 "Pornhub suspends porn in France over new age-verification law")
Pornographic websites Pornhub and YouPorn have launched a campaign against the French government after it introduced a law mandating the sites to take extra steps to verify users’ age. Aylo, parent company of both websites, said it will stop streaming in France starting Wednesday (June 4) and instead will show a message denouncing the law.
Solomon Friedman of Aylo’s owner, Ethical Capital Partners, told reporters the purpose of the move is to tell the French people “how dangerous, how potentially privacy-infringing, and how ineffective the French law is".
What is France’s new age verification law?
This year, France has introduced requirements for all adult content websites to verify their users’ age using details from credit cards or government documents.
The law says the websites must offer a third-party “double-blind” option that would keep the platforms themselves from seeing users’ identifying information.
Aylo says move ‘ineffective’
Aylo maintains the move is not only ineffective but directly puts the users’ privacy at risk from bad actors, hacks or leaks.
Although Aylo executive Alex Kekesi told reporters that the company was “extremely pro the concept of age verification", she warned that requiring platforms to verify age “poses a very serious risk… with respect to your privacy rights.”
Meanwhile, Friedman said the onus to verify the users’ age must lie with the operating system providers.
“Google, Apple and Microsoft all have the capability built into their operating system to verify the age of the user at the operating system or device level,” he said.
Their ability “to supply an age signal to any site or app… can actually provide a solution” for controlling access to adult content without requiring users to share sensitive data with multiple websites, he argued. “I understand that those three entities are large and they’re powerful, but that is not an excuse for France to do what they have done.”
Warning from France’s culture minister
Earlier on Tuesday (June 3), French Culture Minister Aurore Berge expressed her displeasure with the pornographic websites’ stance and asked them to rather stop operating in the country than having to follow the new legal framework.
“There will be less violent, degrading and humiliating content accessible to minors in France,” she warned.
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