Elaine Craig is professor of law at Dalhousie University and the author of Mainstreaming Porn: Sexual Integrity and the Law Online.
Trying to lock curious and determined teenagers out of parts of the internet is like spitting into the wind: It will not get very far, and is likely to backfire.
But with Bill S-210, a broadly worded age-verification law aimed at preventing those under age 18 from accessing online pornography, federal opposition parties in Canada appear set on trying anyway. And because of a Conservative Party filibuster, the bill is poised to return to the House of Commons for third reading in October without proper committee study or witness testimony.
If passed, the law would impose an age-verification requirement on any company that makes sexually explicit material available online. But such restrictions will not prevent kids from intentionally accessing porn online. By age 16, the vast majority of young people have used or know how to use a virtual private network (VPN) to make it appear as if their IP address comes from a country without an age-verification law. Anyone who doesn’t know can learn in a matter of seconds. Try searching “how to access blocked porn sites” on Google.
What about children who are too young to deploy a VPN? Well, they’re also too young to circumvent the parental-control tools and safe-search filters that already exist. And by the time they are old enough to circumvent these safeguards, they’ll be old enough to figure out VPNs.
As tools are devised to prevent the use of VPNs, new and riskier VPNs will be developed to undermine these mechanisms. Unless virtually every country in the world adopts age-verification laws, Bill S-210 will be unsuccessful in preventing those younger than 18 who seek to access porn platforms.
Some have argued that age-verification seems to limit minors’ access to alcohol and gambling sites. But this is because for them, credit cards are required, and delivery arrangements must be made. This is not true of free internet porn.
But it is not just that Bill S-210 will be ineffective in achieving its purported aim. It will make things worse. In addition to the considerable privacy issues that this law poses, and the harms that such regimes, when poorly designed, impose upon sex workers, there are concerns that the law will unjustifiably compromise the freedom of expression of adults, children, and youth. As University of Ottawa expert Michael Geist notes, Bill S-210 could capture sites like Google, preventing kids in school from doing internet searches.
There are other dangers posed by Bill S-210.
One of the worst potential outcomes is that this law risks leaving parents and educators with the belief that they would now not need to have conversations with kids about pornography. While a lot of people watch it, not many like talking about it. Relying on a law like this, rather than on genuine, age-appropriate education and dialogue, will leave kids less equipped to deal with the representations of sex that they are certain to confront or seek out online. It will also discourage kids from talking to adults about it.
Protecting children and youth from the harmful aspects of pornography is much more likely to be achieved by talking with them about porn, about its harms and potential benefits, and about consent and desire, pleasure and sexism, and racism and power and violence.
So why would the NDP line up with the Conservatives and support Bill S-210? It is a political win. Who wouldn’t want to keep children from watching pornography?
To be clear, we do need a better legislative response to mainstream porn platforms. The lack of accountability, the readily available content on these sites that eroticizes and normalizes the sexual assault of sleeping or unconscious adolescent girls and women and intra-family sexualized violence, the pirated intellectual property upon which these platforms allegedly built their businesses, and the fact that algorithms and their homogenizing cultural force are informing what significant swathes of our communities consume are problems that must be addressed given the effect of mainstream porn on our relationships and sexual culture. Unfortunately, as drafted, the Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, is not up to the task. It largely exempts porn platforms from human-rights liability for their own misogynistic and racist hate speech, and focuses too narrowly on child sexual abuse material and non-consensual content. This is not good for women or children.
But Bill S-210 is not the answer, either. And if it causes lawmakers or parents and educators to focus our attention elsewhere because we think, “well, at least we have done something about online porn” – then for that reason alone, this law will only make things worse.