Long-standing readers of this blog will know UK government attempts to censor the Internet under the banner of “child protection”. For years, media regulators and sections of government made the argument that online pornography was harming children. Given that there was little evidence to support this, they relied on disseminating moral panics in order to bounce government into taking action.

Various vested interests were rallied to support these panics and add a level of credibility. These included anti-sex feminists – who added a ‘women’s rights’ narrative, and the NSPCC (a child protection charity) which lent its brand to spreading dubious claims about porn addiction. I documented these campaigns in my book Porn Panic.

The solution offered by the regulators (which was passed into law in the Digital Economy Act of 2017) was to force porn providers to verify the ages of their visitors. While this might have sounded reasonable to the unaware, this would have involved large amounts of infrastructure spending in three places: first, porn vendors would be required implement age verification systems; second an “age verification regulator” (the BBFC) would be given powers to act against porn companies that did not comply; and third, ISPs would be required to block sites if ordered to do so by the BBFC.

Expensive change is always good for someone. In this case, the biggest winner would have been the Age Verification industry, which would have been granted a large state-enforced market. Unsurprisingly, members of the AV industry were often involved with lobbying activities, designed to make the case for the porn block. The AV industry also became a regular sponsor of adult industry events, in anticipation of the day that the porn companies would be forced to use their products.

Then after the election of Boris Johnson as the Tory Party leader, in a rare display of common sense, the government suddenly scrapped the scheme. This was good news for anti-censorship and privacy campaigners, but less good news for the AV industry.

Now, four AV industry providers (AgeChecked Ltd, VeriMe, AVYourself and AVSecure) are suing the government for £3m for changing its mind. Watch this space for more.