It’s Jacquie and Michel’s turn to be in the sights of Arcom. After Pornhub and several other French pornographic sites, the regulatory authority criticizes the platform for not preventing minors from viewing adult content effectively enough. It thus demands that a better barrier be put in place, failing which the operators will have to block access to the site.
It’s a soap opera that lasts for months. Since the July 2020 law against domestic violence came into force, pornographic sites have been required to set up an age verification process to prevent minors from visiting their platforms, otherwise they risk being blocked pure and simple in France. However, this obligation poses problems for the publishers of the sites in question, which has led to a legal battle with many twists and turns.
While the authorities will rule on the fate of Pornhub and several of its acolytes on September 6, Arcom, the organization responsible (among other things) for ensuring age control on pornographic sites, has a new target in his sights: Jacquie and Michel. However, the site is not the worst student of all. Indeed, the latter has been offering its own visitor age verification solution for some time, called My18Pass.
Jacquie and Michel could soon be blocked in France
Its operation is relatively simple: to access the site, the user must enter the details of his credit card, which is supposed to prove that he is of legal age. Particularly proud of its technology, Ares, one of Jacquie and Michel’s two publishers, even markets it to other regulated sites, particularly related to the sale of alcohol or gambling.
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However, Ares does not seem to have taken into account the possibility of obtaining a bank card before he turns 18. Thus, as Arcom points out, “the technical process put in place […] is not reliable insofar as the use of information relating to a bank card whose holder is a minor allows the creation of a My18Pass account”. In other words, any teenager with his own bank card can visit Jacquie and Michel without any problem.
Formal notice by Arcom, the platform is therefore now required to quickly offer a solution deemed more effective, failing which it is once again exposed to blocking by ISPs. As our colleagues from Numerama remind us, this case comes in a particularly troubled period for Jacquie and Michel, implicated in cases of rape, sexual violence and pimping following an investigation by Mediapart.