Under the leadership of Jean-Noel Barrot, the government plans to develop an anti-scam filter and more promptly enforce the ban on the broadcast of pornographic pictures to children. The essay goes beyond just translating European regulations on the issue.
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| Jean-Noel Barrot, Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications in France |
The Internet has never been a lawless zone, but the fundamental challenge has been enforcing it for decades. The administration of Elisabeth Borne has recently laid a foundation stone in order to "secure and regulate the digital space" with a measure tabled on Wednesday, May 10 by the Minister for Digital Transition, Jean-Noel Barrot.
Originally intended as a simple formality for the transposition of the European regulations Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, this text inscribes in stone many principles validated in Brussels, ranging from the prohibition of digital platforms favoring their own services to the prohibition of advertising directed at minors, as well as transparency obligations in the fight against disinformation.
However, if the "Barrot law" is passed by Parliament, it will be reinforced with a number of online security mechanisms. A recap of what's new.
Restrictions on pornographic site below age 18
The regulator will no longer bother with preliminaries in the long balance of power that pits it against the publishers of adult content sites that are all too easy to access on the Internet: the government bill intends to give Arcom the power to block sites that do not seriously verify the age of Internet users who visit them in order to reject minors. "At the age of twelve, one-third of our children have already been exposed to pornographic content, which has very serious consequences for their long-term emotional development," Jean-Nol Barrot observes.
Until until, the system called for a formal notification followed by a judge's involvement. While a first lawsuit initiated at the end of 2021 against industry leaders Pornhub and Xvideos will be the subject of a court judgment next July, Arcom will be able to move more quickly under the new law. If the authority communicates its concerns with questionable sites twice, the adversarial principle will be considered honored. In concrete terms, a blockade means that the incriminated sites will no longer be available to consumers of telecom carriers' Internet services, unless they use a private network (VPN).
Automated alert on suspicious sites
The new rule would also force telecom carriers to warn their consumers about the hazards of visiting a long list of websites deemed harmful by state-run specialized agencies (ComCyberGend, Anssi, AMF, and so on). Senders of SMS vectors of frauds or data extortion efforts will be similarly branded with a hot iron.
This gadget, dubbed a "anti-scam filter" in Emmanuel Macron's 2022 election campaign, is expected to hit the market in 2024, with a trial version available by the end of next summer. Even if each operator has technology, the task has most likely not begun. According to the Ministry of Digital Transition, negotiations are underway to compensate them for their role as the technical provider of the anti-scam filter.
Last year, 18 million French citizens were victims of cybercrime. Half of them were in debt. However, experts caution that maintaining the list of harmful sites up to date would be challenging, as thieves alter their tune multiple times every day.
It will be just as bad in the eyes of the law to leave terrorist propaganda online as it will be to leave a child pornography image. Website publishers, including social networks and forums where Internet users can directly express themselves, will now have 24 hours to delete suspected child pornography content. In the case of failure, they will face fines of 250,000 euros and a year in prison for their legal representation. This sort of request was made 74,000 times last year.
Following its assault on internet bigotry, the government is now targeting repeat offenders. The new rule allows a court to limit a person's access to social media for six months or even a year if they are guilty of cyberbullying, child pornography, negationism, apologizing for terrorism, or disseminating violent imagery.
Even if the Internet user can always make a new account with a few clicks, the action will at the very least temporarily exclude him from the community of other users who are frequently participating in genuine "raids" against individuals.
France is not waiting for European treaties to act on this issue. While a Data Act is being drafted in Brussels for implementation in 2026, the government already intends to prohibit the transfer fees levied by the market's dominant online computing platforms ("cloud computing") (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and others) when their customers want to switch to a competitor under the guise of using bandwidth to transmit their data.
Other expenditures of the same nature, such as migration and interoperability, will remain approved. On the other hand, the practice of commercial credits – these incentives given to new consumers – will henceforth be time-limited.