The name ‘Aylo’ might not ring a bell with many people but it is one of the leading players in the adult entertainment industry.

Formerly known as MindGeek, and Manwin before that , the company conquered the online adult market over the past decade by offering free porn to the masses.

Aylo is also the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as PornHub, YouPorn, Redtube and Tube. It also owns many adult brands, such as Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of over 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm MG Premium protects this content by various means; it sends millions of takedown requests per week and full-blown lawsuits often enter the equation.

Bizarre Goodporn Lawsuit

One stand-out lawsuit targeted the tube site, Goodporn. MG Premium sued the platform for widespread copyright infringement, hoping to shut it down, but after two years that had proven elusive.

Instead, Goodporn owner Amrit Kumar fought back hard. Among other things, he allegedly signed a contract to obtain the rights to MG Premium’s content in 2019, leading him to accuse his accusers of copyright infringement. Kumar went as far as ‘going after’ the pornhub.com domain .

It’s almost impossible to summarize this bizarre case, which comprises hundreds of filings. For example, it also includes Lizette Lundberg and Emile Brunn as defendants, who stood accused of working with Kumar and submitting inaccurate DMCA counternotices.

Ultimately, however, the court entered summary judgment and a default, for inducement of copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement against all Goodporn defendants.

Millions in Damages and a Broad Injunction

Last December MG Premium asked a California federal court to issue a default judgment in the amount of $21.6 million. That was based on a $15,000 damages award for each of the 2,433 works in the lawsuit.

The $15,000 figure was reasonable, the company argued, as it’s just a tenth of the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work.

MG Premium also requested a permanent injunction that would order domain registries and registrars to sign over all infringing Goodporn domain names.

While these targeted requests are not uncommon, the proposed injunction went much further than that. Search engines, hosting and Internet service providers, domain registrars, domain registries and other service providers should be required to block the site’s domain names, MG Premium said.

“[The companies should] block or use reasonable efforts to attempt to block access by United States users of the Goodporn Websites by blocking or attempting to block access to all domains, subdomains, URLs, and/or IP Addresses that have as its sole or predominant purpose to enable to facilitate access to the Goodporn Websites.”

Court Limits Damages, Denies Injunction

After reviewing all relevant factors, the court agreed that a default judgment is appropriate. However, MG Premium won’t get everything it requested. The court settled on a substantially lower damages award, decimating the original request.

“Plaintiff has not adduced any evidence justifying why an award of $15,000 per infringement is reasonable and appropriate in this case,” the order reads.

“Weighing the authorities and arguments presented in Plaintiff’s brief, though unmoored by evidence substantiating Plaintiff’s position, the Court exercises its discretion to award statutory damages of $1,500 per infringement, that is, twice the minimum statutory damages available for willful infringement.”

The damages award, to be paid by Kumar, is substantially lower than the amount MG Premium hoped to get, but still adds up to $2,157,000. On top, $46,740 in attorneys’ fees, to be paid by all defendants.

The court further declared that MG Premium is the rightful owner of all works identified in the complaint but declined to award the requested injunction. This means that the domains will be neither seized nor blocked.

“Without any evidence to support the remedy, particularly evidence toward irreparable harm and the inadequacy of monetary remedies, the Court declines to find Plaintiff is entitled to the injunctions it seeks,” the order reads.

Despite the win, MG Premium likely hoped for much more than it got. That could mean this isn’t the last we hear of this case.

More to Come?

TorrentFreak spoke with Jason Tucker of Battleship Stance , who worked for MG Premium on this case. He is pleased that this important hurdle was taken but expects that there is more to come.

“This is one of the most bizarre cases I have ever consulted on and it is not over,” Tucker informs TorrentFreak.

“The Defendant displayed full-length movies with no license and completely ignored takedown notices. In response to a lawsuit, a person purportedly named Amrit Kumar claimed to own all of MG Premium’s past and future library of movies and images. His basis was a forged agreement.”

Whether MG Premium will fully recoup the damages remains to be seen. The fact that there are doubts about the identities of the defendants suggests that this might not be straightforward. That said, Tucker tells us that he is committed to helping his client enforce the judgment, while putting an end to the copyright-infringing activity.

—

A copy of the order is available here (pdf) and the associated judgment can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The name ‘Aylo’ might not ring a bell with many people but it is one of the leading players in the adult entertainment industry.

Formerly known as MindGeek, and Manwin before that , the company conquered the online adult market over the past decade by offering free porn to the masses.

With help from user-uploaded videos, the company built massive databases of adult entertainment, much to the frustration of incumbent adult industry companies that, in the past , often found pirated copies of their content on MindGeek-operated sites.

This bold business model paid off with billions of visits that provided a sizable revenue stream through sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube, Tube8, and dozens of others. And as MindGeek’s stature rose, the company transformed into a major rightsholder which today operates under Aylo branding.

This imperium also controls a lot of copyrighted content. Aylo subsidiary MG Premium, for example, which owns various brands including Brazzers, has more than 40,000 works registered at the US Copyright Office which it actively protects.

Aylo’s subsidiary regularly files lawsuits against ‘pirate’ tube sites and users of peer-to-peer networks . The most impressive numbers come from its DMCA takedown campaign, targeting close to 900 million URLs through Google alone.

Goodporn Lawsuit

One stand-out lawsuit targets the tube site Goodporn. MG Premium sued the platform for widespread copyright infringement, hoping to shut it down, but after two years that is yet to happen.

Instead, Goodporn owner Amrit Kumar fought back hard . Among other things, he allegedly signed a contract to obtain the rights to MG Premium’s content in 2019, leading him to accuse his accusers of copyright infringement.

This counterclaim was eventually dismissed by the court during the summer. In addition, the court granted MG Premium’s motion for summary judgment for inducement of copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement.

It’s almost impossible to summarize the entire case, which comprises hundreds of filings. For example, it also includes Lizette Lundberg and Emile Brunn as defendants, who stood accused of working with Kumar and submitting inaccurate DMCA counternotices.

Ultimately, however, the court entered summary judgment and a default for inducement of copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement against all Goodporn defendants.

$21 million damages

With the default in hand, MG Premium is hoping to finalize the case. A few days ago it submitted a motion for default judgment, pointing out that Kumar continues to profit from the infringing activities to this day.

“As this case has proceeded for two years, Defendant ‘Amrit Kumar’ continued to reap profit from this scheme,” MG Premium writes.

“Operating covertly behind proxy internet protocol addresses, anonymous email servers, and fake physical addresses, Kumar adopted the guise of a ‘pro per’ litigant while engaging ghostwriters, dodging depositions, eschewing telephone or video communication with counsel, and submitting falsified evidence of copyright ownership.”

MG Premium claims to have lost many millions of dollars and seeks substantial damages as compensation. At the maximum of $150,000 per work, it can request up to $216 million. However, following the lower bar set in the Yespornplease case , a tenth of that is sufficient; $21.6 million.

Proposed Blocking Order

In addition to damages, MG Premium also requests a broad permanent injunction, ordering domain registries and registrars to sign over all infringing Goodporn domain names.

While these targeted requests are not uncommon, the proposed injunction goes further than that. It also requires search engines, hosting and Internet service providers, domain registrars, domain registries and other service providers to block the site’s domain names.

According to MG Premium, these companies should be ordered…

“To block or use reasonable efforts to attempt to block access by United States users of the Goodporn Websites by blocking or attempting to block access to all domains, subdomains, URLs, and/or IP Addresses that have as its sole or predominant purpose to enable to facilitate access to the Goodporn Websites”

Not Over Yet…

The motion for default judgment has yet to be signed off by the court. The blocking measures are targeted at services that act “in concert or participation” with Goodporn. It’s not clear against which companies it will be enforced.

It’s clear that Pornhub’s sister company is eager to get this case over with. However, history has shown that nothing in the proceeding is straightforward.

Earlier this week, Defendant Kumar submitted a motion to set aside the default judgment, citing Visa restrictions, limited familiarity with U.S. legal proceedings, and other reasons for his earlier lack of appearance. Whether that will be granted remains to be seen.

—

A copy of MG Premium’s motion for a default judgment is available here (pdf) and the proposed order can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Adult entertainment company MG Premium has left no stone unturned in its three-year legal standoff with the operator of piracy sites including the hugely popular ‘DaftSex’.

The first public sign of the battle ahead arrived courtesy of a huge MG Premium DMCA takedown campaign that aimed to remove 832,000 DaftSex URLs from Google search.

Mass copyright takedowns like these should a) make sites like DaftSex harder to find and b) trigger Google’s downranking mechanism which reduces search engine placement in response to DMCA notices.

Then came MG Premium’s application for a DMCA subpoena targeting Cloudflare in the summer of 2020, which hoped to obtain the identity of DaftSex’s operator.

At the time DaftSex was pulling in tens of millions of visits per month and MG Premium’s goal was to reduce that to zero, through the courts if necessary.

