9 ms·

Does the UK Think It Can Police the Internet?

46 points by jstanier 7y ago

bogle 7y ago
Given the UK government's terrible record of really awful legislation, much of it illegal itself (e.g. the recent attempts to whitewash [pollution][0]) it seems the outcome will be more rubbish legislation, if anything at all. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-court-rules-uk-air-pollution-plans-unlawful https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-cou...
fit2rule 7y ago
Nope. Censorship is damage. The Internet just routes around it.
- dangerface 7y ago
  If only, the UK government might consider technology and magic the same thing but when it comes to censorship they are serious about it. It has taken them the better part of 20 years to figure it out but they are now doing real china style censorship that can not be easily circumvented.
  - cs02rm0 7y ago
    What censorship are they doing that cannot be easily circumvented?
    - dangerface 7y ago
      For piracy sites they first blocked the dns, dumb easily circumvented use the ip. Then they blocked the ip, dumb easily circumvented spawn multiple versions. They made linking to pirate sites illegal so they could block alternative versions. They used to sniff all plaintext looking for tracker announces which look really distinctive. But their latest methods are scarily effective. They now do a man in the middle attack to decrypt ssl, and store all of it, if you use openvpn as a proxy without accounting for this they own you. They also have the ability to send fake a close packet (I think its a corrupt packet and most ssl / ssh will just drop the connection) to stop you tunnelling out and around their censorship. The average citizen could not possibly hope to overcome this censorship and I find my own abilities more and more challenged to stay ahead of them, they have a whole army of people that understand the internet better than me, eventually they will exceed my abilities, its only a matter of time.
      - g-erson 7y ago
        > They now do a man in the middle attack to decrypt ssl, and store all of it, if you use openvpn as a proxy without accounting for this they own you. Is there any evidence of this?
        dangerface 7y ago
        Yes in 2012 GCHQ installed black boxes in every uk isp that all internet must be routed through[1]. While no one knows what these boxes do, it was thought that they decrypt https requests and log the request header, which seems to be confirmed by snowden[2]. In 2016 the investigatory powers act is what gives them the legal authority to do it[3]. They have never claimed they send fake ssl packets to drop the stream but they have done it to me and the uk governments stance is kind of against modern tls greater than 1.2 which fixes the drop stream packet bug [4]. There is plenty more detail about what they are doing out there, search snoopers charter and GCHQ snowden to see what they have been doing and are now trying to make legal. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-k-spy-agencies-plan-to-install-web-snooping-black-boxes/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-k-spy-agencies-plan-to-insta... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encry... [3] https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy/snoopers-charter https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy/s... [4] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/tls-13-better-individuals-harder-enterprises https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/tls-13-better-individuals-...
        ben_w 7y ago
        I thought the point of SSL was that a MITM couldn’t decrypt it? Unless they have the private key(s). (Or the ability to substitute their own keys, but that seems to get noticed fairly quickly and the relevant certificate authority gets rapidly shunned).
        dangerface 7y ago
        Yea but as you point out SSL is only as safe as the public key infrastructure it runs on. Backwards compatibilty is also an issue, afaik default setups below tls 1.2 can be degraded to the point where its only ~70bit encryption which can be broken by state actors. I was told they have intermediate keys for certificate authorities(probably done legally with the ca permission), generate a new key signed with the real intermediate. This would be detectable as the cert fingerprint would be different from the legit legit one, while SSH checks for this by default SSL does not. I have tried to detect the above and as far as I can tell they are not doing it, but I believe the people I heard more than I believe my ability to detect it.
  - ChrisSD 7y ago
    All the "censorship" amounts to at the moment is ISPs redirecting DNS queries. This is trivial to work around.
    - dangerface 7y ago
      Not any more now they block the ip and use active attacks to kill proxies.
      - ChrisSD 7y ago
