Hilarious

Sometimes life can provide amusing kickbacks, such as this one.

Four companies that were developing age verification schemes for pornography websites are seeking damages after the government scrapped the idea.

The plans would have forced adult websites to verify users’ ages or face being blocked in the UK.

Culture Secretary Baroness Morgan scrapped the scheme in October 2019 amid a wave of privacy concerns.

AgeChecked, VeriMe, AVYourself and AVSecure are seeking over £3m in damages from the government.

They have lodged a judicial review with the High Court to review the lawfulness of the decision to axe the scheme.

So these companies jumped on the bandwagon of a nasty draconian plan with the intention of making a mint out of their proposed captive market and are now all salty because it fell flat when it was rightly scrapped.

Well boo hoo, suck it up. If you ride the monster, expect to suffer the consequences. No, they should not get a penny, for they were complicit in an attempt to create a nasty, controlling environment where the state could monitor our Internet usage.

Steve Winyard, chief marketing officer at AVSecure, claimed the government was concerned about negative media attention ahead of the general election in 2019.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that [the porn plan] could have caused some consternation in the press.”

Why do you think that might be, Steve? Perhaps because is was a dreadful, illiberal idea that should have been strangled at birth?

It was never about porn, just as the smoking ban was never about health.