Starting Saturday, January 11, Internet users will have to prove their age before accessing certain pornographic content platforms. This new rule and its implementation, which has been discussed for years, will be closely monitored by a "technical working group", announced this Friday, January 10 by the Minister Delegate for AI and Digital Affairs, Clara Chappaz. This group will be open to all players in the sector, she added, quoted by AFP. The former head of French Tech organized a round table today with child protection associations, representatives of age verification solution providers and pornographic sites, as well as Roch-Olivier Maistre, president of Arcom.
The opportunity to take stock of the implementation of the new rules, twenty-four hours before their implementation.
Why this new age verification rule?
Since a 2020 law, X sites are supposed to check the age of their visitors for the purposes of protecting minors. The objective is "that no user accesses pornographic content until they have proven that they are of legal age". Children and adolescents are therefore not supposed to access online content reserved for adults.
However, "today, with one click, young people have access to content (…) that is extremely shocking", recalled the Minister Delegate for AI and Digital Affairs, speaking to Franceinfo this Friday. According to Arcom, 2.3 million minors visit X sites in France every month: minors represent 12% of the sites' audience.
While the age control rule had already been part of the legal arsenal since 2020, it had been struggling to be implemented for years. It was ultimately Arcom that was appointed by the legislator to resolve this thorny problem, with the SREN law of May 21, 2024, which aims to secure and regulate the digital space. Last October, the audiovisual regulator published a "technical reference" that specifies the terms of this age verification, with a timetable for the measures to be adopted by X sites.
What are the next steps?
From Saturday, January 11, pornographic sites must implement a system that goes beyond the simple declaration of majority. The latter must be secure and compliant with privacy protection standards. They will be able to offer their visitors the option of using their bank card to prove their age, on a temporary basis.
But from April 11, they will have to have opted for a long-term solution such as a "double anonymity" system. The idea is to go through a trusted third party, to whom the Internet user will prove their majority. The third party will then issue a certificate of majority to the pornographic site, without specifying the identity of the applicant.
"From tomorrow (Editor's note: Saturday, January 11), sites will have to comply," reminded the Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, to our colleagues. This under penalty of sanction. Because from April 11, Arcom will be able to order the blocking of bad students by telecom operators, as well as their delisting. Recalcitrants also risk a fine of up to 4% of their global turnover.
Are all pornographic sites affected?
The fact remains that the measure currently concerns sites based in France and outside the European Union. For sites located in other European countries such as PornHub or YouPorn domiciled in Cyprus, Arcom will have to go through a long procedure to ensure compliance with the new rules. According to our colleagues at l’Informé, Arcom will need to have:
- a decree from the Ministries of Culture and Digital Affairs;
- a request from Paris asking the European capital to act.
- if the reaction is not up to par, or if the country does not have a national law on the matter, the French authority may decide to act, but it will have to notify the European Commission.
It should be noted that this entire procedure, in the event of an emergency, could be done a posteriori, provided that the urgency in question can be justified. In order to remove any ambiguity, a decree will list the actors concerned.
In the meantime, some X sites are playing for time, for cost reasons, but also for fear of seeing the traffic on their sites drop, reported our colleagues at Politico last December. Will the new obligation achieve its objective of making pornographic content inaccessible to minors? While some are already asking the question of circumventing the measures via a VPN, others believe that this is already a more than welcome first step.
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