Concerns raised over Cyprus’ porn industry

Concerns were raised over the weekend over Cyprus’ burgeoning porn industry, with an investigation set to be launched by parliament.

Akel MP Nikos Kettiros told newspaper Politis on Saturday that he had requested answers in writing from the commerce ministry regarding the growth of Cyprus’ porn industry, now said to be worth hundreds of millions of euros but said he had not received satisfactory answers.

As a result, he will now move to have the relevant parliamentary committee investigate the ins and outs of the matter.

In specifics, Kettiros said he wants the companies’ financial situations to be investigated, as well as the origin of the material published on their websites and whether adequate checks are carried out regarding the legality of downloading the material in question.

Cyprus is home to five large porn websites, Pornhub, XHamster, Stripchat, Faphouse, Virtual Taboo, and Faphouse. According to Politis, the five websites belong to various companies based in Dali and Limassol.

Kettiros was keen to point out that the prevalence of porn websites based in Cyprus has not gone unnoticed in Europe, and that an MP from “another European country” had informed him regarding a “serious issue” with the industry which “should be investigated”.

Porn companies are set to be further regulated in the European Union from Monday, when the EU’s Digital Services Act comes into force.

From Monday, porn companies will have to submit risk assessment reports regarding their activities to the European Commission, while also establishing measures to reduce systemic risks related to the services they provide.

In addition, they will be required to adhere to new transparency obligations pertaining to advertising and providing access to data.

Quality control and checks to ensure the legality of content posted on the websites is already carried out, as it is highly illegal to display videos which contain rape, animal cruelty, paedophilia, necrophilia, or other such acts on the websites.

For that reason, websites typically hire local staff in Cyprus to monitor videos being uploaded to the websites by private users to make sure they adhere to the law.

However, concerns have been raised that while age verification is highly regulated on the producer side of the industry, checks to ensure that consumers of porn are not under the age of 18 are lax at best, and concerns have been raised to this end.

Surveys carried out on the matter suggest that as much as 93 per cent of boys and 62 per cent of girls are exposed to some form of pornography before they reach the age of 18.

In January this year, there were 5.81 billion unique visits to the world’s top three porn websites. Last year, a total of 165 billion porn videos were watched, translating to 33 videos per adult in the world.

This amounts to around 17.8 trillion hours of porn watched per adult per year, which, if watched back-to-back, would take around two million years to complete.

It is estimated that around 25 per cent of web searches and 35 per cent of downloads are related to pornography, while 25 per cent of employed people access pornography from a work computer.