UK Law Currently Gives Minors Ability to Purchase Adult Content

The Times Online, a London based newspaper is reporting that a blunder by the British Government concerning a law passed in 1984 has given children the ability to purchase adult rated content in the United Kingdom. The 1984 Video Recordings Act was passed to give the government legal means to prosecute people who sell adult content to minors, this includes pornography, movies and video games.

The problem is that the law was never properly enacted. This means that any new prosecutions based on the law will not be brought before a court in the United Kingdom. Anyone that is currently serving a sentence because of this act will be unaffected and those prosecutions still stand, simply no further action will be taken against people until this problem is rectified. The British government is working as quickly as they can to close this loophole.

Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, said: “Much of the problem would have been avoided if they had sorted out the classification of video games earlier, as we and many others in the industry have been urging them to do.”

Source:Times Online

What this essentially means is that as of right now there is nothing stopping a ten year old person from going out and buying porn or what would be an "M" rated game. They can't use the ratings on the material as a marker because they can't be prosecuted because of it. Hopefully this situation will be cleared up very soon and the sales of inappropriate material will not get out of hand. Most people will still use it as a guideline, and won't buy things for their kids they wouldn't normally buy, but there will be slime bags out there who will do whatever they can for a buck.