After a prolonged reading of the government’s abysmal Online Harms Bill, released yesterday, it looks like Guido’s finally spotted some good news: the porn laws are being dropped. Clause 131 of the bill repeals Part 3 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 – the act that introduced Theresa May’s age verification for online porn providers, though which was never implemented. The repeal specifies Dowden will no longer have the obligation to issue a code of practice of providers of online social media platforms. The ASI, however, hail it as a “pyrrhic victory” given the wider anti-freedom losses from the Online Harms Bill…

One person who won’t be happy about the scrapping is the executive director of the Age Verification Providers Association, a group currently trying to sue the government for not implementing the 2017 porn block. Just before lockdown was introduced, they announced plans to take ministers to the high court and force them to introduce the ban. Executive director Iain Corby claims he’s trying to protect children, writing “The same groups say we should let parents solve the problem, but a parent can no more supervise all cybersurfing than they can go with a child on each visit to a newsagent.”

Corby’s Hyacinth Bucket-esque ‘save the children’ moralising will come as a particular surprise to many Westminster insiders, who will mostly remember him from headlines in 2014 when he resigned as head of the Tory Parliamentary Research Unit (PRU) after using Grindr to boast of “cute boys” and sexual antics in his conference penthouse – funded by Tory MPs’ expenses. In one message Corby boasted:

“Sharing with two colleagues but I chose the cutest boys from my team!”

When Guido first revealed the news of Corby’s resignation from Parliament, the official announcement claimed it was because he wanted to “return to the commercial world”. He clearly succeeded, and now finds himself heading an overly moralistic pro-porn blocker lobby firm. Guido’s glad he’s cleaned up his own behaviour, it’s just a shame he’s trying to police everybody else’s…