        I'm in the UK with BT as my ISP. I've not had a problem accessing blocked sites.
        dangerface 7y ago
        Good to know, im on virgin and they block ip not dns.
        ChrisSD 7y ago
        So that sounds like a Virgin block and not a UK government one.
  - EvilGrin 7y ago
    However, the censorship requires enforcement. Post austerity the UK police force is overstretched and undermanned by its own admission. For example, the Manchester Police Commissioner stated just the other day that 43% of real world crimes are not investigated due to budget cuts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47963134 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47963134 So British government can write all the laws it likes, until it starts paying for enforcement I don't see how it matters.
    - dangerface 7y ago
      > However, the censorship requires enforcement. Not true, if you censor a problem exists then no one knows you are doing nothing about it. Censorship is always cheaper than enforcement. This has been the UK governments stance toward child pornography they could do something about it but like you said enforcement is expensive, its easier to just censor the child porn and pretend the problem doesn't exist.
inflatableDodo 7y ago
>The ambitions of the UK government are bold. They want the UK “to be the safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a digital business.” Pick one.
- Funes- 7y ago
  Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Why would safety be contrary to business opportunity? If anything, I would say that users' safety should be present in any legally viable business endeavor. Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not in favor of surveillance or opaque mechanisms run by any State.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    >Why would safety be contrary to business opportunity? They are a balancing act, you can't maximise both. If you maximised safety in recreation, for instance, you would make things like horse racing illegal. If you maximised business opportunity, you'd be allowed to feed the horse pcp before the race.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    The costs of course - they need something to enforce the safety and that isn't free. And "should be" isn't worth a hill of beans unless it actually gives a competitive advantage like users trusting them more for it. Of course "safety" out of a politician's mouth is usually an excuse for a power grab. It is also abused in such a way that proving that the mayor is a serial killing cannibal, that the police knew about this and did nothing about it is a threat to public safety because it could incite a riot. However the cannibal mayor is not.
  - jsty 7y ago
    If you think of a "digital business" as one that involves accepting user content, then being forced to identify those users and moderate their output could be a disadvantage compared to competitors in more 'liberal' (i.e. less regulated) regimes - if only due to the increased operational overhead. OTOH, this is probably a small percentage of what most people think of as digital businesses, and might be seen as a price worth paying.
dangerface 7y ago
The UK is a police state they think they can police everything but the politicians who are literally above the law.
- _lessthan0 7y ago
  It is that way somewhat, but then on the other hand you have the USA who think they are the police of the whole world, the brute enforcers. Both situations are very bad.
jmaa 7y ago
I'm really conflicted at this. I do not want the internet to be censored, but at the same time, I think that big internet companies are making the world worse through inaction. Even if a user or $/yr minimum is implemented in law, then what happens as distributed and federated technology becomes more common? What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as?
- dangerface 7y ago
  > What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as? I think they are currently illegal because of various copyright and data protection laws in the UK.
  - mattlondon 7y ago
    Do you have any references for that? I am not an expert but from my perspective I don't see why these would be illegal due to copyright or data protection laws in the UK?
tootahe45 7y ago
They can (at least for individuals & orgs in the UK), and they can decide one day they don't want the media reporting on their censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
eplanit 7y ago
The Nanny State brings us the Nanny 'net -- great (sigh).
jdietrich 7y ago
