Pornography: five sites ordered by the CSA to block their access to minors

Five pornographic sites -Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos, Xnxx- are concerned by the formal notices from the CSA, published Monday on the regulator's site.

"With these decisions, we appeal to the responsibility of operators who must put in place the necessary measures to prevent minors from accessing their content," the CSA told AFP.

"The regulator ensures, in accordance with the law, its mission of protecting minors", argued the authority.

"A minor, and in particular a child who finds himself in front of unsuitable content, such as pornographic content, can be durably, and at least, shocked."

The penal code prohibits exposing minors to pornographic photos and videos and the law on domestic violence of July 30, 2020 specifies that the companies concerned cannot exonerate themselves from their responsibilities by simply asking an Internet user if he is major.

Since the entry into force of this law, the CSA can seize the president of the judicial court who can request the blocking of the offending sites to the providers of Internet access.

The CSA took this decision after being informed at the end of November 2020 by three associations, the Observatory for parenthood and digital education (Open), the National Union of Family Associations (Unaf) and the French Council of Associations for children's rights (Cofrade).

These three organizations initially targeted eight pornographic sites.

The latter were, they wrote at the time, in violation because "they only included a simple + disclaimer + - in other words a warning message allowing the Internet user to declare to be of legal age - for the sole measure aimed at restricting their access. by minors ".

More and more violent

Several associations for the protection of children have been sounding the alarm for months in the face of the upsurge in the viewing of violent and very raw images by increasingly young minors.

"We are very happy with this initiative of the CSA and confident that it will succeed", reacted to AFP Justine Atlan, director of the association e-Enfance, which had initiated with another association, La Voix de l ' child, legal action to demand the blocking of pornographic sites by French internet service providers.

Their request was rejected in early October.

"It is important to put pressure on pornographic sites so that they cannot continue to violate the legal framework of the industry they have chosen, which stipulates not to expose minors to pornography," said she added.

"Current internet pornography has more violent content, + revenge porn + (ie pornographic content aimed at humiliating a person, editor's note), sex without consent. This has consequences for the sexual practices that young people reproduce: brutality, consent problem, performance pressure… ", deplores Justine Atlan.

Among the five sites put on notice, Pornhub and Xhamster, established in Cyprus, belong to the porn giant MindGeek, also owner of YouPorn, which is legally domiciled in Luxembourg.

Xvideos and Xnxx are installed in the Czech Republic and Tukif in Portugal.

Four of these platforms (Pornhub, Xhamster, Xvideos, Xnxx) are among the 50 most visited sites in France, according to data compiled by the digital audience site SimilarWeb.

The webmaster of the Tukif site explained to the Next INpact publication that France represented "60% of accesses to the TuKif.com site, or between 12 and 18 million unique users per month for a total of more than 20 million. monthly visits from France ".

In Europe, initiatives are multiplying to try to prevent minors from accessing pornographic sites.

In 2019, the British government adopted a text to force age authentication. But "there was no control system that held up," Olivier Gérard, from the National Union of Family Associations, told AFP.

cgu-clp-jub-cac / elc / cal

© 2021 AFP