Ofcom has continued to tighten enforcement of the Online Safety Act 2023 (OSA) in relation to online pornography, issuing two further penalties in February 2026 against operators of adult websites for failing to deploy legally required age-assurance measures.
The larger of the two, imposed on 8579 LLC, amounts to £1.35 million and is the highest fine yet imposed in this strand of OSA enforcement. Read alongside Ofcom’s earlier action against AVS Group and other providers, the new decisions show that the regulator has moved beyond programme oversight and into sustained, portfolio-level enforcement of the Act’s child-protection duties, coupled with strict use of its information-gathering powers.
The enforcement backdrop
These two decisions sit within the enforcement programme that Ofcom launched in January 2025 to monitor compliance with statutory age-checking duties for pornographic services. That programme initially focused on Part 5 services, which publish or display their own pornographic content, and was then widened in July 2025 to cover Part 3 services, namely providers that allow users to upload or generate pornographic content. The latest fines concern that expanded Part 3 regime. Both cases also follow earlier enforcement, including the December 2025 AVS Group decision, and therefore form part of a growing line of cases rather than isolated interventions.
In each case, Ofcom found a breach of section 12 of the OSA (safety duties protecting children), which requires providers of Part 3 services likely to be accessed by children to ensure that children are prevented from encountering pornographic content by means of ‘highly effective age assurance’. In each case, Ofcom also found a separate breach of section 102(8), after the provider failed to respond in time to a statutory information request issued during the investigation.
Both decisions therefore combine enforcement of the core child-safety duty with enforcement of Ofcom’s procedural powers to compel information. In both cases, the regulator imposed an initial financial penalty, required corrective action, and backed that up with daily penalties for any continuing non-compliance. Each provider was also ordered to supply a complete list of all pornographic sites it operates.
Parallel breaches, different outcomes
The first decision concerned Kick Online Entertainment S.A., in relation to the adult platform motherless.com. Ofcom had opened the investigation shortly after the July 2025 expansion of its enforcement programme to Part 3 services. In its final (confirmation) decision, issued under section 132 OSA, the regulator concluded that Kick Online had failed to implement highly effective age assurance on the service for a defined period after the Part 3 duties took effect. Ofcom stated that, following a provisional decision, the company later introduced an age-assurance method capable of meeting the statutory threshold. The regulator imposed a £800,000 fine for the section 12 breach and a further £30,000 for failure to comply in time with a statutory information request. It also required Kick Online to provide a full list of all pornographic sites it operates, backed by a £200 daily penalty if it did not do so within the period specified.
The second decision, against 8579 LLC, was broader in scope and more severe in outcome. Ofcom’s investigation covered a number of adult services, including crazyporn.xxx, hoes.tube and love4porn.com, and found that highly effective age assurance had not been implemented on those services during the relevant period. For justpornflix.com, the regulator concluded that the section 12 breach was still continuing at the time of the final decision. Ofcom originally also examined 4kporn.xxx and 429.xxx, but did not make final findings in relation to those sites after identifying an apparent change of provider before the provisional decision stage, from 8579 LLC to Reply Buzzer Ltd.
Unlike the Kick case, where the provider had introduced a compliant age-assurance method before the final decision, the 8579 LLC case still involved an ongoing substantive breach on one service. Ofcom accordingly imposed a larger penalty of £1.35 million for the section 12 contravention, together with a further £50,000 for breach of section 102(8). It also ordered 8579 LLC to implement highly effective age assurance on justpornflix.com by a specified deadline, backed by a £1,000 daily penalty for any continuing failure. As with Kick Online, Ofcom separately required the company to produce a full list of all sites it operates, with an additional daily penalty for delay.
What the latest fines reveal (and what remains unclear)
On the whole, the investigation into Kick concerned a single principal service and concluded after the operator introduced compliant age-assurance measures, resulting in a lower financial penalty. By contrast, the case against 8579 LLC involved multiple platforms and an ongoing compliance failure, which was reflected in a larger fine and stronger corrective directions.
Taken together, the two February 2026 decisions (Kick and 8579 LLC) sharpen the picture already visible from the AVS investigation and earlier provisional decisions. First, Ofcom is enforcing the OSA age-assurance regime across operators’ site portfolios, not only in relation to single services viewed in isolation. Secondly, it is treating failures to answer statutory information requests as a distinct compliance issue attracting independent sanctions, rather than a secondary procedural matter. Thirdly, the regulator is using a layered enforcement model: substantive penalties for breach of section 12, separate penalties for breach of section 102(8), mandatory corrective steps, and daily-rate penalties designed to bring providers into line quickly.
These investigations matter less for their procedural detail than for the enforcement pattern they reveal. The OSA’s child-protection duties for pornographic services are now being applied with increasing financial penalties and close scrutiny of operators running multiple domains. The February 2026 decisions (including the record £1.35 million fine imposed on 8579 LLC) indicate that Ofcom is establishing a clear enforcement track under the Act, combining sanctions for failures in age-assurance with strict oversight of providers’ transparency and responsiveness to regulatory information requests. However, public visibility over enforcement outcomes remains an unresolved point: Ofcom publishes the penalties it imposes under the OSA but has declined to disclose whether those fines have actually been paid.
Alexandros Antoniou, University of Essex
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