The Senate adopted an amendment strengthening the verification of the age of visitors to pornographic sites.
Clicking on the famous "I confirm that I am 18 years old" will no longer be enough. We will have to say more. The Senate thus adopted, on Wednesday, an amendment aimed at blocking access to pornographic sites which would not offer an effective age verification system. A judge may, at the request of the CSA, order the blocking of access by Internet service providers (ISPs), or the dereferencing of pornographic sites which infringe article 227-24 of the Criminal Code. The latter already sanctions by three years imprisonment and 75,000 euros fine any site containing pornographic content as soon as the content is "likely to be seen by a minor". Tabled by the senator and rapporteur Marie Mercier (LR), the amendment comes within the framework of the bill on domestic violence. Le Parisien reminds us that the president himself had already mentioned the creation of devices making it possible to really check the age of people visiting X sites. He had given web players six months to set up parental controls by default, otherwise it would be necessary to legislate. A sentence said on November 20, 2019, during a speech at Unesco.
"In violation of the law, many websites have given up on implementing a real age control for people viewing these images. All it takes is a click, by which the minor certifies that he is over eighteen, so that thousands of pornographic videos are accessible to him ", justifies the amendment, reported by LCI.
The new reinforcement would be based on the France Connect authenticator, used for administrative identifications, for example on tax or health insurance websites. There is also the option of connection with a payment card.
Sites criticize this news
Some people mention the possibility of easily circumventing this control. Auditioned at the National Assembly, the site Jacquie et Michel said in Le Parisien: "We have expressed our doubts about the real effectiveness of these technical blocking measures. They will be easy to circumvent with the use of more in addition to widespread VPN services. "
VPN, or "virtual private network", for web novices, allows you to maintain your anonymity on the Internet, by encrypting our data. This would allow users to consult sites pretending to be a user outside of France, effectively bypassing these technical barriers. And the payment card is not flawless either, from the age of 16, everyone can have one.
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