The French parliament has agreed to pass a new law requiring age verification on pornographic websites to prevent access by children under 18, Politico reports. The initiative has the support of President Emmanuel Macron, who called for such a measure in January.
The French law gives sites discretion to decide how to perform age verification. Requiring users to enter a credit card number seems to be one of the most popular options.
According to Politico, the law gives French regulators the power to create a blacklist for overseas sites that don't comply with the new rules. If a site doesn't respond to a warning from French officials, they can "ask the Paris Court of Justice to send an order to telecom operators to block the access to these sites from France."
France is one of several countries considering legislation to keep pornography away from children. In the United Kingdom, the government has been trying for several years to establish a system for age-verifying porn sites. That effort hasn't gone well. After multiple delays, the government put the effort on hold indefinitely last October. Australian legislators are considering a similar measure.
A major sticking point in the UK's age verification debate was privacy. Critics pointed out that it wasn't a great idea to force adult consumers to turn over their credit card numbers to porn sites that might not have the strongest privacy protections—or the highest ethical standards. It's not clear what privacy protections will be offered to consumers under the French law.
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