PARIS — Top adult tube sites in France were summoned Monday by the country’s Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA), a regulatory government body similar to the American FCC, and ordered to “prevent minors from accessing their content before the end of the year” under penalty of being deplatformed by internet service providers.
As XBIZ reported Monday, the news had been leaked to a journalist before the announcement, although the timeline seems to have been tightened by two weeks, forcing tube sites to act during the country’s holiday vacation.
Pornhub, Tukif, xHamster, XVideos and XNXX were ordered to immediately implement a form of age verification via formal notices published on the CSA website, leading French newspaper Le Monde reported.
The CSA claims it is acting in the name of “its mission of protecting minors.”
“In the event of non-compliance with this obligation within 15 days,” Le Monde reported, “the sites run the risk of total blocking of their access in France.”
A CSA representative told wire services Agence France-Presse (AFP) that ”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. A minor, and in particular a child who finds himself in front of unsuitable content, such as pornographic content, can be lastingly, at the very least, shocked.”
A Controversial ‘Domestic Violence’ Law
A controversial provision added to a hastily and unusually approved law during an atypical COVID-era session of the French Parliament in July, 2020 specifies that adult companies should not be only allowed to ask an internet user if they are of age.
The law allows a government official, the president of the CSA, to demand that the president of the judicial court order the ISP providers to immediately block infringing sites in the entire country.
The CSA was prompted to action late last month by three nonprofit groups that allege to represent “children’s rights,” the Observatoire de la Parentalité et de l’Éducation Numérique (OPEN), the Union Nationale des Associations Familiales (UNAF) and the Conseil Français des Associations Pour les Droits de l’Enfant (Cofrade).
The groups identified eight “pornographic sites” to be censored for their alleged violation to the July 2020 law.
Effort Spearheaded by Self-Appointed ‘Children’s Rights’ Groups
Several other groups with unclear agendas, and claiming to be in favor of “protecting children,” are also spearheading attempts to prevent French people from accessing what they consider “pornographic websites,” which may include any site that may feature explicit sexual expression, like Twitter.
Justine Atlan — mouthpiece for one of these organizations, e-Enfance — told AFP that “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.”
Atlan claims that “the current internet pornography has more violent content, ‘revenge porn’ and sex without consent. This has consequences on the sexual practices that young people reproduce — brutality, problem of consent, pressure [linked to] performance.”
Similar initiatives have been announced in the U.K. and Germany to prevent access to adult tube sites.
Le Monde is also currently publishing a series of reports exposing what they consider predatory practices in the French adult industry, which appear to be timed in order to influence public opinion to support the actions of these supposed “children’s rights” groups and their allies within the CSA.