PARIS — The French Senate on Tuesday twice amended a bill to “secure and regulate the digital space,” adding provisions that would mandate warnings if any adult content simulates an illegal act, and require sites to remove adult content upon a performer’s request.
Senator Laurence Rossignol (Socialist) readily admitted that the amendments — formulated in a sensationalist anti-porn parliamentary report — “will complicate the life of publishers of porn sites,” adding, “That is the goal.”
The new amendments to the bill, which was proposed by the conservative Macron government, stem from a September 2022 French Senate committee report recommending state regulation and censorship. The report’s title, “Porno, l’Enfer du Decor,” is a pun comparing the adult industry with the Christian notion of hell.
The report resulted from hearings about the adult industry, conducted by Senators Annick Billon, chair of the committee for women’s rights (UDI, Vendee); Alexandra Borchio Fontimp (LR, Alpes-Maritimes); Laurence Cohen (Communiste, Val-de-Marne); and Rossignol (Socialiste, Oise).
As the newspaper Liberation reported at the time, the document was prompted and influenced by sensationalist media coverage of “sordid affairs” involving a few adult producers and shoots — some dating back to 2009 — that were publicized in 2021 and 2022.
Following the lead of anti-porn crusaders, the French Parliament’s attempt to establish state supervision of the internet comes during a season of violent civil unrest sparked by incidents of police brutality.
Disagreements Among Anti-Porn Politicians
One of the amendments approved on Tuesday, sponsored by the head of last year’s anti-porn committee Senator Billon, would require adult websites to “display a message alerting consumers” whenever illegal activities such as “rape, sexual assault or an offense committed against a minor” are simulated, French wire service AFP reported.
Failure to comply would be punishable by a fine of 75,000 euros and one year of imprisonment.
“We share the intention of the amendment,” affirmed Minister for Digital Transition Jean-Noël Barrot, before warning that there is “still a bit of work to be done.”
Barrot expressed opposition, however, to Billon’s second amendment, also passed by the Senate, which would empower people who appear in adult content to obtain prompt withdrawal of that content from the internet, regardless of the terms contractually agreed upon.
Though Barrot has vowed to end access to pornographic sites for children, he nevertheless expressed concern that this amendment would simply make content to which performers object illegal.
Macron's Government Ramps Up Anti-Porn Campaign
As XBIZ reported, in May the French government confirmed that its bill to “secure and regulate the digital space,” which aims to bypass the courts and force platforms to implement age verification, will apply not only to specifically adult sites but also to any site that allows explicit content, including Twitter.
Barrot celebrated at the time the government’s plan to empower online media regulator ARCOM to order, without needing to go through the courts, the blocking and delisting of adult sites that do not prevent minors from accessing their content.
The five most popular adult sites in France — Pornhub, Tukif, xHamster, XVideos and Xnxx — have been explicitly targeted by the government.
In April, those sites presented their objections to the controversial, vaguely worded 2020 law allowing ARCOM to seek a blocking order for sites “that fail to prevent minors from accessing online pornography.”
The sites’ lawyers presented requests to nullify the proceedings and order a stay of the proposed block. The tribunal then gave itself until July 7 to make a decision.
France’s age verification mandate was surreptitiously added to a hastily approved domestic violence law during an atypical and sparsely attended COVID-era session of the French Parliament in July 2020.
