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 under the country’s Online Safety Act.
The new eSafety position paperentitled ‘Development of Phase 2 Industry Codes under the Online Safety Act’, states that the 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 who are part of the direct membership of the Notice Recipients, it strongly encourages them to participate in the Australian co-regulatory process and contribute to the development of the Phase 2 codes,” Inman-Grant’s office said.
Despite what the paper clearly says, The Guardian’s Australian bureau is confusing headed her report on Inman Grant’s latest attempt to regulate adult content: “Porn sites and meta are among those charged with setting Australia’s online child safety rules.”
Inman Grant told The Guardian that “requiring tech companies across industries to work on the code would mean there is no single point of failure.”
“The bigger porn sites actually have pretty robust age verification provisions, but there will be rogue porn sites all over the internet that will never comply,” she added, after which The Guardian specifically mentioned Aylo’s popular tube site Pornhub. .
XBIZ contacted a representative for Aylo, who attempted to clarify the situation.
“Australia’s eSafety Commissioner recommends age verification at the device level, account level and ecosystem level for adult sites,” Aylo’s representative explained. “This is essentially what we asked for, and what we believe is the safest and most effective way to implement age verification.”
The Aylo representative added that, to the extent the company is currently involved in the Inman Grant process, the company has “absolutely offered to participate in age verification testing and device-level pilot programs in Australia.”
“We would very much like to participate in testing solutions at the device level,” the Aylo representative added. “We believe this is the most effective age verification solution that maintains both security and user privacy.”
The representative suspected that The Guardian may have been referring to Aylo’s offer to participate, rather than actually being contacted by the office of vocal anti-porn Inman Grant, as the paper makes clear.
As XBIZ reported, the eSafety Commissioner has acknowledged having conversations with US-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 meeting. Parliament has passed the online safety law.
A recent one article by an Australian libertarian think tank quoted Inman Grant’s statements at the 2022 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, where she called for “a reassessment of a whole range of human rights that play out online, from freedom of expression to the freedom to freely of online violence.”
Main image: Australia’s top online censor, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant