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The Internet

France To Introduce Controversial Age Verification System For Adult Websites (politico.eu) 101

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The French Parliament unanimously agreed this week to introduce a nationwide age verification system for pornography websites, months after President Emmanuel Macron pledged to protect children against such content. From a report: Macron made the protection of children against adult content online a high-profile issue well before the coronavirus crisis hit. In January, tech companies, internet services providers and the adult movies industry signed a voluntary charter, pledging to roll out tools to help ensure minors don't have access to pornographic content. Within a broader law on domestic violence, the Senate decided in June to introduce an amendment requiring pornography websites to implement an age verification mechanism.

In order to enforce the law, the French audiovisual regulator CSA will be granted new powers to audit and sanction companies that do not comply -- sanctions could go as far as blocking access to the websites in France with a court order. The choice of verification mechanisms will be left up to the platforms. But lawmakers have suggested using credit card verification -- a system first adopted by the U.K., which mulled similar plans to control access to pornography but had to drop them in late 2019 because of technical difficulties and privacy concerns. Italy also approved a similar bill in late June, which raised the same concerns over its feasibility and compliance with the EU laws.
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France To Introduce Controversial Age Verification System For Adult Websites More

France To Introduce Controversial Age Verification System For Adult Websites

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  • for adult websites

    FTFY.

    Also, this is a really bad idea. Kids will find naughty bits online. Now instead of them going to the major sites (which are free of spyware & viruses because they're multi-billion dollar businesses) they'll end up on the dodgy foreign sites.

    But hey, beats trying to solve France's economic problems, amiright? Everything social is always a distraction from economics.

    • That is a good point. I bet the next step on this is to ban VPNs to make sure nobody gets around this.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sabri ( 584428 )

        I bet the next step on this is to ban VPNs to make sure nobody gets around this.

        For the sake of (choose one):

        [ ] The Children
        [ ] Women trafficking
        [ ] Drug trafficking
        [ ] Terrorists

    • It is a really bad idea because it shifts power from citizens to governments and other organizations. It allows to set up structures to monitor and control what people do and makes it easier to incrdease that control later on. I don;t think porn is normally considered one of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse [wikipedia.org] but the idea is the same: whether the boogieman is just a pretext or a sincere concern , the issue of the boogieman is handled in a way which has a broad impact which takes power away from the citize

    • When I was a kid I found soft porn on Cinemax, or had older adult friends buy me and my friends some. I think this is normal, and I obviously couldn't watch it 24/7 likes kids can do today. The difference is the easy and the absolute endless amount of porn that is on the internet today.

      What I would like is a law in the U.S. where ISPs are required to give purchasers the option to ban porn on their subscription. And ISPs should work together to vigilantly create a list of porn sites to block so that subsc

  • While I certainly don't mind that minors have reduced access to porn (and reduced is a generous term, anyone capable of using a torrent program can bypass this easily), the issue is closer to the fact that no one in their right mind would want to supply their identity to a porn services company. There is already widespread abuse of this problem as internet scumbags send out threatening emails about exposing the porn preferences of anyone they can identify unless the victim pays them. This issue will likely

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fustakrakich ( 1673220 )

      no one in their right mind would want to supply their identity to a porn services company.

      You're right! Let's make them register with the government instead

    • I don't see how its a good idea. It has nothing to do with protecting kids and everything to do with getting a list of porn sites that political leader's enemies have visited for blackmail purposes.

    • It's not only a terrible implementation, it's also futile.

      There are two things minors have an abundance of: time and eagerness to break rules. All this is going to teach them is how to circumvent censorship and that there's an internet beyond the sanitized corporate sites. So it's not all bad I guess.

  • About damn time (Score:5, Funny)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @03:27PM (#60284410) Journal

    It's about damn time we had age verification for pornography. I cannot stand that shit when you click on the video that says "teen" and then it's some 35-year-old woman in pigtails and a plaid skirt.

  • Still living in the 1990s I see. Hey France, this has been tried multiple times and always fails.

    Grow the fuck up, You show tits and ass on normal television programming. Sure, it isn't hard-core porn, but it is still the naked human form. With simulated and/or implied sex in a lot of cases.

    Going to require age verification to watch TV as well?

    • Re: What year us this again? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @04:05PM (#60284554) Homepage

      No, because they're not Americans who think nudity equates with obscenity. That's the problem with Puritans. In their eyes, a naked person and a gangbang are the same thing.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sure, it isn't hard-core porn, but it is still the naked human form. With simulated and/or implied sex in a lot of cases.

        they're not Americans who think nudity equates with obscenity

        So, naked human with simulated sex isn't obscenity but naked human with sex is obscenity. Ok. I think we're making progress toward understanding .... something.

    • They had to wait until now, because first they had to invent a French word to describe the issue...

    • France doesn't need porn anyway. Every good husband is expected to have a girlfriend on the side.

      Perhaps an exaggeration, but it ain't Utah.

  • It's a real plague (Score:3)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @03:45PM (#60284464) Homepage Journal

    Users visiting a website without reliable ways to track them.

