France to enforce age verification checks for major porn sites

Some of the world’s biggest pornographic websites have been told by the French Government they risk being blocked unless they ensure all users are over the age of 18.

Under a new law introduced in 2020, France’s regulator has the power to impose sanctions through the courts on ‘service providers’ who fail to implement robust age verification checks. The sites were given until the end of last year to comply.

In the UK, such checks were approved under the Digital Economy Act 2017, but plans to implement them were abandoned in October 2019 when the Government claimed they would be covered by its draft Online Safety Bill.

Online Safety Bill

However, the draft Bill does not include mandatory age verification checks for commercial pornography websites, and in December the Joint Committee examining it failed to call for them to be added.

The Committee said pornography sites should follow a “binding Code of practice” to protect children from harmful content, but stopped short of recommending more stringent safeguards.

Last year, the High Court granted Ioannis Dekas, 52, and student Ava Vakil permission for a judicial review over the Government’s failure to implement the age verification checks on pornographic websites promised in 2017.

Taking action against sites that fail to prevent children from accessing adult content aligns France with German law.