The law against this has existed for two years. The website has been running for three.

The story

Secretly shot videos of women and girls walking in shorts or leggings are being uploaded to a website where paying users watch them, with titles such as "Sunny Day Shopper" and "Spanish brunette," and around 400 clips of unknowing victims filmed as they walk, buy food or shop. Locations include Stratford Westfield, Oxford Street and Tube stations in London, and many of those filmed appear to be under 16. Victims' faces feature on thumbnails to entice viewers to subscribe for £50. Personal trainer Eranta Ntatsi, 29, discovered she had been filmed wearing leggings on a north London high street and said it felt like being raped in the moment. The video was available to watch for three years before she found it. Under the Online Safety Act, sites must assess the risk of this kind of content circulating and take steps to stop it appearing, and non-consensual image-based abuse is a criminal offence. Met police said the incident had not been reported to them. A government spokesperson said the state will "deploy the full power" it has to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

The reframe

The Online Safety Act's duty to prevent exactly this kind of content did not arrive after this website started operating. It was already law while the site ran for three years, uploaded around 400 clips, and charged fifty pounds a subscription. Ms Ntatsi's video sat online, watchable, for the entire period during which a statutory duty existed requiring platforms to assess and act on this specific risk. The rule was in force throughout. Its force is not the same as its effect.

What the government spokesperson describes as deploying "the full power of the state" is a statement made after Metro's reporting, not before it, and about a website that Metro found rather than one enforcement located first. The Met confirmed Ms Ntatsi's case has not been reported to them, meaning the machinery capable of investigating a criminal offence has not yet been asked to. The law exists. The duty exists. What has been missing for three years is not the rule but the attention that would have made the rule mean anything to the people it was supposed to protect. A statute that nobody enforces until a newspaper does the enforcing agency's discovery work for it is, for three years running, a rule that exists mainly on the page.