PARIS — France’s highest court, the Council of State, on Tuesday reinstated age verification rules for EU-based sites under the country’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law, ruling in favor of the French government and against Hammy Media.
As XBIZ reported in June, Cyprus-based Hammy Media, which operates the adult site xHamster, challenged the application of SREN’s age verification regulations to sites based in other EU countries. The Paris Administrative Court temporarily suspended enforcement of those rules, but French authorities appealed to the Council of State, which has now dismissed the company’s immediate objections.
In its decision, the Council of State ruled that Hammy Media failed to demonstrate that the SREN rules would prevent the company from distributing adult content to users of legal age, echoing the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the pivotal age verification case FSC v. Paxton.
Importantly, while the court ruled to end the suspension of AV rules under SREN, the Paris Administrative Court is still reviewing broader legal challenges to the decree's validity. SREN requires adult sites accessible in France to implement age verification of users, but there has been controversy over whether French media regulator ARCOM has jurisdiction to regulate companies based in other EU member states and what procedures would have to be followed.
In May, government officials in Luxembourg rebuffed a French government request to help enforce SREN by taking action against webcam platform LiveJasmin. The officials rejected the idea that Luxembourg is obligated to enforce French laws.
Pornhub parent company Aylo opted to block access to its sites in France rather than comply with AV requirements under SREN. When the Paris Administrative Court suspended those rules, the company reversed that move and made the sites available again.
In the wake of today's reversal, Aylo has announced that it will resume blocking access. In France, visitors to Pornhub will instead encounter a message calling the SREN regulations ineffective, privacy-compromising and uninformed, and calling for an effective device-based age verification solution.