When the Paris Court of Appeal recently blocked four porn sites in France for not having a proper age verification system, the two online child protection nonprofits that had pushed for the blocks probably thought they’d scored a big victory. But, in one case, it turned out to be a bit of a self-own.
As l’Informé reports, the nonprofits went after Iciporno, Mrsexe, Tukif and xHamster. Their complaints listed the web addresses of the sites — but for xHamster they put “fr.xhamster.com“, pointing to the site’s French subdomain.
As a result, the court ordered blocking of “fr.xhamster.com” — including the “fr.” prefix. This means internet service providers have complied with the order and blocked xHamster at the DNS level — but only with the “fr.” prefix…
So xHamster remains accessible in France… until regulator, Arcom, finds a way to close this embarrassing loophole.