PARIS — The French National Assembly is considering a proposal to criminalize the purchase, and/or facilitation by online platforms, of sexual services performed remotely by streamers and custom content creators.
French criminal law does not currently penalize the act of engaging in prostitution, but does punish clients of prostitutes as well as anyone who profits financially from prostitution. However, the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court in civil and criminal matters, has previously ruled that online services such as camming do not fall under the definition of prostitution, due to the absence of physical contact with the client.
Bill 3106, a broader piece of legislation aimed at addressing sexual and gender-based violence against women and children, includes a section that would broaden the definition of prostitution to include the online purchase of sexual acts. If passed into law, it would treat online platforms that facilitate streaming and custom content as “pimps,” and users who tip streamers or commission customs as “johns.”
Such a ban could lead to enforcement against fan and webcam platforms, their users, and conceivably even against creators who collaborate together.
The new provision draws inspiration from a similar ban enacted in Sweden last year. At the time, the European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance and Red Umbrella Sweden stated, “Criminalising the purchase of digital sexual services will not stop exploitation. It will only push workers further into the shadows.”
The left-wing France Unbowed party, which holds 71 out of the 577 seats in the National Assembly, has called for removing the proposed ban from the bill.
“It does not protect the people it claims to help,” an amendment put forward by France Unbowed reads. “On the contrary, criminalizing intermediaries will inevitably lead to the closure of established, legal platforms with traceable activities on which these individuals currently operate. This closure would not eliminate the activity, but would simply shift it to unregulated, less traceable, and far less protective channels, further exposing those involved to the very risks the article purports to combat.”
The assembly’s Ecologist and Social caucus has also objected to the proposal, noting that content creation done remotely and physical sex work “do not present exactly the same issues of protection, health and recognition,” and that penalizing clients has not eliminated sex work, but has rather pushed sex workers into greater secrecy.
“Extending such a logic to online activities at present therefore does not seem appropriate, unless the aim is to reproduce the same effects in the digital space,” the caucus’s proposed amendment reads.
The bill is currently under review by a special committee assembled to review its provisions.
