robust age verification provisions in place, but there are going to be rogue porn sites all over the internet that are never going to comply,” she added, after which The Guardian specifically mentioned Pornhub's decision to block access to users in Texas after the state passed an age verification law.
XBIZ contacted an Aylo rep, who attempted to clarify the situation.
“The eSafety Commissioner in Australia is recommending device-level, account-based and ecosystem-level age verification for adult sites,” the Aylo rep explained. “This is essentially what we have called for, and what we believe is the safest and most effective way to introduce age verification.”
The Aylo rep added that the company “absolutely has offered to participate in device-level age verification tests and pilot programs in Australia.”
“We would be extremely happy to participate,” the Aylo rep added. “We believe this is the most effective age verification solution that preserves both user safety and privacy.”
The rep conjectured that The Guardian headline may refer to Aylo’s offer to participate, since the company has not actually been contacted by the office of the vocally anti-porn Inman Grant, as the article notes.
As XBIZ reported, Inman Grant has acknowledged having conversations with U.S.-based, religiously-inspired lobby NCOSE — formerly Morality in Media — and even appeared on an NCOSE podcast at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit in July 2021, shortly after the Australian Parliament passed the Online Safety Act.
A recent article by an Australian libertarian think tank quoted Inman Grant’s statements at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in 2022, where she advocated for “a recalibration of a whole range of human rights that are playing out online, from freedom of speech to the freedom to be free from online violence.”
Main Image: Australia's top online censor, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant