12 Facts About ATVOD

ATVOD was founded following a European Union directive on the regulation of audiovisual media.

Legislation enabled ATVOD to regulate "On-Demand Programme Services" as the body designated by Ofcom.

However, in February 2014 ATVOD determined that the feature film streaming and downloading service provided by Sainsbury's Entertainment did fall under its remit.

In practice the majority of ATVOD's work consisted of regulating UK websites that hosted videos to ensure that services containing adult content could not be accessed by users under 18.

Failure by commercial websites to obtain proof that the user was over 18 before allowing access to adult content was considered by ATVOD to be a breach of the Obscene Publications Act 1959.

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ATVOD only had the jurisdiction to take action against websites that were based in the UK.

Subsequently, ATVOD provided the UK Government and the European Commission with detailed briefings on policy options.

In March 2014 ATVOD proposed that legislation should be enacted before the 2015 United Kingdom general election, to forbid credit and debit card operators from processing payments from UK customers to unlicensed websites.

The ASACP described ATVOD's proposed age verification measures as "overbroad" and expressed concern that any consequent legislation could be "overly broad in its definition of adult entertainment content".

In 2013 ATVOD conducted a survey into how easy the public think it is for under-18s to access hardcore pornography on the Internet and whether the public think that regulation to prevent such access is important.

ATVOD subsequently organised a conference for representatives from the UK's adult entertainment industry and children's charities in conjunction with Queen Mary University of London.

In 2014 ATVOD published the results of research carried out in December 2013, tracking the actions of 45,000 UK internet users under the age of 18.