Access to certain pornographic sites may soon be blocked by Arcom without the approval of a judge. A bill introducing the new powers of the French telecoms regulator will be presented on May 10, 2023 to the Council of Ministers before being submitted to the National Assembly and the Senate in the coming months. The project also allows Arcom to banish an already convicted cyberstalker from social networks.
For several years, the French government has been fighting to prevent minors from having access to pornographic sites. On the one hand, the ministers want to develop an application that would allow the authentication of an adult user while preserving their anonymity. A project announced in February 2023 which could see the light of day before the end of the year.
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And on the other, they want require sites to confirm the majority of their users, whether with a bank card or a certificate of majority (compatible with the application mentioned above). And not with a simple button. Obviously, sites such as Youporn, Pornhub and others do not want to use an authentication system, because that would necessarily lower their audience. And so their income. In protest, Pornhub even went so far as to locally shut down its service in the United States. This shows how porn sites are not ready to easily comply.
Arcom will soon be able to decide alone to block a porn site
However, the government would already have a parade for all those who refuse to comply with the rules: strengthen the powers of Arcom, the regulatory authority born of the merger between the CSA and Hadopi. In an interview with theAFPJean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, announces that a bill will be presented to the Council of Ministers of May 10, 2023. Or the day after tomorrow.
This text, if adopted, would allow Arcom to impose the outright blocking of a website by operators. And this without asking a judge. Currently, the Arcom must go through the court to block a site. In return, Arcom will have to define the different authorized age verification systems in the coming months.
The text, which will be presented to the Senate in the coming months and then to the National Assembly at the start of the school year, also offers two other weapons to Arcom: the banishment from social networks of people convicted of cyberbullying and a power of formal notice to stop the publication on the Internet of a media subject to a ban in Europe. The goal of the Minister Delegate: “secure and regulate the digital space”.