Three new pornographic sites have been given formal notice by Arcom to prevent access to their content by minors, under penalty of exposing themselves to a blocking of their service by the courts, according to a press release from the French regulator. audiovisual published on Tuesday.
Arcom, which has been trying for more than a year to complete a first blocking procedure targeting five sites, this time targets the companies Technius Ltd and Techpump Solutions SL for “respectively one and two pornographic sites that they publish”, xHamsterLive on one side, Heureporno and Folieporno on the other.
According to the decisions of the authority, two of them are accessible after “a simple declaration of majority on which it is enough to click”, while a third “is not subject to any verification device of the majority “.
Redtube in the viewfinder
The regulator also announced the referral to the President of the Paris Court of Justice against the Redtube site of the Cypriot MG Freesites, property of the world porn leader Mindgeek (recently acquired by a Canadian fund) and publisher of the Pornhub platform.
At the end of 2021, Arcom had launched a first series of formal notices against five sites (Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx), summoned to comply with the legal obligation to effectively block access by minors to their content.
The penal code prohibits exposing minors to pornographic photos and videos and the law on domestic violence of July 30, 2020 specifies that the companies concerned cannot exonerate themselves from their responsibilities by simply asking an Internet user if he is major.
Towards an age verification system
The next public hearing in this case is to be held Thursday in Paris, after the rejection by the Court of Cassation of a priority question of constitutionality filed by MG Freesites and the failure of mediation between the targeted publishers and Arcom.
The government wants to bring this legal battle to a successful conclusion this year and is working on the implementation of a technical solution for age verification known as “double anonymity”, in order to respond to the arguments of sites which say they have no solution. satisfactory to verify the age of their visitors.
In the meantime, the Cnil, guardian of the privacy of the French, has declared itself in favor of the use of other systems, such as the validation of age by the payment card or the analysis of facial features.