Under the law, France’s audiovisual and digital services regulator Arcom has the power to block porn sites if it deems they are not implementing age verification properly and in time.
“The Minister for Digital Affairs Clara Chappaz has told us that the first site blocks could take place this summer,” a member of parliament familiar with the matter said, granted anonymity to disclose details of confidential conversations.
Pornhub’s owner Aylo is already challenging the law in court.
For the time being, only French and non-European pornographic sites can be blocked. Starting Friday, those porn websites had to offer at least one secure age verification system that checks visitors’ ages through things like a verified identity document or even a video selfie that estimates a user’s age.
That’s led to a rush from age verification software providers to offer their services to porn websites.
There has been “definite and last-minute interest” in verification tools in the run-up to Friday’s deadline in France, said Iain Corby, the president of AVPA, a large association of such software providers. But, he added, the association for now has spotted few actual deployments.