“An inapplicable micmac”: child protection associations deplore a missed opportunity with the final adoption on Wednesday of the bill on digital regulation, known as “Sren”, whose section on child protection leaves them with a “ bitter taste ".
“Anything that can go in the direction of better protecting children from this content, we are ready to sign,” assures AFP Thomas Rohmer, director of the Observatory of Parenthood and Digital Education ( Open). “But here, we are reinventing a hope of a gas plant, we cannot make it more complicated, it is an incomprehensible and inapplicable micmac,” he adds, deploring “a lot of chatter, wasted time” and “a missed opportunity”.
According to the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom), 2.3 million minors visit pornographic sites in France. From the age of 12, more than half of boys using the Internet visit these sites on average every month. Faced with this observation, the authorities have been trying for several years to increase pressure on porn sites by requiring them to verify the age of users, an obligation reaffirmed in a 2020 law but without convincing success at this stage.
Age verification: the method has still not been decided
In order to act “faster and stronger”, the government is giving Arcom, via its “Sren” bill, the power to administratively block sites that do not correctly verify age, without going through a judge. as is the case currently.
“We have the impression that everyone is waiting for the miracle solution and the ideal age verification system which would be 100% reliable, but that does not exist”, estimates on franceinfo Justine Atlan, the general director of the e-Enfance association, association for the protection of children on the Internet.
The issue of the age verification method, which raises many questions in terms of technical feasibility, has still not been resolved. The text returns to Arcom the responsibility of drawing the outlines of a “technical reference”, that is to say a concrete solution to allow this verification beyond a simple click.
A “disempowerment” of the platforms which makes Arthur Melon, general delegate of the French Council of Associations for the Rights of the Child (Cofrade), jump. “If we see that minors still have access to content, the platforms will say that it is not their fault, that they have complied with the framework and that if the latter is not effective, we must see with Arcom,” he believes.
An opinion shared by Céline Piques, from “Dare feminism!” ". “The repository is what sites want to save time. The government is rolling out the red carpet for porn sites,” she told AFP, denouncing “sabotage”. She also deplores the fact that the prerogatives of blocking data on a purely experimental basis, on the Pharos reporting platform, are limited to images of acts of torture or barbarity, leaving aside rape, incest and the dissemination of content against the person's opinion.
What about foreign platforms?
At the same time, voices were raised to express concern about the fact that, in the interest of compliance with European law, Arcom's regulatory power over sites does not prevent minors from accessing their content. only concerns platforms established in France or outside the European Union.
However, the main platforms are there, such as Pornhub and Xhamster in Cyprus, Xvideos and Xnxx in the Czech Republic and Tukif in Portugal. In the case of a site hosted in an EU country, an appeal must be made to the local authorities. If they do not react, “Arcom will be able to impose sanctions, as for platforms in France and internationally,” assured MP Paul Midy, rapporteur of the text.
A text that “leaves itself open to legal quibbling”
More generally, the bill will only “complexify” the situation compared to the 2020 law which certainly has pitfalls, but which was “simpler to implement”, according to Cofrade and the Open. “The current law only has one paragraph and despite this, the platforms have managed to drag out legal proceedings for months and months,” notes Arthur Melon who believes that the new text, with its “multitude of procedures” will “lend itself to legal quibbling”.
The text includes "deadlines and interlocutors which intermingle, we are making things more complex", adds Thomas Rohmer, who "is taking the bet that the Constitutional Council will quickly be contacted by the sites". “We are in a bad series which is far from ending, with in the meantime millions of children who risk being exposed to porn sites”.