Pornhub and Other Adult Websites Resume Operations in France After Extended Protest

Adult pornographic sites, including Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube, resumed operations in France after being down for almost three weeks as a French court on Friday suspended a contentious decree that mandated the EU-based adult sites to verify the age of visitors, news agency AFP reported.  

The Protest Against Age-Verification Rules

The owner of the platforms, Aylo, based in Cyprus, had gone dark in early June in protest against the decree of the French government. The law, which would limit minors from viewing adult material, asked websites to authenticate users’ ages based on sensitive personal information, including a credit card or ID. Noncompliance would have resulted in penalties, including fines or even a full blocking of the websites in France, the report said.

French Court Suspends Government Decree Amid Legal Challenge

Earlier this week, the Paris administrative tribunal suspended the government decree until it determines if the law is in line with European Union rules, in a decision that effectively permitted the platforms to come back online. Meanwhile, the French government has said it is planning to appeal the judgment to the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, according to AFP.

Aylo’s Concerns Over Security Risks

Aylo, owner of Pornhub and other adult websites, welcomed the court’s suspension, saying in a statement that the ruling gave an “opportunity to reconsider more efficient approaches” to age verification, as reported by AFP. The company expressed fears about the security risks of the decree while insisting that the move would leave users’ personal information prone to hacks and breaches.

“Making you repeatedly enter sensitive personal data creates an unacceptable security risk that we steadfastly decline to place on our users,” Aylo stated in a message on the website’s homepage late last month.

Concerns Galore Around Underage Access in France

In a 2024 report by France’s Arcom audiovisual regulator, cited by AFP, about 40% of French children visited adult sites monthly. The percentage, combined with other concerns, led the French government to adopt measures to restrict access to such content by minors. According to the report, the decree also incorporated a clause that would have made adult sites provide a third-party “double-blind” age verification scheme, where the users could verify their age without having to share their details with the websites.

Alternative Solutions Amid Criticism of the Law

Aylo has proposed a different way. Instead of enforcing strict age-verification on sites, the company has recommended that companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google be responsible for authenticating users’ ages at the device level, AFP reported. The platform also criticised the French law for allegedly driving users to “thousands of websites that deliberately evade rules” and for a lack of moderation on topics such as the age and consent of performers.

Countries like the United Kingdom and Germany have similar age-restriction measures for adult websites.

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