Under the act, websites that published pornography on a commercial basis would have been required to implement a "robust" age verification system to prevent minors from accessing their sites.
[6][7][8] The implementation of the law was initially delayed multiple times to allow the BBFC to draft and receive approval for official guidelines regarding the age verification requirements.
[9][10] Following the passage of the Online Pornography (Commercial Basis) Regulations 2019 (which established a legal definition for the types of websites that would be subject to the requirements), implementation was again rescheduled, this time for a planned start date of April 2019.
[15] Technical concerns included the use of VPNs[16] and DNS over HTTPS,[17] both of which make it more difficult to perform man-in-the-middle attacks such as those required for effective Internet blocking.
[18][19] On 16 October 2019, the Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan stated that the government had abandoned the mandate altogether, in favour of replacing it with a forthcoming wider scheme of Internet regulation based on the principles expressed in the Online Harms White Paper.