Legislative and technical advances aimed at protecting children are now shaping the contours of a promising market, especially in Europe (AFP / Archives / NICOLAS ASFOURI)
“On the internet, no one knows you are a dog.” This famous legend of a drawing published in 1993 still illustrates the difficulty in verifying the age of Internet users, but legislative and technical advances aimed at protecting children are now shaping the contours of a promising market, especially in Europe.
In France, the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) recently gave notice to 5 of the most visited pornographic sites to find a solution within two weeks to prohibit their access to minors, on pain of being blocked.
At the same time in Germany, several pornographic platforms could become inaccessible if they do not set up age verification systems. Several major portals are affected, including YouPorn and Pornhub, according to Der Spiegel.
In the fall of 2019, however, the United Kingdom, which was preparing to become one of the first countries to impose age verification, had finally given up, disappointing the many companies preparing to enter the market.
– A measure not very popular –
The government had justified this reversal by the risks for private life and because the solutions envisaged were too easily circumvented.
“Boris Johnson (conservative party) thought that it was not a very popular measure before an election”, regrets Iain Corby, the executive director of the Avpa which federates the providers of age verification solutions, in an interview with AFP.
“Since then, the creators of these technologies have diversified into other sectors,” he explains. In particular, they have found use for their systems in smaller markets such as alcohol, tobacco or gambling sites.
British parliamentarians are also trying to reinstate age verification on pornographic sites in the new law on online safety, but this will “probably not have concrete effect until 2025”, said Mr Corby.
The hopes of the industry therefore rest on the European Union, and in particular on the Audiovisual Services Directive (AVMSD), revised in 2018, which provides that video-on-demand platforms really prevent minors from accessing services. potentially harmful content for them.
In September, the European Commission called to order the member states which had not transposed this directive within the allotted time, including Cyprus, where several pornographic platforms like Pornhub have taken up residence.
– Age verification on 30% of sites –
Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx ordered by the Superior Audiovisual Council (CSA) to prevent their access to minors (AFP / Archives / Valery HACHE)
To verify the age of an Internet user without asking him for his full identity, there is “no miracle solution”, considers the Cnil, the French gendarme of personal data.
Either identity documents are required and analyzed by a trusted third party, which only transmits to the requesting site the user’s age, or it is necessary to go through an estimate of the age.
In any case, “it is a big friction. As long as it is not generalized by the law, those who put it in place deprive themselves of a significant part of their traffic”, explains to AFP Nils Lataillade , co-founder of The Poken Company, which uses the Yoti technology solution for its application of adult content.
Yoti, who claims 500 million verifications to date, estimates the age from a photo of the user, with an accuracy of 1.5 years (according to the company), and keeps this information in memory for future reference. reuse on other sites.
This reuse is also essential to prevent the user from having to repeat the verification over and over again. Thus the EUConsent consortium, born out of a call for tenders from the European Commission, aims to make the various players interoperable so that they can exchange the verifications already carried out.
In test from February 2022, the device will be ready in the summer, promises Iain Corby, who is one of the promoters. “Companies will then have to agree on how they want to be remunerated for having carried out the verification. We are creating an open and competitive market”, estimated according to Avpa at 4 billion euros in the European Union by now five to seven years.
“A hypothesis which is perhaps not immediately obvious is that 30% of sites will have to one way or another to verify the age” of their visitors, estimates the association, which counts in particular on the advertising actors , including Google and Facebook.
According to the European GDPR regulation, which came into force in 2018, the collection of valid consent is only valid above an age threshold set between 13 and 16 years old depending on the country. A legal aspect largely ignored for the moment, for lack of being able to identify them.
© 2022 AFP
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