PARIS — Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s minister for digital affairs, announced in an interview with the French-language Le Parisien that the government is poised to introduce a government certification scheme requiring age verification for adults 18 years or older to access porn.
“I intend to put an end to this scandal,” Barrot told the daily. “In 2023, it is the end of access to pornography websites for our children.”
The pending French measure is the latest national proposal to restrict minors’ access to pornographic content on the internet, including in the U.S., with the adoption of the controversial age verification law in Louisiana that poses potential constitutional questions. Minister Barrot is expected to lead the coordinated effort among the coalition government and members of the 16th legislature of the Fifth French Republic.
“The first time they access a pornographic site, children are on average 11 years old,” claim Le Parisien reporters Aurélie Lebelle, Thomas Poupeau, and Gaël Lombart, citing Barrot. “Yet it is forbidden in France to expose under-18s to this kind of content. But in reality, it is enough to click on the homepage of these sites, promising to be of age, to discover videos whose content can shock or, worse, [traumatize].”
While the specifics of the scheme have yet to be finalized, the implementation of such a policy is expected for September 2023. Barrot said that specific policies were in development to protect users’ anonymity to counter an increased risk of data breaches.
Most porn websites have age warnings in place, with some sites no longer requiring emails or other unique identifying information to create an account on a tube or membership site. For example, xHamster.com has this functionality to allow users to sign up for the free-of-charge features of the website, such as its video recommendation algorithm, which are only available to registered users of the platform in question.
France’s highest court ruled in January 2023 that Arcom, the country’s audiovisual and platform regulator, that age verification measures like the scheme Barrot announced aren’t unconstitutional. xHamster, with sites Pornhub, XNXX, XVideos, and Tukif, filed the challenge.
Euronews, a European Union-focused news organization based in Lyon, noted that age verification measures popping up all over the Western Hemisphere is part of a supranational public policy trend that could have negative implications for adult industry companies.
Besides the Louisiana law that entered force on Jan. 1, lawmakers in other U.S. states have introduced age verification bills in a push that the Free Speech Coalition calls the “most aggressive censorship we’ve seen in decades.” Republican-controlled states face such proposed laws.
YNOT.com reported on Feb. 1 about the Free Speech Coalition’s latest warning to professionals in the adult entertainment industry. That warning includes concerns and fears over a rash of age verification bills in states dominated by socially-conservative Republicans who propagate the pseudoscience behind an ostensible public health crisis surrounding pornography consumption. There’s concern over potential data breaches and exposure of those who must verify their ages with government ID to access adult sites.
Arkansas and Utah are just two of the latest jurisdictions to introduce similar proposals to Louisiana’s controversial law that Mike Stabile, director of public affairs for FSC, calls unconstitutional. Arkansas lawmakers have quickly advanced their ‘copy cat’ bill through the legislature.
In a similar vein, Democratic President Joe Biden announced his intentions during his recent State of the Union address to crack down on social media companies and big tech “for the experiment they are running on our children for profit.”
Lawmakers in Congress have proposed a range of bills that would ban minors from social media or would significantly penalize all web platforms for the illegal and unethical actions of a few select bad apples in the industry.
On the international stage, the United Kingdom is still in a heated debate over the Tory-led Online Safety Bill that free speech advocates and backbench Conservative and Labour Party members of Parliament call an overreach. An element of the Online Safety Bill provisions would make it compulsory for adult entertainment websites to use age verification technology to continue operating on the British internet.
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