Tobias Schmid, the director of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, already knows how this story ends: “In the end, this content will be prevented.” He says “this content” because it is inappropriate for someone in his position to say “porn”. The operators of porn platforms had “danced around on the nose” of the rule of law for too long, but that was the end of it now. On Wednesday, the Düsseldorf Administrative Court ruled that Pornhub, Youporn and Mydirtyhobby, which are among the most visited websites in Germany, can be blocked for German users. If you believe Schmid, that’s just the beginning. Other platforms are already on his list.
Actually, providers of pornographic content have to demand secure proof of age from their users, for example via webcam with their ID. The platforms deliberately ignore this. When entering, it is sufficient to click on a button that says “I am 18 years or older”. That is why Schmid’s authority, in coordination with the other state media authorities, initiated proceedings against the porn sites at the Commission for the Protection of Minors in 2019, which then decided to block them last year. The platforms, however, defended themselves in court. They referred to a European legal principle according to which the country in which a company is located is responsible – in the case of the porn company Cyprus.
The administrative court has now issued a very clear rejection. According to him, German authorities may very well take action to enforce the protection of minors in their area of responsibility. The protection of minors falls under the “particularly valuable protection goods”, and the offers, which are written in German, are aimed at a German audience.
The state media authority already wanted to switch off XHamster
Blocking websites is not that easy, however. Schmid’s authority plans to use so-called network blocks, which authoritarian systems like Russia or Iran like to use. In Germany they are at the very back of the poison cabinet when it comes to network politics. The Chaos Computer Club led the protest against “Internet censorship” around twenty years ago when the Düsseldorf district government wanted to block the first websites. From 2009 this protest flushed the pirate party into the state parliaments.
The state media authority has already tried out how a ban would be implemented in the conflict with XHamster, another porn platform. Their operators in Cyprus did not respond to the official requests from Düsseldorf. Next they tried the operators of the servers on which XHamster is running. However, they could not find them because the platform uses the services of the provider Cloudflare, which disguises which servers a website uses to access the network. Finally, the state media authority sent letters to the last link in the chain, the German Internet providers, such as Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone. But they didn’t want to take action either until there was legal clarity as to whether a blockage was legal.
From Schmid’s point of view, this clarity is now given with the judgment of the administrative court. The provider could appeal against it, but basically, “the only question now is whether you want to drag the process out and keep children and young people defenseless until it is finished. Or whether you say, so, we’ll do it that now “.
People always find a way, says the porn producer
Depending on whether the provider wants to have the judgment checked further or not, Schmid said it could take between three months and three years for the locks to take effect. In response to a SZ request, Telekom announced that a formal request to block a certain Internet offer had not yet been made, so the case could not be commented on. However, the company will implement access barriers “if these are legally ordered”. 1 & 1 announces that they want to “check exactly” a lock request.
To avoid the lock, the platforms could give in and incorporate age control procedures. But if the industry refuses in the future too, Schmid wants to block further platforms, one after the other. According to SZ information, his authority is already preparing a case against Cam4, a site for pornographic live amateur videos.
The porn producer Paulita Pappel, who works in Berlin, finds the judgment of the administrative court “absurd”, “dangerous” and “negligent”. People always find a way to get pornography on the Internet without having to show their ID, just possibly no longer via the established platforms. These now work together with the porn industry, they share in advertising income and direct users to the paid offers of companies such as Pappels Label Lustery. This gives porn actresses a certain amount of financial and legal security.
If these platforms are blocked, what should happen next? Pappel asks. “How are you supposed to control and switch off all Internet sites that exist? With filters?”