Pornhub no longer has many cards to play to continue to require a simple declaration of majority to access its content. The Council of State rejected his appeal against Arcom, which is trying to block the pornographic site in France.
The war between Pornhub and globally all porn sites and the Arcom is not over yet, but it is moving forward. The public authority won a battle a few days ago: that of the Council of State, against a Pornhub which wants to do everything to avoid having to verify the age of its users.
Arcom is waging war on the porn industry
Nearly a year ago, the CSA, which in the meantime has become Arcom (by merging with Hadopi), had summoned five very popular pornographic sites in France to more effectively restrict minors’ access to their content by setting up a real verification of the age of Internet users. This followed a decree issued two months earlier that paved the way for an attempt by the French state to block these sites.
As reminded by digital centuryon September 8, the sites Pornhub, Xvideos and Xnxx as well as Arcom had met within the framework of a mediation “ proposed by the judicial authorities in an attempt to resolve the dispute “. A mediation which did not succeed and the Council of State had been seized to decide on the question. He gave his conclusion a few days ago.
The Council of State rejects Pornhub’s complaint and agrees with Arcom
In his ” basis of case law “, the Council of State rejects the appeals brought by the company MG Freesites Ltd (which publishes Pornhub, Redtube and Youporn). She asked to cancel the decision of Arcom giving her formal notice to comply with the law within fifteen days to set up age verification. In addition to this, she asked the Council of State to charge Arcom 6,000 euros as reimbursement of costs in the case.
The Council of State declared that: The request of the company MG Freesites Ltd is rejected as being brought before a court without jurisdiction to hear it. Clearly, if the Council of State does not rule on the substance of the problem or the constitutionality of the law, it rejects the appeal of the publisher of Pornhub, thus giving reason to Arcom.
Why Pornhub does not want to verify the age on its site
As reported by digital century Still, the lawyer for MG Freesites Ltd Elsa Rodrigues indicates that he ” is very difficult to find a satisfactory solution to control the age of Internet users ” And that’s where the whole problem lies. We can of course want to protect minors from pornography, but finding the right solution is not easy. The journalist Valentin Cimino recalls that the Secretary of State for Children Charlotte Caubel had proposed the registration of a blue card at the entrance, without paying anything, but for ” put an extra layer of parental supervision “. A solution ” invasive and imperfect according to the CNIL.
Another solution envisaged would be to request the identity card of Internet users, or to go through an identification system under state control, like FranceConnect or the digital identity application which should soon see the day. Of course, this raises other ethical questions about this method of verification.
Even if the blocking of said sites would be recorded and implemented by Internet service providers (ISPs), workarounds exist. There is the use of a VPN or the change of DNS which would allow access to these porn sites anyway.
Pornhub’s last resort: the Court of Cassation
There is one last card left for porn sites in France. At the beginning of October, The Parisian wrote that: “ The Paris court agreed on Tuesday to transmit to the Court of Cassation a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) of the pornographic platform Pornhub. This question concerns the procedure that Arcom follows to block sites; according to MG Freesites Ltd, the offense with which it is charged is not defined ” in sufficiently clear and precise terms “.
The Court of Cassation has since October 4 three months to decide. She could refer this question to the Constitutional Council, which could, according to the newspaper, “ invalidate the disputed provisions “.
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