LOS ANGELES—Momentum had been building in New Zealand over recent months for a nationwide law blocking internet porn, but the effort spearheaded by Interior Affairs Minister Tracey Martin appears to have hit a roadblock. Martin said late last year that she planned to bring her porn ban bill before New Zealand’s parliament prior to the 2020 elections, which are scheduled for September.
According to a report by The New Zealand Herald this week, Martin — who also serves as Minister for Children — created a draft proposal to require blocking of porn sites by internet service providers for anyone under 18 years of age.
But when she circulated the paper among members of the governing coalition including her own centrist New Zealand First Party, as well as the liberal-progressive Labor and Green Parties, she found a lack of interest. She now says she will not attempt to push the porn-blocking plan any further.
New Zealand’s government contains a position known as “chief censor,” whose job description is largely as advertised — to censor media content that enters the southwestern Pacific island country of about 5 million people. The current chief censor, David Shanks, said in September of last year that he had considered banning all porn by pushing a proverbial button.
“Imagine I've got a box with a button on it—a big red button,” Shanks said at the time. “If I push that button, I've terminated all access to pornography for everyone in this country. Should I push the button?”
In December, Shanks released the results of what he said was the first research study of online porn, saying that his findings were “a bit shocking.” According to the study, which consisted simply of viewing the 200 Pornhub videos most often accessed by New Zealanders, he found that “step porn” — videos portraying sex acts among performers pretending to be members of a blended family — comprised almost half of those most often accessed by Kiwis.
Despite her inability to win support for her porn-blocking proposal, Martin still says that she favors an age-verification system for online porn, according to the Herald report.
In 2017, the United Kingdom passed a law requiring just such an age verification system, but after two years and a cost equivalent to $2.5 million in taxpayer cash, the U.K. simply abandoned the law last October as unworkable.
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