More mundanely: Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to position himself as a decisive strong-man, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual prime minister. His ability to actually reduce crime is hamstrung by years of austerity, which have led to a substantial reduction in the number of police officers and other law enforcement resources. He wants more money, but he doesn't really have the influence to get it. He needs to look tough on crime, but he can't do anything that costs money. Silly legislation is practically free, even if it doesn't achieve much. We've had a worrying increase in knife crime over the past few years. How should the government respond? More police patrols in violence hot spots? Better intelligence on gang-related disputes that might lead to violence? Social work interventions to work with troubled young people who are at risk of becoming involved in violent crime? No, because all of those things would cost money. The government's only substantive policy has been the creation of "knife crime prevention orders", which restrict the civil liberties of people who are suspected of carrying knives with violent intent. It's illiberal, there's no evidence that it'll work, but it looks tough and it doesn't really cost anything. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-youth-knife-crime-orders-human-rights-fears https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-... The internet censorship agenda plays into this perfectly. It costs almost nothing to force foreign internet companies to censor their content, but it looks tough in the headlines. Terrorist attacks? Blame Facebook. Sex offences? Blame Google. Gang crime? Blame Snapchat. It's free, it distracts the newspapers for a couple of days and you get to make some vague but tough-sounding pronouncements without actually being accountable for anything.
- arethuza 7y ago
  Why they can't just implement the measures that seem to have worked in Scotland to address knife crime seems a mystery - NIH at a political level? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Scotland? That's in the distant colonies to the north of Watford Gap isn't it? (And near me) As far as Westminster governments are concerned we don't exist, have good ideas or get infrastructure. Just somewhere to park nuclear things and fracking.
pjc50 7y ago
The lesson of Brexit is that all attempts at asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" have been abandoned, and we're governed by pure short-term sloganeering. But the restriction of free speech in the UK in the name of anti-terrorism has a long history. I'm old enough to remember when the Sinn Fein MPs were prohibited from speaking on television: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc... It's not clear how best to campaign against this, since the legacy print media know that no matter how bad their hate content gets the law is unlikely to inconvenience them, so they're happy to campaign against free speech for their enemies.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  The most comical part was the words were still spoken by an actor trying to lip sync. Which made a mockery of the intent to deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity - in every news broadcast. They didn't think that one through too far. :) > asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" I think that's been steadily dying since the mid and later Thatcher years, and accelerated rapidly under Blair. This current lot have just achieved peak "strong and stable" absurdity. It really takes some doing to achieve a slogan the journos are taking the piss out of on the first and second day it's used.
  - Veen 7y ago
    It is a good thing that it made thugs like Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams look ridiculous as they attempted to represent themselves as peaceful politicians rather than the terrorists they actually were.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      When it comes to groups like the IRA one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. You necessarily need to act in a way that makes you a terrorist in the eyes of the government if you want to get your freedom.
Chris2048 7y ago
I'm still angry about the face-sitting ban: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-people-face-sitting-outside-parliament http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-peopl...
- DanBC 7y ago
  There isn't a ban on face sitting or on pornography that involves face sitting. Please link to the actual law you think is banning this content.
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-act...
    - DanBC 7y ago
      That's not the law! That refers to this: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.htm?wrap=true https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.h... Which refers to this: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A This splits content into three types: prohibited content (doesn't include face-sitting), specially restricted content (18R) (does include face sitting), and regular 18 content. If you are a tv channel providing tv programmes and you have a VOD service you cannot provide prohibited content, and you must not provide 18R content unless you have a suitable age wall.

