Porn sites impossible to block in France?
Accessing pornographic content today is as easy as turning on a tap. Except that this source pours images for adults too easily accessible to children’s eyes. Yes, there is a question about age (“ Are you 18 years old? “) when you try to enter a page but no additional official verification that could not corroborate this sole mark of good faith. To change things, associations have therefore stepped up to change things and simply block access to these sites. Unfortunately for them, their request will be very difficult to be heard. At least the way it was made.
When we attack the wrong people
The associations e-Enfance and La voix de l’enfant had in fact sued several Internet service providers (SFR, Orange, Free, Bouygues Telecom, Colt Technologies and Outre-mer Télécom) in September 2021. They were asked to block 9 porn sites, including YouPorn, Redtube and PornHub. Already, in October of the same year, the Paris Court of Appeal had rejected this request. Almost a year later, the same judgment was confirmedjustice reproaching the two associations not to have attacked the sites directly. They have in fact neither acted nor attempted to act against their targets when the latter are personally identified and identifiable. There is therefore no no reason to attack an intermediary. This is only possible if applicants for a blocking measure from internet access providers must establish the impossibility of acting effectively and quickly against the host, against the publisher or against the author of the disputed content “, as it is recalled in the judgment. This is not the case here. We all have in mind the example of rights holders in the world of music and cinema systematically attacking hosts when it comes to hunting down pirated content (as is the case for YggTorrent which must constantly change addresses…).
If you are looking for the Paris CA stop, it is there, last line:
Appeals court upholds rejection of request to block porn sites by ISPs https://t.co/7I3cucZ1mv via @nextinpact
— marc rees (@reesmarc) May 23, 2022
The address of the X-factor
It is indeed quite easy to be able to contact the publishers, authors or hosts of sites offering adult content. The legal judgment in fact confides that “ the sites in question all mention information relating to the publishing companies of the incriminated sites, thus making it possible to consider at the very least an action against them before any blocking measure with the access providers “.
Everything is known, transparent and within everyone’s reach:
The hosts are thus identified as being the companies Reflected Network for the Pornhub or YouPorn sites, OVH (French company) for the Mr Sexe site or even Server Stack for XNXX, Xvideos or Redtube, no element being raised by the appellants on the impossibility to act against these people.
However, if the two associations want to continue their crusade for the blocking of sites, they will have to do it differently and directly target the source of their evil. However, the pornographic pages are not yet out of the turmoil since ARCOM (formerly HADOPI) has put several sites on notice so that they more strongly secure access to their addresses for minors. From there to seeing the end of anonymity on pornographic sites soon, there is only one step that may need to be taken more quickly than one might think.
