"There is an urgent need to remove our children from the flood of porn images on the internet and enforce the law once and for all." The Minister Delegate for Digital Jean-Noël Barrot announced this Sunday to AFP that the government would entrust Arcom with the power to order, without the assistance of a judge, the blocking by operators and the dereferencing of pornographic sites that do not prevent minors from accessing their content.

The measure will be part of the bill to "secure and regulate the digital space", which will be presented Wednesday in the Council of Ministers, then proposed before the summer to the Senate and the return to the National Assembly. It also provides for the banning from social networks of cyberharassers already convicted by the courts, and a power of formal notice also entrusted to Arcom to stop the dissemination on the Internet of media banned in the European Union.

An effective age check before the end of the year

Born in January 2022 from the merger of the CSA and Hadopi, the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom) is responsible for ensuring that pornographic sites comply with their obligation to verify the age of their visitors, which can no longer be a simple declaration of majority since a 2020 law. But the authority can for the moment only send formal notices in case of infringement then, if it does not obtain a return, seize the president of the judicial court of Paris to order a blocking by telecom operators.



A first procedure targeting in particular the giants of the sector Pornhub or XVideos should lead to a decision of the court on July 7. However, the blocking is not guaranteed, they contest the request on the grounds that the law is not sufficiently precise on the modalities of age verification. "It is provided in the text that Arcom publishes guidelines" to define the contours of such a system, said Jean-Noël Barrot, who relies on a report by four senators who denounced the excesses of this industry. Arcom officers may also be sworn in to record violations. The government wants to achieve before the end of the year an effective age verification on porn sites, or their blocking, four years after Emmanuel Macron's promise to stop their access to minors.

  • Society
  • Porn
  • Minor
  • Internet