The Justice ordered this Thursday Arcom, the media regulatory authority, to meet with a mediator to “reconnect” with pornographic sites in order to find a way to prevent their access to minors, according to the sentence consulted by AFP.
Snub for Arcom
It also suggests inviting the Cnil, guardian of freedoms on the Internet, to the negotiating table. The decision is a snub for Arcom, which was given the power by the law of July 30, 2020 to request the blocking of a pornographic site if it discovers that it is accessible to minors.
As of this law, a simple declaration of legal age is no longer enough and sites are obliged to verify the age of their visitors.
More generally, Arcom considers that the five sites (Pornhub, Pornhub, XHamster, Xvideos, Xnxx) subject to the procedure are using delaying maneuvers to avoid a block by the courts. On Tuesday, the Cypriot company MG Freesites, publisher of the Pornhub platform, filed a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) questioning the legitimacy of Arcom to act.
No technical solution to verify age
This shows “the desire of the sites to drag out the case, based on bad faith arguments,” Thomas Rohmer, founder of Open, one of the child protection associations, which had seized the regulator at the end of the week, told AFP. 2021. The MG Freesites lawyer had assured during the hearing that her client had tried several technical solutions, but that none had been satisfactory.
Recent reports from Cnil and Peren, the government’s center of expertise, have recalled the risks associated with existing majority verification solutions offered by the industry, while paving the way for a system based on third-party trust.
Source: BFM TV
