DIGITAL LIFE

Xhamster pornographic site can be blocked in Germany

“At xHamster we have a final decision against which no legal recourse is possible,” said the director of the State Institute of Media of North Rhine-Westphalia, Tobias Schmid, the German press agency. “It's pornography, there's no age verification, and German law applies,” Schmid said.

Since xHamster has so far refused to communicate with the supervisory authority and has not implemented any of the measures to make its offer legal, the network operators have now been contacted: “We inform them of the fact that there is illegal content on their networks must be blocked''...said a statement from the authority involved in the blocking.

“We only implement access blocks technically if they are legally mandated,” a Telekom spokesperson said on request. At Vodafone it was said: "We are currently working on the legal assessment."

In response to a request, xHamster announced that network blocking was “far from an ideal solution”. The company is ready to work with the German authorities. Currently, age checks are the only way to keep young people away from adult content. This technology can be used. But this must be done across the entire industry.

Other portal operators are still processing notifications affecting them before the High Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Text by Frank Christiansen