MG Premium Files Lawsuit Against the Operator of DaftSex

Filed at the federal court in the District of Washington in 2022, MG Premium went after Vasily Kharchenko, the alleged operator of Daftsex.com, Biqle.com, Daxab.com and other affiliated sites. In response, Kharchenko dug in his heels, failed to appear in the lawsuit, then sat back as District Judge Benjamin Settle awarded MG Premium $32,145,000 in damages in November 2022.

The Judge also signed off on an injunction that authorized the transfer of several domains away from Kharchenko and into MG Premium’s possession.

The MindGeek subsidiary took control of some domains very quickly and redirected them to its own platforms including RedTube. DaftSex acted quickly too; it switched to new domains including Daft.sex, Dsex.to, plus biqle.ru and biqle.org.

In December 2022, MG Premium asked the court to hold Kharchenko in contempt for breaching the injunction. The company also requested permission to take control of the new DaftSex domains at Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org. Since Daftsex was using a Twitter account to inform users of new domains, MG Premium asked the court to issue an order compelling Twitter to either shut down the account or transfer it to MG Premium.

Kharchenko Ignores Order to Show Cause, Judge Runs Out Patience

In his March 2023 order, Judge Settle described MG Premium’s evidence showing Kharchenko violating the injunction, as both “clear and convincing.” Nevertheless, Kharchenko was given yet another chance to participate and informed that he had 30 days to show why he should not be “subject to a bench warrant, to an order holding him in contempt, or to monetary sanctions.”

Having boycotted the entire process to date, and despite being served, Kharchenko failed to comply with the March order. In an order handed down last week, Judge Settle considered MG Premium’s evidence and the laid out the consequences.

After finding that MG Premium’s 2,143 copyrighted works were still being displayed on Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org, Judge Settle found Kharchenko in contempt for violating the injunctions. With that alone unlikely to prevent further infringement, the court came up with a solution to help reduce visibility of the infringing sites.

Judge Declares MG Premium the New Owner of ‘Pirate’ Domains

The section of the order dealing with Kharchenko’s domains initially reads like bad news for MG Premium but then suddenly starts to improve.

“MG Premium has not persuaded the Court that it can or should order non-parties to take concrete steps to prevent the infringement, or as a sanction for Karchenko’s wrongful conduct and his contempt of court,” it begins.

“The Court will not, therefore, Order third parties take affirmative steps to transfer domain name registrars to MG Premium. It will ORDER instead that MG Premium is entitled to ownership of the domain names.” With that, Judge Settle issued the instructions below.

(1) MG Premium or its designee is entitled to be the registrar of record for the domain name Daft.sex, and this Order demonstrates that right to the operator of the .SEX registry, ICM Registry and/or Registry Service, LLSC. Any resulting transfer shall be done at MG Premium’s reasonable expense.

(2) MG Premium or its designee is entitled to be the registrar of record for the domain name Dsex.to, and this Order demonstrates that right to the operator of the .TO registry, Tonic Domains Corp. Any resulting transfer shall be done at MG Premium’s reasonable expense.

(3) MG Premium or its designee is entitled to be the registrar of record for the domain name Biqle.org, and this Order demonstrates that right to the operator of the ORG registry, Public Interest Registry. Any resulting transfer shall be done at MG Premium’s reasonable expense.

Twitter and GitHub Ordered to Eject Kharchenko

Further instructions relate to Kharchenko-operated accounts on Twitter/X and GitHub. The order notes that since MG Premium “is entitled to be the owner of record” of the Twitter account used to communicate with DaftSex users, it should be transferred to the company at “reasonable expense.” The same applies to daftsex.github.io and daftpost.github.io which have been used to inform DaftSex users of new domain names for many months.

Whether any of the above will be enough to prevent ongoing violations of MG Premium’s rights and the terms of the permanent injunction, remains to be seen. Events to date indicate there’s a solid chance that Kharchenko will find ways to circumvent the order. He may have been served but we suspect that his geographical location represents a major roadblock that’s unlikely to be removed for the next several years.

The March order and last week’s contempt order can be found here ( 1 , 2 ,pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Some people believe that the early internet received a welcome uptake boost when the adult industry began to move online. Three decades later, many countries believe the internet – and children especially – would be better off if adult content was heavily restricted online.

The main problem is readily accessible ‘tube’ sites. Once hated by the adult industry because they were filled with pirated content that was never paid for, big-name tube sites like Pornhub are today owned by corporations which finance, produce, and distribute their own adult entertainment content.

