Latest news with #SREN
Euractiv
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Euractiv
Major blow to Pornhub as France's highest court re-introduces age verification
France's state council has overruled a Paris administrative court ruling to suspend a government decree on 15 July – meaning that all porn websites offering services in France must verify their users' age. The ruling from the state council on Tuesday comes only weeks after the Paris administrative court suspended a governmental decree requiring age verification for EU-based porn websites in June. Today's decision is the latest development in the dispute championed by French Digital Minister Clara Chappaz, affecting adult websites including Pornhub, YouPorn and Redtube which are owned by Cyprus-based company Aylo as well as xhamster-owner Hammy Media. "The State Council has decided: the law has to be followed," wrote Chappaz on X. But the council's ruling only suspends the June court decision and does not pre-empt the forthcoming preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). The CJEU must determine whether the French government's decree requiring EU-based porn companies to comply with national law conflicts with EU law. In short, this is merely a temporary victory for Chappaz, as the CJEU could still annul the French government's decree for failure to comply with EU law. It remains unclear whether Aylo will shut down its websites in France, as it did in June to protest enforcement of the French SREN law – the law the government decree aimed at enforcing. The European Commission on Monday proposed new guidelines to protect minors online. France claimed victory, saying the Commission's proposal enshrined its own approach mandating age verification for accessing pornographic website throughout the EU. Aylo did not respond to a request for a comment at the time of reporting. (vib)
Euronews
04-06-2025
- Business
- Euronews
Pornhub suspends access in France in protest over age verification law
The owner of Pornhub, RedTube and YouTube has blocked access to the adult platforms in France, in protest against a law requiring porn sites to verify the age of their users. Parent company Aylo said it would stop operating in France as of Wednesday, having criticised the French government's measures to shield children from inappropriate content by making porn platforms take extra steps to ensure that users are 18 or older. "I can confirm that Aylo has made the difficult decision to suspend access to its user-uploaded platforms (Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube) in France. We will be using our platforms to directly address the French public,' a Pornhub spokesperson said on Tuesday. Under France's so-called SREN law, which was passed in 2023, adult content platforms have until Saturday to implement age verification measures. French media regulator Arcom can request that porn sites are blocked and issue fines if it finds their checks are lacking. Solomon Friedman, a partner at Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Aylo, told reporters in a briefing call on Tuesday that the law was "ineffective", "dangerous", and "potentially privacy-infringing". "It's a matter of putting our values first, and that means communicating directly with the French people to tell them what their government is refusing to tell them," he said, in reference to a message that Aylo's platforms will display to French users on Wednesday. Aurore Bergé, French minister for gender equality, wrote "au revoir" in a post on X in response to Aylo's statement. "There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France," she wrote. Clara Chappaz, France's junior minister for artificial intelligence and digital technology, said on X: "If Aylo would rather leave France than apply our laws, they are free to do so." European Union regulators announced last week that they were investigating four major porn websites over suspected breaches of the bloc's online content rules, which include provisions for protecting children from pornographic material. These include risks that age verification measures deployed by the sites are ineffective. The European Commission said it has opened formal proceedings against Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos under the 27-nation bloc's Digital Safety Act. Aylo said last week that it was aware of the investigation and was "fully committed" to ensuring online safety of children. XNXX, Stripchat and XVideos did not comment. A court in El Salvador has sentenced three former senior military officers to 15 years in prison for the killing of four Dutch journalists in 1982. Jan Kuiper, Koos Koster, Hans ter Laag and Joop Willemson were killed in an ambush by the Salvadoran army in the northern province of Chalatenango while filming a documentary about the Central American country's civil war, which lasted from 1980 until 1992. Late on Tuesday, a five-person jury in a Chalatenango court found three former top military officials guilty over their deaths after a trial that was closed to the public. The convicted men were former Defence Minister José Guillermo García, 91, former Treasury Police Director Francisco Morán, 93, and Mario Adalberto Reyes Mena, 85, the former army commander of the Fourth Infantry Brigade in Chalatenango. García and Morán remain under a police guard at a private hospital in the capital San Salvador, while Reyes Mena lives in the US. The Salvadoran Supreme Court started extradition proceedings in March to bring him back to face justice. García was deported from the US in 2016, with a US judge declaring him responsible for serious human rights violations during the Salvadoran civil war. Óscar Pérez, lawyer for the Foundation Comunicandonos that represented the victims' families, said prosecutors had requested a minimum 15-year prison sentence for all three men. Shortly before they were killed, the four Dutch reporters, who were making a documentary for Ikon TV, had joined up with guerrillas to film behind enemy lines. Salvadoran soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns then ambushed them and the guerrillas. Pérez told reporters that there was 'sufficient proof' that 'deliberate and well-planned military action' led to the Dutch journalists' killings. The same assessment was also made by the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador after the end of the civil war. The lawyer added that the judge in the case also condemned the Salvadoran government, ordering President Nayib Bukele to apologise publicly to the victims in his role as head of the country's armed forces. Juan Carlos Sánchez, from the NGO Mesa Contra la Impunidad, said the trial was a 'transcendental step that the victims have waited 40 years for'. The prosecution of the military officials was relaunched in 2018, after the country's highest court ruled that the general post-civil war amnesty was unconstitutional. In March 2022, relatives of the victims as well as representatives of the Dutch government and the EU demanded that the suspects be tried. Some of the men accused of being involved in the killings had already died, including Mario Canizales Espinoza, who was believed to have led the patrol that carried out the massacre. Some 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed during the civil war, most of whom died at the hands of the US-backed government security forces.
Reuters
17-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
French TV regulator to rule on Eutelsat's potential sanctions breach 'very shortly'
March 17 (Reuters) - France's Arcom will rule on Eutelsat's ( opens new tab compliance with European sanctions against Russia soon, the broadcasting authority told Reuters, following requests from several NGOs that it should take action against the satellite provider. "The process of investigating the cases reported to Arcom is nearing completion, and the authority's college is due to rule very shortly on the actions to be taken," it said in an emailed statement. Eutelsat in 2022 stopped broadcasting three Russian TV channels after Arcom urged it to do so, but it still has contracts with Russian companies such as the army's broadcasting unit Zvezda ( opens new tab and state media holding VGTRK. According to Comité Diderot, a French non-governmental organization promoting the restoration of the free flow of information, without war propaganda, between Europe and Russia, those contracts do not comply with EU sanctions. The contracts represent about 4% of Eutelsat's revenue, a company spokesperson said. Contacted by Reuters, Eutelsat said that it respects regulators' decisions on international sanctions. Arcom may issue a fine of up to 3% of a company's annual sales excluding tax, depending on the seriousness of the breach. If the same obligation is breached again, the threshold is raised to 5%, according to the French Superior Audiovisual Council's website. Eutelsat reported 1.21 billion euros ($1.32 billion) in revenue in 2023-2024. An article of the SREN law on digital security published in May 2024 gave Arcom the authority to ensure compliance with EU sanctions by French companies. Arcom should have ordered all operators to stop broadcasting Kremlin war propaganda since this law was adopted, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said in an emailed statement. French national assembly on Wednesday, while discussing the European Resolution for an increased support to Ukraine, adopted an amendment calling for Arcom to compel Eutelsat to respect the sanctions. ($1 = 0.9173 euros)
