Will Pornhub, Pornhub, XHamster, Xvideos and Xnxx still be accessible this summer? The court will deliver its decision on July 7, he announced today, after a blocking request initiated by Arcom. The French audiovisual and digital policeman tries to enforce the legal obligation to prevent access to their content by minors.
These companies – including MG Freesites, which publishes the Pornhub platform, domiciled in Cyprus and belonging to the world porn leader Mindgeek, or Web Group Czech, which publishes Xvideos and Xnxx, founded by Frenchman Stéphane Pacaud – refuse to set up a verification. age because they consider the law insufficiently clear on the expected technical modalities.
Despite the rejection of these reasons by the Court of Cassation in January, they still demand the publication by Arcom of “guidelines” and regret not having been concerned by the experimentation of a mechanism recently announced by the government. for implementation in September. Beyond that, they claim that Arcom did not correctly notify its intention to take blocking measures to the European authorities, as required by a Community directive.
12% minors in their audience
Publishing guidelines is “a trap the sites want us to get into. We are fighting so that it does not take place, ”said Thomas Rohmer, founder of Open, one of the child protection associations which seized the regulator at the end of 2021. Access to pornographic content by minors can, according to him, be prevented by switching to a paid business model.
For Arcom lawyer Nicolas Jouanin, these new site requests are “obviously dilatory”. “In this case, everything is done to make an extremely simple legal issue as complex as possible,” he pleaded. “The sites have taken this procedure hostage, it has been dragging on for months”. According to him, “Arcom is not here in censorship of pornography” but tries to “put an end to a serious disturbance to public order”.
According to Médiamétrie’s Global Internet Audience measurement, in the 1st quarter of 2022, all porn sites recorded a cumulative average monthly audience of 18.3 million unique visitors in France, including 12% of minors (i.e. more than 2 ,2 millions).
New notices
On Tuesday, Arcom announced a new round of formal notices targeting three pornographic sites and the launch of legal proceedings against two other platforms belonging to MG Freesites.
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.