Unsurprisingly, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the decision of the Paris Court of Justice in the context of the blocking of several pornographic sites requested by two youth protection associations.
On Thursday May 19, 2022, the Paris Court of Appeal rejected the request to block access to several pornographic sites by Internet service providers (ISPs), requested by two child protection associations, The Voice of the Child and e-Childhood. These two associations criticized the sites for not preventing the exposure of minors to their content. The decision of the Court of Appeal confirms the first judgment rendered in October 2021 by the Paris court.
The Court of Appeal criticized the two associations for not having “not acted nor attempted to act” against the targeted sites, even though their publishers are easily identifiable and communicate an address located in the European Union. Indeed, as the judgment explains, “Applicants to a blocking measure with Internet access providers must establish the impossibility of acting effectively and quickly against the host, against the publisher or against the author of the disputed content”. The request for blocking of access by the ISPs can thus only occur as a last resort, which had already been reproached to the associations by the judicial court.
Pornographic sites still under pressure
As we already wrote in October, this highly publicized and symbolic complaint was also based on recent legislative developments. Since July 20, 2020, letting Internet users access porn content without giving themselves the means to properly verify their age is indeed a crime. And the button “I am over 18” planned on the sites concerned does not constitute a sufficient measure. Despite many options being considered, there is currently no solution to this problem. Be that as it may, the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom), a merger of the CSA and Hadopi, is now in charge of these files.
The new authority takes its new task to heart. On Wednesday April 27, she gave formal notice to the company MG Freesites Ltd, which publishes the porn sites Redtube and YouPorn, asking it to adopt measures within 15 days to comply with the legislation in force. Last March, she also announced that the Paris court had been seized to obtain the blocking from France of five pornographic sites, including Pornhub and Xvideos.