DUSSELDORF, Germany — The one-man War on Porn being conducted in Germany by an obscure, conservative local bureaucrat from the North Rhine-Westphalia region has resulted in the first national ban order on “three pornographic sites based in Cyprus.”
The sites were identified by Der Spiegel as YouPorn, Pornhub and MyDirtyHobby.
As previously reported, the same anti-porn campaign has also targeted xHamster, one of Germany’s leading tube sites, which has offices in Cyprus.
The Dusseldorf administrative court said today it had "rejected complaints by the sites' two unnamed operators, who argued that child-protection regulations in Germany didn't apply to them because they were based in another European Union country,” the AP reported.
Minor state bureaucrat Tobias Schmid, of the State Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, has been single-handedly monopolizing anti-porn headlines in Germany for years. Schmid has stated that his goal is to “shut down” all major tube sites over alleged age-verification infractions.
Schmid’s crusade recently received the blessing of the federal Commission for the Protection of Minors in the Media, or Kommission für Jugendmedienschutz.
AP reports that “the court said the decision taken by the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia state to ban the sites in Germany didn't breach national, European or international law.”
Judges ruled that German law applies because “children and young people are at risk of serious and grave danger from freely available pornographic internet sites.”
As part of its reasoning, the judges “cited studies showing half of all minors questioned had viewed available online pornography, while only a quarter of parents used devices or software to block such content.”
The ruling can be appealed.
According to Der Spiegel, "in order to avert the ban, the porn portals for German users would have to install one of the more than 80 youth protection systems approved in Germany. These essentially provide that a user has identified himself as of legal age with an identification document. It is also possible to identify yourself as of legal age via a corresponding account or a mobile phone contract if the age was recorded when the contract was signed."
A Bureaucrat With a Fetish for 'Order'
As XBIZ has been reporting, Schmid has also recently targeted OnlyFans, telling a mainstream newspaper in March that the site is “increasingly attracting erotic providers and influencers” and promising, “we will take care of it.”
A local bureaucrat aligned with the establishment’s center-right Christian Democrat party, Schmid has gained national and international stature since 2019 by appointing himself the Central European nation’s chief proponent of state censorship on sexual content.
Schmid’s rhetoric, like that of fellow War on Porn crusaders worldwide, claims his campaign is driven by a desire to “protect the children.”
The German newspaper Taz observed in a 2016 article profiling Schmid that “Ordnungspolitik ist sein Fetisch,” meaning “Regulatory policy is his fetish.”
Main Image: Tobias Schmid (Source: LMA)