UK government to review children’s access to adult VOD

The UK government has said it will review access to adult video-on-demand services on the internet as part of its current communications review.

Culture, communications and creative industries minister Ed Vaizey, responding to an Ofcom report on Sexually Explicit Material and Video-on-Demand Services, said the government was committed to ensuring that services carrying adult material could not be seen by children.

The Ofcom report recommended a “precautionary approach” to adult VOD services. It concluded that measures currently in place were “not sufficiently clear” to provide the culture department’s “desire for certainty in this important and controversial area”. Ofcom has recommended that R18 material be excluded from UK-based VOD services unless appropriate mandatory restrictions are in place and prohibited altogether from UK-based VOD services whose content the British Board on Film Classification would refuse to classify, i.e. material stronger than R18.