The news caused a lot of discussion: on November 15, 2024, four porn sites were blocked by the courts for lack of age verification other than declarative. Therefore, the different operators had to give up. Therefore, in theory it is no longer possible to consume videos on these platforms… but one of them is still available.
xHamster bypasses ban thanks to bug
The site L’Informé reveals that xHamster, one of the largest sites of its kind on the web, is still available in France. The fault is… a steering error. This situation highlights a flaw in the blocking procedure, making the initial decision ineffective until measures are taken to correct this error.
In fact, in its decision, the Court of Appeal respected the spelling of the children’s defense associations that brought the case, including e-Enfance and La Voix de l’Enfant. Therefore, it is the fr.xhamster subdomain that has been blocked. Problem: The main domain, xhamster.com, is still accessible as it is not affected by the block.
The e-Enfance association, contacted, indicated that it also wanted to block the standard domain, through a possible bypass to speed up the procedure.
xHamster is not the only one affected by this error, since in the initial request we also found fr.pornhub.com and fr.redtube.com. On these two sites, which are not blocked, the French justice system did not want to comment pending a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union on the matter.
Source: BFM TV
