UK porn blacklist is dead after government abandons age verification

Article note: Well, at least they abandoned the impossible and invasive plan after being confronted with it being impossible and invasive, rather than just forging ahead and trying to alter reality by legislative fiat.

Enlarge / Nicky Morgan, UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. (credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The United Kingdom is abandoning plans to try to force pornography websites to age-verify UK Internet users. Digital Secretary Nicky Morgan announced the shift in a Wednesday statement.

Morgan claimed that "the government's commitment to protecting children online is unwavering." However, she said, the government will now accomplish that goal "through our proposed online harms regulatory regime." She didn't elaborate on what those regulations would look like.

The age verification requirement was part of the Digital Economy Act that the UK parliament passed in 2017. It was supposed to go into effect last year but was delayed multiple times. Most recently, the government announced in April that the new requirement would go into effect on July 15.