Big-name porn sites black out in France over age checks
French visitors to major adult websites Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube were met Wednesday with a message denouncing privacy risks from government demands that they verify users' ages.
"Your government suggests checking your age every time you visit our site -- that's crazy, right?" asked a message displayed on Pornhub in place of the platform's usual torrent of explicit content.
It was topped with an image of the bare-breasted allegorical figure of Liberty brandishing the French flag from Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting "Liberty Leading the People".
France has this year gradually introduced requirements for all adult websites to have users confirm their age with details like a credit card or ID document, aiming to prevent minors from accessing pornography.
In a bid to preserve privacy, operators must offer a third-party "double-blind" option that would keep the platforms themselves from seeing users' identifying information.
But Pornhub parent company Aylo says this is an ineffective mechanism that puts people's data at risk from bad actors, hacks or leaks.
"Requiring you to repeatedly provide sensitive personal information creates an unacceptable security risk that we refuse to impose on our users," the message read.
The platform argues that the French law also "diverts users to thousands of sites that deliberately circumvent regulations" and that fail to moderate videos for issues like the age and consent of performers.
Aylo has called for governments to instead have makers of operating systems like Apple, Microsoft and Google verify users' ages at the level of individual devices.
An "age signal" from the operating system could then be used to grant or deny access to adult content without compromising privacy, the company argues.
"Let (Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube) go," France's digital affairs minister Clara Chappaz said in a statement.
"They can come back the day they're ready to finally respect our rules."
Women's rights group Osez le feminisme (Dare to be Feminist) said in a statement that "this multi-billion-dollar industry prefers to mobilise its resources to fight any attempt at regulation... rather than give up the free, unconditional access that feeds its business model."
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