It’s one of the largest porn sites in the world specializing in amateur videos and webcam models.
The high-reach porn portal xHamster, based in Cyprus, is now threatened with a network block due to disregard for the protection of children and young people.
“At xHamster we have a definitive decision against which no legal remedies are possible,” says Tobias Schmid, the director of the state media agency in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Other portal operators are currently still suing the notices affecting them before the Higher Administrative Court for North Rhine-Westphalia. From the point of view of his authority, the legal situation is “fairly clear”: “It is pornography, there is no age verification and German law is applicable,” said Schmid.
Problems with xHamster
▶︎ Because xHamster has so far refused to communicate with the supervisory authority and has not implemented any of the measures to make its offer legal, the network operator has now been approached. These are among others Vodafone and Telekom.
“We have informed them of the fact that there is illegal content on their networks that must be blocked and are currently listening to them. Then we decide, ”says Schmid.
“We only implement access blocks technically if they are legally ordered,” says a Telekom spokesman. At Vodafone it was said: “We are currently working on the legal assessment.”
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That’s what the porn portal says
xHamster announces that network blocking is “far from an optimal solution”. Through them, young people would only switch to smaller sites where they would be exposed to more extreme content.
The company is ready to work with the German authorities. Currently, age checks are the only way to keep young people away from adult content. Such a technology can be used. But this must be done across the industry.
“I hardly know anyone to whom we have sent more letters and e-mails than xHamster and we have received exactly zero answers,” said Schmid, on the other hand. However, the portal is free at any time to comply with the law and thus to end the proceedings against itself.
He was “somewhat astonished” that one of the network operators had hired a law firm and asked for a generous extension of the deadline and that “he was not accepting his socio-political responsibility any faster,” said Schmid. After all, it is about the endangerment of children and adolescents. It would be regrettable if they remained defenseless for months.
Children and young people should be protected
“After all, the content is clearly illegal. If that doesn’t work better now, the legislator has to look at it again, ”said Schmid. “Every 12-year-old today has a smartphone and can switch from TikTok to these offers.”
In the past, access to the network was via the home PC. “But the parents no longer have access to it today.” The situation has simply changed. “This is not about freedom of expression, but about a business model that makes use of an illegal practice.”
A large number of parents in Germany seem to be behind the procedure, as a representative opinion poll on behalf of the Children’s Fund showed: 93 percent of the parents questioned were in favor of a reliable age check and harsher penalties for violations.
Colorful and controversial group
The xHamster, founded in 2007, has been causing controversy for years and has been blocked more often by individual governments.
The company is said to be owned by the two Russians, Oleg Netepenko and Dmitri Gusew.
When the US government put nearly 800,000 federal employees on compulsory leave or worked without pay due to a budget crisis from December 2018 to January 2019, xHamster offered all affected government employees free access to the website’s premium pornographic content.
In 2017, the provider developed a sex doll called xHamsterina, which was adapted to the preferences of the users.
A statistical report published by xHamster in 2020 showed that Baden-Württemberg and its state capital Stuttgart have the highest proportion of female users in all of Germany with 24 percent. Bavaria and Berlin follow with just over 20 percent, followed by Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein and Thuringia. Porn users in general are increasing the fastest in Berlin and Thuringia.
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