MAINZ, Germany — A German court has blocked Rhineland-Palatinate Media Authority (MA RLP) from forcing telecom providers based within the court’s jurisdiction to cut off access to Aylo-owned adult sites Pornhub and YouPorn.
In a press release issued Thursday, the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Justice revealed that the Administrative Court of Neustadt an der Weinstraße has upheld lawsuits filed by internet access provider 1&1 and by Aylo, opposing blocking orders issued by the MA RLP.
The MA RLP ordered DNS blocking of the sites in April 2024, on the grounds that they did not have sufficient age verification systems in place to prevent minors in Germany from accessing adult content, as required under the country’s Interstate Treaty on the Protection of Minors in the Media (JMStV). Aylo and 1&1 filed lawsuits in response.
The Administrative Court’s 5th Chamber has now upheld those claims, basing its ruling on two main factors: the primacy of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) law over the JMStV, and the “country of origin” principle in the EU’s Directive on Electronic Commerce, under which online services can only be regulated by the EU member states in which they are based. Aylo is legally based in Cyprus.
The Ministry of Justice statement notes that since the DSA entered into force in February 2024, there has been “a single, fully harmonized set of rules at EU level for the protection of minors in online media.”
“This regulation generally prohibits member states from imposing additional national requirements in areas already covered by the regulation,” the statement reads. “As the DSA already stipulates comprehensive due diligence obligations for online platforms to protect minors, it supersedes the previous German special regulations.”
The statement also notes that the European Commission has established exclusive jurisdiction in the matter by initiating its own proceedings against Pornhub and other platforms classified as “Very Large Online Platforms” under the DSA.
The Rhineland-Palatinate Media Authority is likely to appeal the ruling to the Higher Administrative Court of Rhineland-Palatinate — especially since that court previously ruled against Aylo on blocking orders.
Indeed, the issue has become a tangle of jurisdictional confusion. Not only have disparate German courts issued opposing rulings, but the issue of German versus EU law may not be as settled as this latest court ruling implies.
In September, an advocate general of the European Union’s Court of Justice advised the court, in a nonbinding legal opinion on a case involving WebGroup Czech Republic, which operates XVideos.com, and NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com, that France may indeed require pornographic websites based in other EU states to implement age verification in accordance with French law.
The eventual conclusion of the Pornhub/YouPorn litigation in Germany is likely to be a precedent-setter, as the EU and national courts jointly hammer out which rules will take priority going forward.
