Sided in vain since December to prevent the access of minors into their contents, five pornographic sites are in the viewfinder of justice, which has been seized by ARCOM, the media controller.
Le Monde with AFP
The Media Regulator, the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (or ARCOM, Ex-Audiovisual Superior Council [CSA]), seized justice to request blocking five pornographic sites – Pornhub , Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx – sued in vain since December to prevent minor access to their contents, has announced Tuesday, March 8th.
Seized in 2020 by three associations – the Observatory of Parenting and Digital Education (Open), the National Union of Family Associations (UNAF) and the French Council of Associations for the Rights of the Child ( COFRADE) – The CSA had put in due course at the end of 2021 these publishers “to comply with the legal obligation” to block the access of minors to their contents, within a period of fifteen days. Several child protection associations have been alerting for months on the recrudescence of viewing violent and very raw images by increasingly young minors.
“We decided to seize” justice, because the “facts” addressed to these sites were not followed up, announced the President of the ARCOM, Roch-Olivier Maitre, in the margin a press conference on the representation of women on television and radio. The ARCOM has “seized the President of the Paris Judicial Tribunal to order the main providers of Internet access to prevent access to these sites, has developed the proceeding in a statement.
“If justice decides, the publishers’ sites will no longer be accessible from French territory or by their addresses on the territory,” says ARCOM, born in January of the Fusion of the CSA and the High Authority for the dissemination of works and protection of rights on the Internet (HADOPI). Internet users “will then automatically be redirected to an information page explaining” the blocking, is it added.
Dereferencement
If applicable, ARCOM can also grasp the justice if “blocked sites are made accessible from other addresses (” mirror sites “)” and “remain accessible to minors”. He will also be able to “ask the judge to order” their dereferencing “by the search engines and the directories”.
The Penal Code forbids minors to pornographic photos and videos and the domestic violence law of July 30, 2020 states that the companies concerned can not exonerate on their responsibilities by just asking for a Customer if he is the major. Pornhub and Xhamster, established in Cyprus, belong to the big group specialist of Porn Mindgeek, also owner of Youporn, which is a legally domiciled in Luxembourg. Xvideos and Xnxx are installed in the Czech Republic and Tukif in Portugal. At the end of December, Tukif had counted against the CFS, considering that other sites, like YouPorn, are not targeted.
Initiatives are multiplying in Europe to try to prevent minor access to pornographic sites. In 2019, the British government had adopted a text to compel the authentication of the age.