PARIS — French media regulator Arcom has sent enforcement notices to the operators of five adult websites that the agency says have failed to implement age verification as required under France’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law.
An Arcom statement issued Tuesday does not name the websites or providers involved in the enforcement actions, noting only that they are based in the European Union. However, an Arcom media relations rep told XBIZ that the sites are: xHamster, Xvideos, XNXX, xHamsterLive and TNAFlix.
According to the statement, Arcom gave the sites three weeks to comply. Should they fail to do so, Arcom plans to initiate delisting and blocking proceedings against them.
The Arcom statement notes that the letters were sent June 11. However, a government website logs the agency's decisions to warn the five companies as having been made Aug. 1, noting previous letters sent June 13.
As XBIZ reported in June, Cyprus-based Hammy Media, which operates xHamster, previously challenged the application of SREN’s age verification regulations to sites based in other EU countries. The Paris Administrative Court temporarily suspended enforcement of those rules, but French authorities appealed to the Council of State, which ruled in July that Hammy Media failed to demonstrate that the SREN rules would prevent the company from distributing adult content to users of legal age, echoing the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the pivotal age verification case FSC v. Paxton.
The Paris Administrative Court is still reviewing broader legal challenges to the decree's validity. There has been controversy over whether French media regulator Arcom has jurisdiction to regulate companies based in other EU member states and what procedures would have to be followed.
In May, for instance, government officials in Luxembourg rebuffed a French government request to help enforce SREN by taking action against webcam platform LiveJasmin.
In the newly posted Aug. 1 decisions, Arcom reports that it also asked media regulators in Cyprus and the Czech Republic to aid in enforcing its AV rules in the cases of the five sites that received warnings, but those agencies also declined on the grounds that they lack sufficient legal means to enforce the French law in their countries.
As XBIZ reported in May, the European Commission is also investigating Xvideos and XNXX, for suspected breaches of the Digital Services Act (DSA), after preliminarily finding that the platforms do not comply with a DSA requirement to put in place age verification tools to safeguard minors from adult content.
