The executive wants to strengthen the fight to limit access to pornographic sites to minors. For this, it plans to allow Arcom to block and dereference these sites without the approval of a judge.
The government will give Arcom the power to order, without the assistance of a judge, the blocking by operators and the delisting of pornographic sites that do not prevent minors from accessing their content, announced this Sunday at AFP the Minister Delegate for Digital Jean-Noël Barrot.
“Remove our children from the onslaught of porn images”
“There is an urgent need to remove our children from the onslaught of porn images on the internet and to enforce the law once and for all,” he said.
The measure will be part of the bill aimed at “securing and regulating the digital space”, which will be presented to the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, then proposed before the summer in the Senate and at the start of the school year in the National Assembly.
This also provides for the banishment from social networks of cyberstalkers 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.
Simple formal notices currently possible
Created 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 the event of an infringement then, if it does not obtain a return, seize the president of the Paris court to order a blocking by the telecom operators.
A first procedure aimed in particular at the giants of the Pornhub or XVideos sector must lead to a court decision on July 7. The blocking is however not acquired, they contesting the request on the grounds that the law is not sufficiently precise on the methods of the verification of age.
Soon sworn agents?
“It is provided in the text that Arcom publish guidelines” to define the contours of such a system, said Jean-Noël Barrot, who is based on a report by four senators who denounced the abuses of this industry. .
Arcom agents may also be sworn in to find violations.
The government thus wishes to achieve before the end of the year an effective age verification on porn sites, or their blocking, 4 years after Emmanuel Macron’s promise to stop their access to minors.