46 points by jstanier 7y ago

Given the UK government's terrible record of really awful legislation, much of it illegal itself (e.g. the recent attempts to whitewash [pollution][0]) it seems the outcome will be more rubbish legislation, if anything at all. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-court-rules-uk-air-pollution-plans-unlawful https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/21/high-cou...

fit2rule 7y ago

Nope. Censorship is damage. The Internet just routes around it.

dangerface 7y ago
If only, the UK government might consider technology and magic the same thing but when it comes to censorship they are serious about it. It has taken them the better part of 20 years to figure it out but they are now doing real china style censorship that can not be easily circumvented.
- cs02rm0 7y ago
  What censorship are they doing that cannot be easily circumvented?
  - dangerface 7y ago
    For piracy sites they first blocked the dns, dumb easily circumvented use the ip. Then they blocked the ip, dumb easily circumvented spawn multiple versions. They made linking to pirate sites illegal so they could block alternative versions. They used to sniff all plaintext looking for tracker announces which look really distinctive. But their latest methods are scarily effective. They now do a man in the middle attack to decrypt ssl, and store all of it, if you use openvpn as a proxy without accounting for this they own you. They also have the ability to send fake a close packet (I think its a corrupt packet and most ssl / ssh will just drop the connection) to stop you tunnelling out and around their censorship. The average citizen could not possibly hope to overcome this censorship and I find my own abilities more and more challenged to stay ahead of them, they have a whole army of people that understand the internet better than me, eventually they will exceed my abilities, its only a matter of time.
    - g-erson 7y ago
      > They now do a man in the middle attack to decrypt ssl, and store all of it, if you use openvpn as a proxy without accounting for this they own you. Is there any evidence of this?
      - dangerface 7y ago
        Yes in 2012 GCHQ installed black boxes in every uk isp that all internet must be routed through[1]. While no one knows what these boxes do, it was thought that they decrypt https requests and log the request header, which seems to be confirmed by snowden[2]. In 2016 the investigatory powers act is what gives them the legal authority to do it[3]. They have never claimed they send fake ssl packets to drop the stream but they have done it to me and the uk governments stance is kind of against modern tls greater than 1.2 which fixes the drop stream packet bug [4]. There is plenty more detail about what they are doing out there, search snoopers charter and GCHQ snowden to see what they have been doing and are now trying to make legal. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-k-spy-agencies-plan-to-install-web-snooping-black-boxes/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/u-k-spy-agencies-plan-to-insta... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encry... [3] https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy/snoopers-charter https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/human-rights/privacy/s... [4] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/tls-13-better-individuals-harder-enterprises https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/tls-13-better-individuals-...
        ben_w 7y ago
        I thought the point of SSL was that a MITM couldn’t decrypt it? Unless they have the private key(s). (Or the ability to substitute their own keys, but that seems to get noticed fairly quickly and the relevant certificate authority gets rapidly shunned).
        dangerface 7y ago
        Yea but as you point out SSL is only as safe as the public key infrastructure it runs on. Backwards compatibilty is also an issue, afaik default setups below tls 1.2 can be degraded to the point where its only ~70bit encryption which can be broken by state actors. I was told they have intermediate keys for certificate authorities(probably done legally with the ca permission), generate a new key signed with the real intermediate. This would be detectable as the cert fingerprint would be different from the legit legit one, while SSH checks for this by default SSL does not. I have tried to detect the above and as far as I can tell they are not doing it, but I believe the people I heard more than I believe my ability to detect it.
- ChrisSD 7y ago
  All the "censorship" amounts to at the moment is ISPs redirecting DNS queries. This is trivial to work around.
  - dangerface 7y ago
    Not any more now they block the ip and use active attacks to kill proxies.
    - ChrisSD 7y ago
      I'm in the UK with BT as my ISP. I've not had a problem accessing blocked sites.
      - dangerface 7y ago
        Good to know, im on virgin and they block ip not dns.
        ChrisSD 7y ago
        So that sounds like a Virgin block and not a UK government one.
- EvilGrin 7y ago
  However, the censorship requires enforcement. Post austerity the UK police force is overstretched and undermanned by its own admission. For example, the Manchester Police Commissioner stated just the other day that 43% of real world crimes are not investigated due to budget cuts. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47963134 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-47963134 So British government can write all the laws it likes, until it starts paying for enforcement I don't see how it matters.
  - dangerface 7y ago
    > However, the censorship requires enforcement. Not true, if you censor a problem exists then no one knows you are doing nothing about it. Censorship is always cheaper than enforcement. This has been the UK governments stance toward child pornography they could do something about it but like you said enforcement is expensive, its easier to just censor the child porn and pretend the problem doesn't exist.

inflatableDodo 7y ago

>The ambitions of the UK government are bold. They want the UK “to be the safest place in the world to go online, and the best place to start and grow a digital business.” Pick one.

Funes- 7y ago
Why do they have to be mutually exclusive? Why would safety be contrary to business opportunity? If anything, I would say that users' safety should be present in any legally viable business endeavor. Edit: I want to clarify that I'm not in favor of surveillance or opaque mechanisms run by any State.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  >Why would safety be contrary to business opportunity? They are a balancing act, you can't maximise both. If you maximised safety in recreation, for instance, you would make things like horse racing illegal. If you maximised business opportunity, you'd be allowed to feed the horse pcp before the race.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  The costs of course - they need something to enforce the safety and that isn't free. And "should be" isn't worth a hill of beans unless it actually gives a competitive advantage like users trusting them more for it. Of course "safety" out of a politician's mouth is usually an excuse for a power grab. It is also abused in such a way that proving that the mayor is a serial killing cannibal, that the police knew about this and did nothing about it is a threat to public safety because it could incite a riot. However the cannibal mayor is not.
- jsty 7y ago
  If you think of a "digital business" as one that involves accepting user content, then being forced to identify those users and moderate their output could be a disadvantage compared to competitors in more 'liberal' (i.e. less regulated) regimes - if only due to the increased operational overhead. OTOH, this is probably a small percentage of what most people think of as digital businesses, and might be seen as a price worth paying.

dangerface 7y ago

The UK is a police state they think they can police everything but the politicians who are literally above the law.

