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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/retailandleisure/0,3800011842,39169767,00.htm

Online age verification Bill is cynical manipulation
Leader: More about political ambition than protecting children

By silicon.com

Published: Tuesday 22 January 2008

Even though the MP for South Luton Margaret Moran's Ten Minute Rule Bill on age verification for online purchases has gone through to a second reading in May, it is at best ill-thought-out and at worst, nothing more than a cynical ruse to whip up a moral panic around online shopping.

The cases Moran is using as evidence for the need to step up the policing of age verification over the web by retailers appear to be isolated cases, rather than any real wave of under-age porn buying.

Yes, it is probable under-age shoppers are able to sometimes procure restricted items, such as alcohol or porn, from retailers. Teenagers will continually exert a large amount of effort to get these things, purely because they are not allowed them and because that's simply what teenagers do.

However, it's unlikely this is happening wholesale or because retailers just don't care who they sell to. Most retailers care too much about their reputations to risk being branded as corruptors of young minds and bodies.

Retailers have to balance quick, easy customer service for online shoppers with making sure consumers are who they say they are. The British Retail Consortium points out that ages are checked on delivery and that retailers risk losing their licence to sell age-restricted goods, if they sell them indiscriminately. Beyond that, there is little they can do to stop a concerted effort by enterprising youngsters to hoodwink them.

In her statement to the press, (silicon.com did request to speak to Moran, but she was unavailable to comment - presumably too busy protecting UK children from evil purveyors of smut and gut rot) Moran resorts to the sort of manipulative and sensationalist rhetoric that does nothing to further serious progress in online retailing, or the continued embrace of the internet into our daily lives as a whole.

It's not surprising therefore that this Ten Minute Bill comes across as some political profile raising exercise and if it is there are few better ways to do it than to set yourself up as a champion of all that's good by urging us all to "think of the children".