  • The Left or Centre (which is still the left for all intents and purposes especially in Europe) has assumed the new position as the Nanny. They will not only regulate your life in all the old ways they will regulate you in new ways such as banning 'sexist ads', shoehorn fat women and transgenders in even your porn and swimsuit mags out of some underlying weird grudge against you they cover with being inclusive, and bureaucratizing the act of sex itself with 'affirmative' consent. And they are far more effect

    • That is the default stance of any government. The government exists to accumulate power and unless you put checks on that balance from the start, it will continue in that avenue until someone resets the system.

    • they will regulate you in new ways such [...] shoehorn fat women and transgenders in even your porn

      If you've been looking at BBW or transgender porn then you've either been selecting those categories or watching the ad-hoc delivered videos so much that your porn site's analytics engine has figured out your tastes. If you let go of your hate for those people then you can let go of the hate you have for yourself for liking that porn and so you can actually enjoy your porn guilt free (unless guilt is your fe

  • I sense a great disturbance in the Porn Force. It's as if a hundred French websites cried out in horror, then moved offshore.

  • Please, don't tell him (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @04:05PM (#60284556)

    Keep him in his little world where what he legislates matters outside his country. As long as he thinks he matters, we can continue with our lives mainly unimpeded.

  • Credit card verification? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Friday July 10, 2020 @04:06PM (#60284566)

    So, if I live in France, I'll have to borrow one of my parents credit cards to look at porn?

    And, if I'm clever enough, Dad will take the rap if Mom finds out?

    Okay, I guess I can live with that....

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, you'll have to learn how to use bittorrent like everyone else.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Let's see how people will react when that credit card database gets hacked. And will it contain information of names and what sites they visited? What about situations where a stolen CC number is used?
  • Mandate that every ISP must implement parental controls and a simple way for people to turn them ON. i.e. there is no censorship unless you want it and if you want it then every ISP provides it. There is no reason to block sites that are otherwise legal as the default.

    • And then the governments mandate other topics that must be blocked for reasons, and after that the ISPs remove the on/off switch of those filters and you just lost all control.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        They're already mandating. It's a simple position here - make the default to be filtering or not.

    • > Mandate that every ISP must implement parental controls

      Mandate censorship tools at the ISP level so nobody has to pay $2/mo for a filtering service?

      Do you know how many millions of humans have given their lives for the chance at a society where they don't get censored by government edict?

      Don't sell your birthright for eight cents a day.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )
        The reality is that internet filtering will be a thing and it boils down to it being opt in or opt out. Sane people will push the opt in choice, i.e. there is no filtering unless you choose.

  • What morons. This won't solve anything. Now every damn website, porn or not, will have it like the stupid GDPR thing. Kids will of course still be able to bypass it. The average kid has double the IQ of any French government official after all.

  • Emmanuel Lewis won't be able to get access to online porn in France

  • The problem isn't children viewing porn, it's porn that exploits children. I would need citations and study results before I'd believe that some child was psychologically damaged by viewing sexual activity, even kinky sexual activity. Kids know a lot more than you think, they don't believe the world is all unicorns and rainbows, and they've got pretty good resiliency. They're young.

    On the other hand, adults who create, distribute, or even watch child porn are quite evil and sick and should rightly be prosec

  • The more you tighten your grip .... What's next, all the porn has to be in the French language?

    • LOL how do they expect to enforce this on porn websites that aren't hosted in France?
      Hell, all kids have to do is go to one of the *chan sites and they'll get the nastiest porn imaginable, for free.
      Also, who decides what is and is not 'pornography'? You can't define what is and is not 'pornographic'. No one ever has, no one ever will.

    • The more you tighten your grip .... ... the faster it's over?

    • Last time i checked, an IP is proof of identity in France and TOR users have been condemned for being exit nodes for someone else. I know it's stupid But the French are sort of European champions of stupid internet law besting even the Germans.

      I the end, it won't prevent teens from getting their smut of course.

  • I'm sure the teens will figure out that they can buy a visa gift card for any amount, use the card's balance on whatever they want, then just use that card to make an account on pornhub. You can pay fiat currency for visa gift cards in USA and no identification is asked for.

    Nah. They'll never figure THAT out.

  • Over and over again ad infinitum they keep trying this 'net nanny' level crap and it never, ever works. Kids will find a way around it. They always do. You may as well try to herd ferrets on meth.

  • also going to ban French Letters?

  • OK, so it reduces the chance that children will see porn - though its not clear how effective it will be or how damaging porn is to children.

    OTOH, Its difficult to think of a way to check someone's age that doesn't also risk revealing their identity. So now adults can have their porn browsing habits traced. Normally not a problem, but what about political candidates. Imagine releasing the browsing habits of someone running for office, especially the preferences of a female running for office.

    • We know what happened in the UK.

      First porn sites that charge to credits cards have no problems, and they already have a system.
      The UK Government decided that it didn't want to set up a system themselves, they just threatened to fine or block any porn site that met their criteria, raise money by subscriptions or advertising and had 30%+ content that was porn, that didn't apply. And it was delayed by 6 months because the DMCS needed an extension to fill in the forms to get privacy approval from the EU.

      The por

  • The New Zealand government released a viral TV advertisement about the problem of children watching porn online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

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