New Australian safety code requires porn sites to have age assurance by March

While the UK muscles through the implementation and enforcement of its Online Safety Act, Australia is preparing to follow suit. New codes published by the eSafety Commissioner require sites hosting pornographic content to implement age checks to keep out users under 18.

Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant initially rejected the six new codes designed by stakeholders in the online industry. She appears to have changed her mind, registering the codes on Tuesday – following on the heels of the final report from Australia’s Age Assurance technology Trial, which was released last week.

The new regulations will come into effect in March 2026, some three months after the December imposition of age assurance measures for access to social media, which limit under-16s from creating accounts.

A report from News.com.au says adult content providers will be required to introduce “appropriate age assurance measures” such as ID checks, credit card verification, or biometric age estimation, or risk civil penalties. They must also “take appropriate steps to test and monitor the effectiveness of its age assurance and access control measures over time.”

The rules will also apply to app stores, which must “ensure 18-plus content is appropriately restricted,” and to AI chatbots like ChatGPT. And they are accompanied by rules governing material that is “legal but still considered harmful to young audiences, particularly pornography, high-impact violence and self-harm promotion.”

The issue of scope creep has dogged the UK’s rollout, as its law leaks out into places lawmakers had not intended it to go. Categorization laws have ensnared Wikipedia in the age verification web, and there have been public complaints about preemptive takedowns of potentially sensitive content by sites worried about noncompliance fines. And new Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has already made moves to further torque the Act, this week announcing restrictions around self-harm content.

The fundamental question for both the UK and Australia is, what makes something “harmful to young audiences”? Vague language in policy often makes for overreach in practice, as politicians seek to impose their own interpretations. Besides, a concept as broad as “harm” is liable to change over time, as cigarette smokers can attest. And it is especially volatile in an environment that has become politically polarized.

So, as online safety laws roll out, it will be critical for governments to ensure they don’t roll too far. In Australia, the six codes add to the first three, published in July, which cover search engine services, plus codes covering enterprise hosting services and internet carriage services. The original intention was for there to be nine. We shall see if that number grows, and how quickly.

Article Topics

age verification  |  app store age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  chatbots  |  eSafety Commissioner  |  Online Safety Act (Australia)  |  regulation