You may have noticed it during an unexpected search followed by an unfortunate click: content from YouPorn, RedTube, and Pornhub is no longer viewable on the French web. The Aylo group, owner of these platforms, preferred to block access from France rather than comply with the new age verification requirements imposed by the State.
A decree from the Ministry of Culture, published in March, gave 17 pornographic sites until June 6 to implement a system preventing minors from accessing their content. Some, like Aylo, have therefore closed their doors to French Internet users; others were clearly trying to slip through the net. Some have just been caught by the patrol.
4X in the crosshairs
Indeed, the Arcom (Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority) is definitely keeping a close eye on things. It has just issued a warning to five sites—Xnxx, Xvideos, Xhamster, Xhamsterlive, and Tnaflix—based in Cyprus or the Czech Republic that do not verify the age of their visitors. The warning comes in the form of a letter of observations. This is the first step before blocking or delisting.
Regarding the three sites mentioned at the beginning of the article, the press release includes a few words about them. Arcom writes that it did not have to intervene, because Aylo decided "to withdraw them from the French market to avoid its obligations, thus no longer directly offering pornographic content in France.".
X sites do not want to take responsibility
In its defense, Aylo had put forward an argument that was certainly well chosen to avoid responsibility, but which nevertheless raises a fundamental question. The group proclaims its refusal to collect personal data of this type, for obvious reasons of anonymization and privacy protection. It advocates for another approach based on upstream age verification, directly via the device's operating system or a third-party application.
In short, while the legislator's intention seems clear, the implementation remains unclear. The European Commission has, however, taken up the issue. It is working on a pan-European age verification tool, inspired by the health pass: an application capable of certifying digital majority without disclosing identity. This system, initially designed for social networks, could also be applied to adult sites.
However, European legislation would not allow the use of a chosen application to be imposed. In an article from France Info dealing with this subject, an anonymous source mentions the desire to "implicitly impose" on platforms the use of such a tool when it sees the light of day (by this summer).
Source: Arcom
0 Comments