On Tuesday March 8, Arcom (ex-CSA) announced that the Paris court had been seized in order to obtain the blocking, from France, of five pornographic sites, including Pornhub and Xvideos.
The Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom), a new entity born on January 1, 2022 from the merger between the CSA and Hadopi, is preparing its weapons. This Tuesday, March 8, the audiovisual gendarme announced that he had taken legal action to obtain the blocking of five pornographic sites due to the lack of effective verification of the age of their visitors. The first entities targeted are Pornhub, Pornhub, XHamster, Xnxx and Xvidéos. Previously, Arcom had sent an injunction to the platforms to bring them into compliance, the bailiffs not having noted any positive development at the end of the time limit.
“The formal notices issued by the regulator not having been acted upon to date, the president of Arcom seized the president of the Paris court to order the main internet access providers to prevent access to the sites in questionexplains Arcom in a press release. If justice, in the long term, so decides, the sites of the publishers will no longer be accessible from French territory or via their addresses located on the territory. Internet users who seek to consult these sites will then be automatically redirected to an information page explaining the reason for this blocking.“.
Youporn and Redtube also in the viewfinder
Arcom also indicates that it reserves the right to appeal to the President of the Paris Court of Justice if it finds that the blocked sites are made accessible from mirror sites and that they can still be consulted by minors. In addition, it may ask the judge to order the delisting of sites by search engines and directories.
In addition, Arcom today sent the publisher of the Youporn and Redtube sites a request for observations which may possibly be followed by formal notices for disregard of the provisions of article 227-24 of the Penal Code. Since the vote of the law against domestic violence in 2020, an amendment specifies that the sites can no longer be satisfied with asking Internet users to declare that they are of legal age. Except that to date, there is no alternative solution.
The Cnil, in its deliberation of June 3, 2021, had pointed out that “the implementation of technical procedures for verifying the age majority of users is likely to lead to the implementation of personal data processing”. On the legislative side, we therefore stick to one line: it is up to the sites to find the solution and in the meantime, they are outlawed.