In a move to make the Internet safer for kids, the U.K. government has said it will legally require pornography websites to install methods of age verification by next April.

As part of the Digital Economy Act, companies not implementing age verification on their websites could find themselves blocked by Internet service providers. It’s thought the verification will take the form of users being asked for credit card details, such as gambling websites are required to do in the U.K.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport called the move “a milestone in the government’s work to make the U.K. the safest place in the world for children to be online.” The government also said it would appoint a regulator to police porn sites, which could be the British Board of Film Classification.

Age verification is seen a positive move from some parties, including Internet safety charity Childnet, which said in a press release that preventing children from exposure to pornographic material “is incredibly important, given the effect it can have on young people.”

A report by The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 2016 revealed that online pornography was negatively affecting British children’s development, stating that 65 percent of 15- to 16-year-olds and 48 percent of 11- to 16-year-olds had viewed such content on the Internet.

Not everyone was so positive about the move, though. Jim Killock, executive director for the Open Rights Group, wrote in a blog post that creating a database of the U.K.’s porn habits might lead to what he called “Ashley Madison style hacks.” Given that Brits are some of the world’s biggest online porn consumers, such a hack would be worrying. Killock said that sex education in schools was the answer to healthy sexual development, not fixing “a social problem with technology.”

Jerry Barnett, a free speech campaigner and author of the book Porn Panic!, told The Guardian, “This law is the culmination of years of lobbying by a wide variety of state and private interests, and will fundamentally change the internet in the U.K. and possibly globally.”

Barnett said the move was not about protecting children as much as it was about the government having more power over Internet content, not just pornography but potentially mere nudity on a site not associated with pornography. “For the first time, the government has the power to block websites, en masse, without court orders,” he said. “This is a first in a democracy.”

Perhaps considering this gray area, Digital Minister Matt Hancock called the new scheme “complex” and said the government will have until April next year to work things out. Another thing to consider is that it’s thought that about 30 percent of people over 18 in the U.K. don’t have a credit card, although it’s believed other methods of verification will be implemented as well.

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