Will online pornography soon be out of reach for under-18s in Canada? Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne is taking over the reins of this battle horse with a modified version of her bill which aims to force these websites to verify the age of its users.
For the Quebec senator, former president of the Conseil du Status de la femme du Québec, it is high time to act and put an end to this inconsistency. Far from the web, a child cannot rent a pornographic film: why would this be possible online? she asked at a conference organized this week by the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Research on Children’s Rights (LRIDE) and the Faculty of Civil Law at the University of Ottawa.
She believes that the way of doing these sites, which is to ask customers to tick a box to certify that they are over 18, is absolutely useless.
The ecosystem changed about ten years ago when the platforms chose a model of content uploaded by citizens, and therefore opted for free. Not needing a credit card — which was a bit of a barrier — made access much easier for young people.
Criminalize accessibility to minors
It was the senator herself who tabled a private bill in the Senate whose short title is: Protection of Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.
It was passed last year in the Upper House, but died on the order paper when the election was called. The senator returned to the charge with a new “improved” version of the bill now listed under S-210, whose scope is a little more limited.
The essence of his project is as follows: that platforms allowing the viewing of pornography online be obliged to verify the age of their customers and to block access to minors. To do this, it proposes to criminalize the fact of making sexually explicit material accessible to a young person for commercial purposes. The maximum fine for a first offense is $250,000, and $500,000 for a repeat offence.
If the platforms do not comply, it also allows the responsible authority to ask a court to block access to the site. Concretely, this would mean asking Internet service providers, such as Bell and Videotron, to prevent customers from accessing the offending site, by various technological means at their disposal.
This is the most effective way to act against foreign sites, argues Ms. Miville-Dechêne.
Because self-regulation has failed, she told the conference. The platforms do not want to prevent those under 18 from going to their sites: “Children’s clicks pay off”, since they allow them to have advertising money.
Technology now makes it possible to verify age online in a safe way. She suggests that this step be done by a third-party company, so that the porn site does not have access to customers’ personal data.
“It’s safer than before,” insists the senator.
The first version of the bill imposed the obligations on individuals as well as on companies. In its amended version, only companies — commercial distributors — are targeted so as not to cause negative consequences for sex workers.
During the conference, the senator responded to some criticism.
To those who argue that it is up to parents to watch their children, she replies: Why? We don’t do it for alcohol and cigarettes. And then, parents cannot monitor what their children are consuming on the Internet full time.
Others say that young people, skilled with technology, will succeed in circumventing the barriers installed, whatever they are. For example by using a VPN (virtual private network) to hide their country of origin. But the senator denies being naive: if the law cannot prevent everything, it can at least reduce the number of children who will watch content on these sites.
Why do we need to act?
Because young people have access to online pornography when they are very young, and it is increasingly violent and degrading for women, argued the senator in particular.
She cites these figures, taken from a study carried out in 2014: it is at 11 years old, on average, that children have their first contact with pornography. And in Canada, before the pandemic, 40% of high school boys had seen pornography online, 28% searched for it at least once a day or week, and 7% of girls said they had watched it.
Studies report that the consumption of sexually explicit material by young people is associated with a series of serious harms, including the development of addiction to pornography, the reinforcement of sexual stereotypes and the development of attitudes favorable to bullying and bullying. violence — including sexual harassment and sexual violence — particularly against women.
She is aware that these studies have limitations: you cannot ask minors to watch pornography in order to draw strong “cause and effect” conclusions. But the conclusions of the studies nevertheless require the application of the “precautionary principle”.
She reports the words of Quebec sex therapist Marie-Christine Pinel, who made disturbing observations among young people who are influenced by pornography in her practice: “I see the emergence of destructive tendencies: an upsurge in dominance relationships, anxiety about performance that results in pain on penetration and erectile dysfunction, and an explosion in demand for genital cosmetic surgery”.
France adopted a similar law a year ago and Germany has gone even further: with its legislative measure, it has already initiated the necessary procedures to block access to four of the largest sites which have refused to ensure that their customers were adults, including PornHub, mentions Ms. Miville-Dechêne.
His own bill is slated for Senate committee consideration in early February, taking another step closer to eventual law status.