Judge denies majority of Pornhub’s bid to toss child porn suit
A California judge ruled Friday that the majority of a teen’s child pornography and sex-trafficking suit against embattled X-rated purveyor Pornhub can move forward.
The teenager filed suit anonymously under the name Jane Doe in February, alleging that Pornhub and its parent company MindGeek profited off the videos taken of her when she was just 16.
Her ex-boyfriend posted the videos to Pornhub and another MindGeek site, RedTube, in December 2019, with one of the videos featured on the latter site’s front page receiving 30,000 views, her suit said.
MindGeek — which has been sued by dozens of other alleged victims — asked a judge to toss the suit, claiming immunity since it didn’t create or post the video.
California federal Judge Cormac Carney found that the victim sufficiently alleged that MindGeek, in fact, did act as a content creator — a legal distinction that wouldn’t allow it to claim immunity in the case — for a slew of reasons.
The site asks users to fill out surveys about what type of videos they prefer; it allegedly uses “coded language for child pornography to ensure that content is visible to the ‘right fans'”; and the site allegedly tells users how to name their videos in certain ways that “target individuals interested in child pornography,” the ruling says.
For example, the suit claimed that MindGeek’s sites promote underage content with video playlists titled “less than 18,” “the best collection of young boys” and “under-age.”
“The court finds defendants’ conduct, as plaintiff alleges, has materially contributed to the creation of child pornography on its platforms,” Carney’s decision said.
The judge tossed three other claims in the suit for technical reasons while denying “in substantial part” MindGeek’s motion to dismiss.
The teen’s suit also accused the site of being on notice about the rampant issue of child pornography and child sexual exploitation on its pages, even promoting this content and trying to hide the full extent of the problem — since it profits off it.
“We are thrilled with the decision and we are looking forward to moving forward with discovery and hopefully a trial to vindicate the rights of victims of child sex-trafficking,” her lawyer Arun Subramanian told The Post. “There is just an epidemic of images and videos of underage victims being posted to sites like MindGeek’s and that’s what this case is all about.”
Lawyers for MindGeek did not immediately return a request for comment.
MindGeek has been brought to court by others who claim its sites feature countless videos of women being raped and forced into porn without consenting to the release of the videos.
https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/judge-denies-majority-of-pornhub-bid-to-toss-child-porn-suit/