_lessthan0 7y ago
It is that way somewhat, but then on the other hand you have the USA who think they are the police of the whole world, the brute enforcers. Both situations are very bad.

jmaa 7y ago

I'm really conflicted at this. I do not want the internet to be censored, but at the same time, I think that big internet companies are making the world worse through inaction. Even if a user or $/yr minimum is implemented in law, then what happens as distributed and federated technology becomes more common? What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as?

dangerface 7y ago
> What does Mastadon or Scuttlebutt count as? I think they are currently illegal because of various copyright and data protection laws in the UK.
- mattlondon 7y ago
  Do you have any references for that? I am not an expert but from my perspective I don't see why these would be illegal due to copyright or data protection laws in the UK?

tootahe45 7y ago

They can (at least for individuals & orgs in the UK), and they can decide one day they don't want the media reporting on their censorship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

eplanit 7y ago

The Nanny State brings us the Nanny 'net -- great (sigh).

jdietrich 7y ago

More mundanely: Sajid Javid, the current home secretary, clearly has ambitions to lead the country. Within the purview of his ministry, he is attempting to position himself as a decisive strong-man, in contrast to the weak and ineffectual prime minister. His ability to actually reduce crime is hamstrung by years of austerity, which have led to a substantial reduction in the number of police officers and other law enforcement resources. He wants more money, but he doesn't really have the influence to get it. He needs to look tough on crime, but he can't do anything that costs money. Silly legislation is practically free, even if it doesn't achieve much. We've had a worrying increase in knife crime over the past few years. How should the government respond? More police patrols in violence hot spots? Better intelligence on gang-related disputes that might lead to violence? Social work interventions to work with troubled young people who are at risk of becoming involved in violent crime? No, because all of those things would cost money. The government's only substantive policy has been the creation of "knife crime prevention orders", which restrict the civil liberties of people who are suspected of carrying knives with violent intent. It's illiberal, there's no evidence that it'll work, but it looks tough and it doesn't really cost anything. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-youth-knife-crime-orders-human-rights-fears https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/24/sajid-javid-... The internet censorship agenda plays into this perfectly. It costs almost nothing to force foreign internet companies to censor their content, but it looks tough in the headlines. Terrorist attacks? Blame Facebook. Sex offences? Blame Google. Gang crime? Blame Snapchat. It's free, it distracts the newspapers for a couple of days and you get to make some vague but tough-sounding pronouncements without actually being accountable for anything.

arethuza 7y ago
Why they can't just implement the measures that seem to have worked in Scotland to address knife crime seems a mystery - NIH at a political level? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45572691
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Scotland? That's in the distant colonies to the north of Watford Gap isn't it? (And near me) As far as Westminster governments are concerned we don't exist, have good ideas or get infrastructure. Just somewhere to park nuclear things and fracking.

pjc50 7y ago

The lesson of Brexit is that all attempts at asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" have been abandoned, and we're governed by pure short-term sloganeering. But the restriction of free speech in the UK in the name of anti-terrorism has a long history. I'm old enough to remember when the Sinn Fein MPs were prohibited from speaking on television: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc... It's not clear how best to campaign against this, since the legacy print media know that no matter how bad their hate content gets the law is unlikely to inconvenience them, so they're happy to campaign against free speech for their enemies.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The most comical part was the words were still spoken by an actor trying to lip sync. Which made a mockery of the intent to deny terrorists the oxygen of publicity - in every news broadcast. They didn't think that one through too far. :) > asking difficult questions like "how will this work" and "will it achieve the stated purpose" I think that's been steadily dying since the mid and later Thatcher years, and accelerated rapidly under Blair. This current lot have just achieved peak "strong and stable" absurdity. It really takes some doing to achieve a slogan the journos are taking the piss out of on the first and second day it's used.
- Veen 7y ago
  It is a good thing that it made thugs like Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams look ridiculous as they attempted to represent themselves as peaceful politicians rather than the terrorists they actually were.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    When it comes to groups like the IRA one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. You necessarily need to act in a way that makes you a terrorist in the eyes of the government if you want to get your freedom.

Chris2048 7y ago

I'm still angry about the face-sitting ban: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-people-face-sitting-outside-parliament http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/30454773/why-are-peopl...

DanBC 7y ago
There isn't a ban on face sitting or on pornography that involves face sitting. Please link to the actual law you think is banning this content.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-act...
  - DanBC 7y ago
    That's not the law! That refers to this: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.htm?wrap=true https://www.legislation.gov.uk/cy/uksi/2014/2916/made/data.h... Which refers to this: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/368A This splits content into three types: prohibited content (doesn't include face-sitting), specially restricted content (18R) (does include face sitting), and regular 18 content. If you are a tv channel providing tv programmes and you have a VOD service you cannot provide prohibited content, and you must not provide 18R content unless you have a suitable age wall.