Germany – Customers of the provider Arcor can no longer access a range of pornographic offerings on the Internet. Questioned by heise online, company spokesman Paul Gerlach confirmed that various pages can no longer be reached from the Arcor network.

“Pornographic content is freely accessible [on the pages concerned] with insufficient or no checks on age”. Among them are sex.com, youporn.com and privatamateure.com. Other pages with similar content can still be reached, however. Arcor would not say how many pages are involved or how access is to be blocked.

According to Arcor, its decision was in response to a request to block the relevant content.

“Until the legal position is clarified, Arcor has voluntarily complied with this request. Provisionally, therefore, the corresponding pages cannot be accessed from the Arcor network”, said Gerlach. Arcor expects, he continued, that “the web site operator and the company that hosts the pages will remove the unlawful content or make it inaccessible to the public.”

Research by heise online reveals that behind the request to Arcor is a German company that itself offers erotic videos online, but performs the age checks that are required in Germany. Companies in this industry don’t wear kid gloves in their fight for sales. Foreign firms are increasingly crowding on to the market with German-language Web pages and, though these are targeted at Germans, they occasionally violate the provisions of Section 184 of the German Penal Code on the distribution of pornographic material.