PARIS — Five high-traffic adult websites based outside of France have implemented age verification as required under the nation’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law, after receiving warnings from French media regulator Arcom.
In August, Arcom sent enforcement notices to xHamster, Xvideos, XNXX, xHamsterLive and TNAFlix, giving the sites three weeks to comply or face delisting and blocking proceedings.
An Arcom rep has informed XBIZ that all of those sites now have an age verification solution in place, so the agency has not taken further action.
There has been controversy over whether Arcom has jurisdiction to regulate companies based in other EU member states and what procedures would have to be followed. Arcom had asked media regulators in Cyprus and the Czech Republic to aid in enforcing its AV rules in the cases of the five sites that received warnings, but those foreign agencies declined on the grounds that they lack sufficient legal means to enforce France’s AV law in their countries.
In September, however, in a case involving WebGroup Czech Republic, which operates XVideos.com, and NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com, an advocate general of the European Union’s Court of Justice advised the court to rule that France may require pornographic websites based in other EU states to implement age verification in accordance with French law.
Although this was a nonbinding legal opinion, should the EU Court of Justice follow the recommendation, such a ruling would set precedent for other EU member states on matters of jurisdiction involving age verification laws. The eventual conclusion of similar litigation in Germany, over the primacy of national laws or the EU’s Digital Services Act, is also likely to impact how the EU and national courts move forward in jointly hammering out which rules will take priority.
As XBIZ reported in September, Arcom plans soon to escalate its enforcement of age verification rules to include smaller adult sites.