Arcom, which has been trying for more than a year to complete a first blocking procedure targeting five sites, this time targets the companies Technius Ltd and Techpump Solutions S.L for "respectively one and two pornographic sites they publish".
According to the authority's decisions, two of them are accessible after "a simple declaration of majority on which it is sufficient to click", while a third "is not subject to any majority verification mechanism".
The regulator also announced the referral to the president of the Paris judicial court against two new sites of the Cypriot company MG Freesites, owned by the world leader in porn Mindgeek (recently bought by a Canadian fund) and publisher of the Pornhub platform.
At the end of 2021, Arcom launched a first series of formal notices against five sites (Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx), ordered to comply with the legal obligation to effectively block minors' access to their content.
The penal code prohibits exposing minors to pornographic photos and videos and the law on domestic violence of 30 July 2020 specifies that the companies concerned cannot absolve themselves of their responsibilities by simply asking an Internet user if he is of age.
At the end of 2021, Arcom launched a first series of formal notices against five sites (Pornhub, Tukif, Xhamster, Xvideos and Xnxx) © Lionel BONAVENTURE / AFP / Archives
The next public hearing in this case is to be held Thursday in Paris, after the rejection by the Court of Cassation of a priority question of constitutionality filed by MG Freesites and the failure of mediation between the publishers concerned and Arcom.
The government wants to conclude this legal battle this year and is working on the implementation of a technical solution for age verification called "double anonymity", in order to respond to the arguments of sites that say they have no satisfactory solution to verify the age of their visitors.
In the meantime, the CNIL, guardian of the privacy of the French, has declared itself in favor of the use of other systems, such as the validation of age by the payment card or the analysis of facial features.
© 2023 AFP