The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
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PARIS — There’s a particular hush that falls right before the hammer drops. Five high-traffic adult websites based outside of France have now put age-verification systems in place under the country’s Security and Regulation of the Digital Space (SREN) law, after receiving pointed warnings from media regulator Arcom. It’s one of those moments where the room goes quiet and everyone waits to see who blinks first.
Back in August, Arcom sent enforcement notices to xHamster, Xvideos, XNXX, xHamsterLive, and TNAFlix, giving them a tight three-week window to comply or brace for delisting and blocking proceedings. Not exactly a friendly nudge—more like a stopwatch set on the table.
According to the regulator, all five sites now have age-verification solutions in place, and for the moment, that’s been enough to halt further action. No public victory laps, no dramatic announcements—just a sense that compliance, at least for now, has won the day.
That hasn’t stopped the arguments, though. From the start, there’s been real tension over whether France even has the authority to regulate companies based in other EU member states, and how that authority would work in practice. Arcom asked media regulators in Cyprus and the Czech Republic to help enforce its rules against the warned sites, but those agencies declined, saying they simply don’t have the legal tools to enforce French age-verification law within their own borders.
Then came a shift in September. In a case involving WebGroup Czech Republic, which operates XVideos.com, and NKL Associates, which operates XNXX.com, an advocate general of the European Union’s Court of Justice advised that France may, in fact, require pornographic websites based in other EU states to implement age verification in line with French law. It wasn’t a ruling—more like a legal compass—but it pointed in a very clear direction.
The opinion isn’t binding, but if the EU Court of Justice follows it, the ripple effects could be enormous. It would set precedent for other member states wrestling with the same jurisdiction questions, especially as similar litigation plays out in Germany over whether national laws or the EU’s Digital Services Act ultimately take precedence. This is the slow, grinding part of policymaking—courts, counsels, and contradictions, all trying to decide who gets the final word.
And this likely isn’t the end of it. Arcom has made clear that its next move will be to widen enforcement to include smaller adult sites. The message feels unmistakable now: this isn’t a one-off crackdown—it’s a line being drawn, and the rest of the industry is standing just behind it, watching to see how hard it holds.
