Under certain conditions, France's laws requiring porn websites to age-check their users fall under online child safety concerns
The EU’s top court – the Court of Justice of the European Union – ruled that France may impose the country’s age verification requirements on pornographic websites hosted in other EU countries that are accessible in France.
France’s national rules requiring any online platform offering pornographic content in France to implement robust age verification came into effect in June last year. The law also included a list of approximately twenty pornographic websites required to comply with the strict verification rules, as part of a broader effort to protect minors from accessing such content.
This led major pornographic websites – notably Aylo-owned platforms Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube – to self-ban their services in France over the strict age check requirements.
The case, decided on Tuesday, was brought by Czech-owned companies WebGroup Czech Republic and NKL Associates. They argued that France’s strict age verification rules should not apply to porn providers hosted in other EU countries due to the “country of origin principle,” set up by the bloc’s e-commerce directive. Under these rules, services are governed by the laws of the country where the provider is established. That would mean that Czech, rather than French, rules should apply to these firms.
