LONDON — The “pornography review” initiated under the conservative government of former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has presented its recommendations, which include banning any adult content deemed “degrading, violent and misogynistic.”
Measures proposed in the review, titled “Creating a Safer World — the Challenge of Regulating Online Pornography,” include making it illegal to possess or publish pornography showing “non-fatal strangulation,” commonly known as choking.
Other recommendations include:
- Creating a “watch list” of certain types of content, such as “incest pornography between step-relations,” and imposing restrictions making such content harder to find or “only available to users if they intentionally seek it out.”
- Instituting “business disruption measures across the ecosystem of pornography — including ancillary services that support the platforms” in order to ensure fast removal pornographic content deemed harmful by the U.K. government.
- Forming a “global coalition” to tackle “harms from online pornography,” with the apparent goal of spreading the approach recommended in the report to the rest of the world.
Many of the recommendations in the report do not pertain to the online adult industry, but to illegal activities such as CSAM, trafficking, deepfakes and intimate image abuse. However, the report conflates many of these problems with the separate issue of legal pornography.
It proposes a "Safe Pornography Code of Practice" under which "legal but harmful" content could be prohibited online and dealt with via the same regulatory apparatus currently enforcing age assurance standards for adults sites under the U.K.'s Online Safety Act. It would equate any categories of adult content that the U.K. government considers "harmful" with the kinds of already-prohibited illegal content mentioned above.
Predetermined Conclusions
The pornography review was initiated in December 2023 at the behest of the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), in the wake of then-Prime Minister Sunak’s call for a full review of British pornography laws.
From the outset, the review’s likely conclusions seemed predetermined, as the DSIT trumpeted in a statement that the porn industry would be scrutinized to “assess the damage it causes individuals and society” and to identify ways to tackle the “harmful impact of pornography on viewers.”
To oversee the review, then-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Michelle Donelan appointed Baroness Gabrielle Bertin, a member of the unelected House of Lords, as “independent lead reviewer” with the responsibility to “assess the damage” adult content causes individuals and society.
At the time, Bertin declared, “The damaging impact that extreme pornography is having on society cannot be allowed to continue unchecked. We owe it to our children and indeed to the whole of society to put the guard rails back in place.”
‘Misinformation and Bad Policy’
In January 2024, the DSIT issued a call for evidence, soliciting input from experts, organizations and members of the public.
In February 2024, representatives of Free Speech Coalition, along with sex workers, producers and industry advocates, pressed for ongoing discussions with industry stakeholders during a meeting that FSC Executive Director Alison Boden called an “opportunity to contest misinformation and bad policy.”
FSC reported that its February 2024 delegation “implored the Review to focus on facts, not headlines.” However, recommendations such as banning adult content that features choking reflect media porn panics fueled by the talking points of anti-porn crusaders.
In October, one of Europe’s leading right-wing publications, the European Conservative, published an editorial calling for a total ban on all pornography, which the author justified by attributing a supposed epidemic of sexual choking to men imitating the pornography they watch.
In its response to Bertin's report, the DSIT stated, “There is increasing evidence that ‘choking’ is becoming a common part of real-life sexual encounters despite the significant medical dangers associated with it. The government will take urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm.”
Next Steps on the Path to Censorship
After Sunak’s government was defeated in a July 2024 election, the status of the review was briefly in limbo until the Labour government of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed in September that the review would proceed as planned.
With the review now finally complete, the DSIT will respond more fully to its recommendations and Parliament will have the option of enacting new laws such as those reportedly being proposed by the review. Should legislators follow the report's guidance, that could mean giving U.K. communications regulator Ofcom new powers to prosecute online platforms that host content deemed “harmful.”
Ofcom is currently charged with enforcing the Online Safety Act, which does not prohibit or ban consensual adult content, but requires that sites and platforms verify that users are adults before allowing access to such content. Should content labeled as “degrading, violent and misogynistic” become illegal in the U.K., however, Ofcom’s responsibilities could escalate to include enforcing such a ban.
Industry attorney and free speech advocate Lawrence Walters of Walters Law Group called the proposal "antithetical to free speech principles" and called for it to be "roundly rejected."
"In the United States, such a ban would not survive First Amendment scrutiny in the courts," Walters noted. "However, the U.K. does not constitutionally protect free expression. If adopted, the proposed content restriction would directly affect U.K. companies and could impact foreign entities publishing the content in the U.K.
"Any attempt to enforce the ban against non-U.K. entities generates thorny issues of international law and comity," he added. "However, targeted companies could risk being geo-blocked by U.K. internet service providers. Like any regulation that seeks to regulate publication of content based on the perceived value of offensiveness of the materials, this proposal is censorious and smacks of creation of thought police."
