Europe’s porn restrictions escalate: xHamster order to remove videos in Netherlands ‘ongoing’

Europe’s porn crackdown has continued apace with news that a Netherlands court has ruled that porn site xHamster must remove all its amateur porn videos from the site in the country, or face fines of up to 30,000 Euros ($33,000) per video.

The move was the latest squeezing of the online porn industry in Europe, with many countries toughening up age and consent verification rules in the sector. It came in April 2023 after a complaint by the Dutch agency, the Expertise Bureau Online Child Abuse (EOKM).

xHamster was been given a three-week window to remove the videos that it cannot provide proof of consent from the people featured in them, or face potential fines. For videos made outside the Netherlands, the site was made aware that it would need to make them inaccessible in the country to comply with the ruling.

On May 22, despite the three-week deadline, XHamster suggested that the issue had not been resolved. When asked by SEXTECHGUIDE if it had removed videos from its Netherlands site to comply with the order, a spokesperson said the company would not comment, due to “ongoing legal proceedings”.

Legal experts have compared the ruling to one that led Pornhub to remove hundreds of thousands of videos from its site in 2021, following similar concerns.

As reported by Ars Technica, the ruling came after the EOKM submitted ten videos, uploaded to the porn site between 2017 and 2020, to the court as examples of content xHamster allegedly didn’t acquire performer consent for. In its defense, xHamster said that since 2021 only verified members and professional porn producers were able to upload content to its site.

Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the US porn industry lobby group Free Speech Coalition, suggested that xHamster had been unfairly targeted. He told Mashable: “So while I understand the concerns, inside the industry and out, there are thousands of sites, adult, and non-adult, that host unverified content — including sites like Twitter.”

A porn crackdown, of sorts, on Twitter has been seen in Germany recently. A Wired investigation showed that over 100 porn creators and models in the country have received notices from police, accusing them of breaching porn rules, some of them using Twitter to do so.

While it’s not illegal to share porn in Germany, it is unlawful to share it without undergoing age verification processes. Authorities in the country have been using AI to scour the internet for porn that might fall foul of this rule.

Some Twitter users told Wired that they had stopped sharing porn online after receiving the letters, due to being scared by the police contact. Authorities have reportedly asked Twitter to block some accounts in relation to sharing porn.

Various porn sites have been targeted by Germany’s porn age verification scheme recently. Pornhub has faced the threat of being blocked in France.