The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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DUBLIN — There’s a quiet shift happening behind the scenes — the kind that doesn’t make noise until suddenly it does. Ireland’s media regulator is signaling that enforcement of age-verification rules is about to widen its reach, stretching past the big, familiar adult platforms and into the long tail of smaller sites across Europe.
Digital Services Media Commissioner John Evans laid it out plainly for members of Ireland’s lower house of Parliament, warning that targeting only the giants won’t actually solve the problem. “If you come down hard on a few platforms, users, including minors, will simply move to smaller ones. So we and many other digital services coordinators are mapping below-threshold pornographic service providers and will tackle those at a national level.”
Ireland’s Online Safety Code has technically been in effect since July, requiring adult sites headquartered in the country to move beyond self-reported age confirmation and implement real age-assurance measures — a meaningful shift that has already begun reshaping compliance conversations behind the scenes.
For sites based elsewhere in the EU, oversight falls under the Digital Services Act (DSA). National digital service coordinators work together beneath that framework to enforce shared standards, including age-verification mandates intended to curb underage access.
So far, formal investigations launched by the European Commission have largely centered on the biggest names — especially those labeled “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs), defined as services reaching at least 45 million monthly users. These platforms face the most punitive regulatory scrutiny, though not all have accepted that classification without legal pushback.
What’s changing now feels familiar. The strategy mirrors a move announced in September by France’s media regulator, Arcom, which declared it would begin ramping up enforcement efforts toward smaller adult platforms, rather than focusing exclusively on the market heavyweights.
That approach has found some supporters in Ireland’s parliament. During the meeting, several lawmakers reportedly pointed to France’s Law Aiming to Secure and Regulate the Digital Space (SREN) as a possible template for tougher regulation. Arcom’s aggressive cross-border enforcement has already sparked ongoing legal disputes over whether individual EU nations can compel compliance from adult sites based elsewhere inside the bloc. In September, an advocate general at the European Union’s Court of Justice offered a nonbinding opinion supporting France’s authority to enforce its AV rules on foreign-based pornographic websites. The court’s final judgment is still pending.
For Evans, though, the direction of travel feels clear — and increasingly urgent. “There is a significant amount of enforcement activity under way on age verification and pornographic services,” he told Irish lawmakers. “We are hopeful we will see changes soon.”
Sometimes the law doesn’t arrive with a bang. Sometimes it just quietly redraws the map — and only later does everyone realize the borders have moved.
