Will France have access to these favorite porn sites in 2022?

• The four most viewed pornographic sites in France as well as Tukif.com were put on notice on Monday by the Superior Audiovisual Council.

• The CSA accuses them of not sufficiently locking the access of their content to minors and threatens them with blocking in France.

• A serious threat which however quickly touches big limits.

Pornhub, xHamster, Xvideos, Xnxx and Tukif.

These five flagship pornographic sites - the first four are among the 25 most visited sites in France and the first of them, Pornhub, are threatened with a total blocking of their access in France by the Superior Audiovisual Council ( THAT'S IT).

The latter asks these sites to better lock access to their content to minors in formal notices published on Monday.

So will the French people start 2022 without these sites cumulating, in 2020 and on average, an average of 130 million visits per day worldwide? 

takes stock.

What does the CSA reproach Pornhub and company?

The Penal Code prohibits exposing minors to pornographic photos and videos and the law on domestic violence of July 30, 2020 specifies that the simple request to the user to know if he is major or not, present on all the sites pornographic offenses, can not be considered sufficient.

In the event of non-respect of this obligation within fifteen days, the CSA indicated that it would seize the judicial court of Paris.

It will then be up to the courts to order or not Internet service providers to block access to the offending sites throughout France.

Can we ask for more than the age of the Internet user who connects to a porn site?

Already in October, two associations for the protection of children, e-Enfance and la Voix de l'Enfant, had taken the matter to court to force six French Internet service providers to block pornographic sites for the same reasons [the facility access for minors]. A request refused by the court, considering that the objective, as legitimate as it is, did not allow to circumvent the conditions set by the law to obtain a blocking decision, recalls the digital lawyer Alexandre Archambault. This is the whole problem of the formal notice of the CSA. If the simple request of age is not enough, what more can you do? It is difficult to verify the identity of an Internet user, "except to enter into very intrusive devices, such as asking for an identity card, which the National Commission fordata processing and freedoms (Cnil) formally prohibited, ”warns the lawyer.

Another technique could be to request a zero euro financial transaction, thus requiring a bank card.

The problem, in addition to the always intrusive side, is that it is possible to have a bank card even as a minor in France, which compromises the objective - even if the measure already made it possible to limit access.

As a consequence of these far from perfect solutions, "some pornographic sites already express the technical impossibility of better controlling access to minors despite their good will", concludes Alexandre Archambault.

An argument already brandished last October and which could again prevent the blocking of Pornhub or xHamster despite the importance of the stake.

The same problem arises in particular for online gaming sites.

A national or European issue?

These sites are not hosted in France, which again limits the power of action. Pornhub and xHamster are established in Cyprus, Xvideos and XNXX in the Czech Republic and Tukif, in Portugal. Another solution mentioned was to impose parental control, but it comes up against two limits: first, "technical intermediaries cannot monitor what their users are doing," recalls Alexandre Archambault. Basically, they can't enforce said parental controls, in the name of free movement on the internet. Second, if the rule only concerns France, it obliges Apple, for example, to configure its iPhones differently for this country than for the rest of the world, which the company may not appreciate.

Apple could also regret a decrease in the consumer experience, and therefore oppose it all the more.

“Any purely national policy not only contributes to fragmenting European law but also has little chance of success.

We need consistency across Europe to weigh on such a strong industry, ”argues the lawyer.

By losing minors, do porn sites lose big?

Side wallet, the ultimatum of the CSA carries little weight. The frequentation of minors does not bring much to the targeted sites. “Advertising is almost non-existent there. L'Oréal or Nike, for example, will never want to appear there, a question of brand image ”, indicates François Levêque, professor of economics at Mines-ParisTech and specialist in the economy of pornography. Additionally, Pornhub & Company's revenue comes from two main sources: paid subscriptions and ads that only link to other porn sites. Again paying. However, minors, with very rare exceptions, consume pornography for free: they do not subscribe to free sites and avoid paying sites.

Seeing them potentially being banned from access “would therefore not change much, if at all, to the recipes of these platforms.

They would simply gain a more noble image without significant financial consequences ”, supports the professor.

Our file on porn

If all the camps seem to agree, the problem remains: how to implement this ban?

How to block access to these sites in France only?

In the absence of a solution, the French, both minors and adults, should therefore have access to pornographic sites in 2022.

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