Pornhub removes Girls Do Porn, drawing the line at sex trafficking charges

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Since then, Pornhub has enacted a detailed system of safeguards to keep illegal and abusive content off the site. In January, the site began requiring these IDs for “performers” in all new videos. “Copyright is one of the few laws we’ve had during the first generation of the commercial internet where platforms had a business incentive to take down content and build out automated portals for making this a streamlined process,” Johnstone said. Holding businesses accountable motivates platforms to assign a registered DMCA agent with the Copyright Office to facilitate takedowns, Johnstone added, and copyright empowers the holder to subpoena a platform for information about the alleged infringer.

Mo Money Mo Problems

Videographer Matthew Wolfe, another member of the GirlsDoPorn team, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking as well as fraud, and he’s scheduled to be sentenced next month. Pratt is accused of recruiting the victims from throughout the United States and Canada using internet advertisements for clothed modeling jobs. Throughout the alleged conspiracy, Pratt and the co-defendants recruited hundreds of young women from around the U.S. and Canada who were aspiring models, court records show. Once the young women responded to the group’s online ads, Pratt and the others would tell them that the jobs were for pornographic videos and not modeling gigs, according to court documents. “These creators of sexually explicit deepfakes have no regard whatsoever for the women and girls who are victims of sex trafficking and now being further abused through this deepfake sexual abuse,” says Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, who works to counter image-based abuse.

One Last Time

• It is a tricky book to write about because of this generative quality, and because the sentiments that strike me as particularly consequential maybe appear banal to a different reader.
• Porn is full of moments and observations like these, which spark trains of thought that can hurtle off to various locations.
• Each of the 4.4 million times someone has typed in words or phrases linked to abuse, a warning message has blocked the page, saying that kind of content is illegal.
• But she does not get any residuals from that site or any others, Khalifa told The Washington Post.
• Ask before you post about your teen online; no matter how proud you are of them, they have a right to control how their image and information is shared online, even by their parents.

The preference for a novelty of sexual partners has also been well documented in animal and human studies and described as the “Coolidge effect” (Fiorino et al., 1997; Wilson, 1997). Some studies suggest that the unbridled access to a large quantity of novel sexual images on the Internet has various effects on neural processing in the mesolimbic reward center, which is similar to some influences of addictive substances (Barrett, 2010; Burtăverde et al., 2021; Mauer-Vakil and Bahji, 2020; Pitchers et al., 2013). Despite those promises, the court said, GirlsDoPorn did exactly the opposite — publishing the videos on their paid subscription websites and posting some to popular free pornographic websites. Online trolls would spread that information to the women’s social circles, including friends, family and employers. A California judge has ruled that the owners of a San Diego-based pornographic website has to pay $13 million in damages after they defrauded 22 women in order to get them to perform in explicit videos. After pleading guilty to counts of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion in 2021, Gyi was sentenced to four years in prison.

Porn Shows What People Still Won’t Say About Sex

Prause and Pfaus suggested that “erectile problems may occur when real-life sexual stimulation does not match the broad content [accessible online]” (Prause and Pfaus, 2015). GirlsDoPorn had argued that each model signed legally binding documents releasing all rights to the videos and consenting to publication online. But the judge said those weren’t enforceable contracts because they “contain vague, incomprehensible language,” and because the women’s signatures were obtained through “fraud, intimidation, and coercion.” The online leaks actually helped build the case against the websites, said attorney Brian Holm, one of the attorneys for the women. Holm told NPR that they contacted the women whose names appeared on PornWikiLeaks, and kept hearing the same stories. The lawsuit was initially filed on behalf of four women; after some initial media attention, Holm and the attorneys were flooded with calls.

This is particularly true for LGBTQ+ teens, who may not be provided as much information in sexual education classes. Some teens are sexting, and while this is usually consensual, girls are more likely to report that they were pressured into sending images of themself, and similarly, boys were more likely to respond that they would ask for sexual pictures from a partner. 73% of teens are exposed to porn by the time they are 17, with over half of teens reporting the first time they saw porn online was before they were 13. LGBTQ+ teens and cisgender boys were most likely to report viewing porn on purpose, but often report using it in ways that explore their sexuality – for LGBTQ+ teens in particular, using porn may be a way teens feel safe exploring their preferences for a partner when they are uncomfortable talking about it to peers or adults. For example, Snapchat became very popular social network for “sexting” as the most usual way of sharing sexually explicit materials (Goodwin et al., 2015; Handyside and Ringrose, 2017; Park et al., 2016). Several of Pratt’s business partners and employees have pleaded guilty to sex crime charges.

She locked herself in the bathroom while Wolfe and Garcia tried to coax her out. But soon after the incident, she was harassed at work—Jane Doe 7’s video had been posted online. While she only looked at it on one website, others told Doe the video was now all over the Internet. The victims said they suffered relentless torment after online trolls figured out their names and posted that and other private information online. Some had links or images from the videos emailed to parents and grandparents, coworkers and bosses.

The Does were eventually able to find one another—and by doing so, they collectively found the strength to come forth and build a successful legal case against GirlsDoPorn. The most recent demand letter from the victims’ lead attorney Brian Holm states that “Cloudflare itself is knowingly participating in this criminal venture” by providing services to these sites. But she ended her statement defiantly, telling Wolfe directly that she hoped the pain of the women who spoke that day haunted him.

“Laila Mickelwait is a superstar advocate and activist who has single-handedly led the charge against Pornhub and its facilitation and monetization of child sex trafficking,” he tweeted last week. Nearly two dozen videos uploaded to Pornhub showed a 12-year-old Alabama boy being repeatedly drugged and raped. The rapist, Rocky Shay Franklin, is now serving a 40-year prison term for sexual exploitation. “Performers” remain unverified in many thousands of pre-2024 videos, including those that pop up from search terms involving teens and violence, Mickelwait told Business Insider.