BERLIN — Germany's federal media regulator has initiated steps to order a block of Pornhub, YouPorn and MyDirtyHobby, escalating the country’s war against online adult content over age verification, a campaign which has been largely spearheaded by a single local bureaucrat.
Germany’s media regulator has contacted leading telecom providers Telekom, Vodafone, Telefónica and 1&1 to initiate the blocking process, NetsPolitik.org journalist Sebastian Meineck reported Thursday.
A process of hearings has now begun with the final aim of blocking access to those sites for all Germans regardless of age. During these hearings, the internet providers will be allowed to formally comment on the mandated block.
The media regulation authorities are claiming they are merely “enforcing German laws on the protection of minors,” Meineck wrote.
According to the German government, “website visitors are supposed to present their ID or have their face biometrically scanned before they are allowed to watch porn,” Meineck continued. “Major porn sites like Pornhub refuse to subject their users to such invasive controls. After years of legal proceedings against Pornhub, the media regulator is now approaching the strongest means at its disposal: ordering a network ban.”
A Relentless Campaign by an Obsessive Anti-Porn Bureaucrat
Last year, the media regulator ordered a network block for xHamster, which subsequently lost its status as the No. 1 most visited adult site in Germany. Although xHamster relocated its content to a mirror site after the block, Pornhub quickly overtook it as the most popular adult site in the country.
As XBIZ reported, federal authorities have taken up censorship efforts after a relentless campaign by the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, which has targeted specific adult sites as part of a crusade to require age verification for viewing sexual content in Germany. The drive has been spearheaded by agency director Tobias Schmid, a one-man War on Porn described as having “a fetish for order,” whose efforts led to a court issuing a “network ban” and blocking access to xHamster last year.
Leading daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine noted at the time that “the network ban is the harshest sanction provided by the German Telemedia Act” and that it is “unpopular and is quickly classified as ‘censorship.’”
“Of course, blocking the network is a dramatic intervention,” Schmid told the paper. “With this offer, however, the right to freedom of expression should not be affected too much. It is simply a business with pornography, and done at the expense of children and young people.”
Main Image: Leading German anti-porn crusader Tobias Schmid.