Pornhub Profits from Videos of Underage Children Class Action

The defendants in this case are companies related to Pornhub (MindGeek USA, Inc., MindGeek SARL, MG Freesites, Ltd, and others). The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Doe. The complaint alleges that the companies “have knowingly benefited financially from … videos posted to their various websites featuring victims who had not yet reached the age of majority.”

The class for this action is all persons who were under 18 when they appeared in a video or image uploaded or otherwise made available for viewing on any website owned or operated by the defendants in this case, between February 14, 2012 and the present.

The complaint alleges, “As Pornhub’s own Senior Community [Manager] publicly acknowledged via a Reddit post, age verification would be a ‘disaster’ for Pornhub because it ‘costs us money to verify’ and would result in a 50% reduction in traffic.”

Of the more than 40 million sex trafficking victims each year, the complaint alleges, 25% are children. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has received tens of millions of tips over time, most of which contain child sexual exploitation material (CSEM).

Pornhub operates pornography websites, including Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, as well as film production companies. It displays videos uploaded by users.

According to the complaint, it is very easy to upload porn videos onto Pornhub: “A user can post any video or image of any person doing anything without any consequences. The user does not have to demonstrate that he or she owns the copyrights in the content, that those depicted in the content have consented, or that those depicted in the content are of majority age.”

Users can also participate in the profits via the Model Program, the complaint says, getting a percentage of the ad revenue made via their content. To get “verified,” users only have to upload an image of themselves showing their usernames and the name “pornhub.com” handwritten on a piece of paper. However, the complaint alleges that “there is nothing to stop Model Hub users from uploading videos of someone else who is not over the age of 18.”

Until recently, the complaint also alleges, users were able to download content, so that even if content was taken down from Pornhub, it might still exist and show up on other pornography sites.

The complaint claims that Pornhub is slow at removing videos and uses them to attract more business. One video of a “prepubescent victim” was uploaded three times, the complaint alleges: “There is documented evidence the video was reported but Pornhub did not act until someone reported the content to [NCMEC]. Even after Pornhub was forced to remove the video, it left the link, title, and tags on the site to continue to drive traffic.”

The complaint alleges that Pornhub knowingly benefits from child sex trafficking. “Indeed,” the complaint alleges, “although Defendants are required to report CSEM to NCMEC, Defendants have utterly failed to report known instances of CSEM.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Minors
Tags: Child Pornography, Children/Minors, Sexual Abuse