Pornhub stopped operating in France last month and is expected to take effect in the country’s age verification law. A few weeks later, when the law was suspended, Pornhub restored its own recovery in France. Now, PornHub has stopped itself again.
France’s age verification law requires pornographic websites to install third-party systems to check the age of visitors. The system must also be “double-blind”, which means that the porn site does not know the age of the visitors and the verification system does not know which site they are visiting.
Is the age verification law valid? Not according to this study.
On June 16, the Paris Administrative Court suspended the law by taking EU regulations as an example. On July 15, the State Council of France’s Supreme Court abolished the moratorium. On the same day, Aylo (owned Pornhub and other adult websites such as Youporn and Redtube) issued a statement that it will once again cease operations in France.
“Although important issues regarding French law enforcement are still being considered, we believe that French citizens should be subject to regulations that will prevent children from accessing adult content and can be effectively enforced,” Aylo noted. “They should also protect their privacy and sensitive data. Again, we believe that the current approach faces a huge challenge in achieving these important goals.”
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The company goes on to point out that verification of one’s age does not protect minors whenever a person visits a website, but rather endangers privacy through potential data breaches. It also said that these laws bring children to sites that do not comply with the law to put them at risk.
“For the French government and [France’s communication regulator] We ask, how many minors have been protected in the six weeks since the law came into effect? “The statement said. Provides data on how to reduce access to content that is not suitable for age.”
These are the problems of freedom of speech expressed by free speech advocates: websites that verify age verification do not work properly, are easily bypassed by VPNs, and have internet privacy and security issues. For the former, the French registration increased by 1000% within 30 minutes after the initial block.
Aylo advocates device-level filters to prevent minors from visiting these sites.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Texas’s age-verification constitution has set a precedent for similar laws. Pornhub has blocked itself through such laws in most states. The UK’s own age verification law will come into effect on July 25 and PornHub will comply with and operate in the region.
