PARIS — French media regulator Arcom has sent enforcement notices to the operators of five adult websites that the agency says have failed to implement age verification as required under France’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law.
An Arcom statement issued Tuesday does not name the websites or providers involved in the enforcement actions, noting only that they are based in the European Union. However, an Arcom media relations rep told XBIZ that the sites are: xHamster, Xvideos, XNXX, xHamsterLive, and TNAFlix.
According to the statement, Arcom gave the sites three weeks to comply. Should they fail to do so, Arcom plans to initiate delisting and blocking proceedings against them.
The Arcom statement notes that the letters were sent on June 11. It is unclear whether the delay in announcing the actions is related to the French courts' recent back-and-forth rulings on the SREN AV rules.
As XBIZ reported in June, Cyprus-based Hammy Media, which operates xHamster, previously 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 ruled in July 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.
The Paris Administrative Court is still reviewing broader legal challenges to the decree's validity. 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.