As a result, these ‘legal’ tube sites now find themselves trying to rid the internet of ‘illegal’ tube sites, which prefer the original model where sites don’t pay for any content at all.

PornEZ Doing Business in the United States

On January 18, 2023, MG Premium, the adult entertainment giant behind brands including Reality Kings, Brazzers, MOFOS, Babes.com, and Twistys, filed a copyright complaint at a California federal court. The MindGeek subsidiary targeted pirate tube site PornEZ.net, its alleged operator Nguyen Hoi, and Does 1-20.

According to the complaint, PornEZ.net received an average of 27.6 million visits per month in the last quarter of 2022, with almost 22% of its visitors hailing from the United States. Building on the site’s U.S. connections, the complaint notes that visitors to U.S. social media platforms such as YouTube, came predominantly from the United States, with Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Twitter users adding to the total. Those that didn’t arrive at PornEZ via U.S. social media platforms did so via U.S.-based search engines like Google.

Anyone in doubt that PornEZ was doing business in the United States could look at its domain name registrar (Namecheap) and its delivery network provider (Cloudflare), the plaintiffs continued. The site’s popups were geo-located to the United States “on the city level” and the site claimed to be in compliance with 18 U.S.C. 2257 , a U.S. law focused on the adult industry,

Claimed Commitment to the DMCA

It’s common for certain types of pirate sites to claim compliance with 17 U.S.C. § 512 of the DMCA, which under appropriate circumstances can limit liability for the existence of infringing content on a platform. PornEZ claimed similar compliance and noted that it would take down infringing content in response to DMCA notices. MG Premium’s experience told a different story.

“[D]efendants systematically refuse to comply with proper and compliant DMCA takedown notices against their own terms and conditions and displayed instructions,” the company informed the court.

MG Premium said that in December 2022, 7,818 of its copyrighted works were available on PornEZ via 51,375 URLs. A more recent accounting reveals that the company submitted 19,586 DMCA notices in an attempt to remove 116,757 infringements.

Aside from non-compliance with takedown requests, PornEZ failed to register as a service provider at the United States Copyright Office, meaning that in the event of a lawsuit, the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA would not apply.

The complaint concluded with a request for a broad injunction and statutory damages for willful copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, and vicarious and/or contributory copyright infringement, in the amount of $150,000 for each work infringed.

Defendants Served But Did Not Appear

In August 2022, a DMCA subpoena obtained by MG Premium resulted in Cloudflare handing over information about the operator of PornEZ.

“In response, Cloudflare provided customer profile, billing and payment data, and user login information that shows the operator logging into Cloudflare’s US servers to control certain site operations,” MG Premium informed the court.

“Cloudflare production showed that the billing listed the ‘Responsible Party’ as customer ID 351754. The name provided was Nguyen Hoi with an email address. No physical address was provided. Through the email address, a total of 11 payments have been made to Cloudflare since August 7, 2021.”

While the payments were made via PayPal, these were tokenized payments, meaning that the operator obtained unique tokens or card account numbers from a third-party vendor, and used these to pay Cloudflare, instead of using their own account. It appears that left the plaintiffs with just a name and email addresses.

In February 2022, the defendants were served with PDF copies of the complaint and a court order, via email. Fairly predictably, they did not answer the complaint or appear in any way, so a default was entered against Nguyen Hoi on April 11, 2023.

Massive Claim For Damages

This week MG Premium filed a 33-page motion for default judgment against Nguyen Hoi, supported by 10 pages of declarations from Jason Tucker of anti-piracy company Battleship Stance and Andreas Alkiviades Andreou, a Cyprus-based director of MG Premium.

“The sale of memberships to MG Premium Ltd.’s paid membership websites where MG Premium Ltd. offers its copyrighted works is directly damaged by Defendant’s display of its works for free. Simply stated, potential MG Premium Ltd. customers will not pay monthly rates for the right to access and view content that is available for free,” the motion notes.

Sales lost to piracy are notoriously difficult to calculate, as unintentionally demonstrated below.

While over $275 billion would indeed be a lot of sales to lose every month, even the $275 million suggested as potential monthly revenue in the motion is optimistic. MG Premium admits that “not all 27.6M monthly visitors” of PornEZ would have been MG Premium customers, but that’s the purpose of statutory damages; precise calculation of loss isn’t required.

“Infringements here were and are willful and malicious. Defendant knew that his conduct was unlawful and acted without the slightest pretense of a justification. Defendant uploaded MG Premium, Ltd.’s copyrighted works onto PornEZ.net. At a minimum, Defendant was made aware of the infringements upon takedown notices sent by MG Premium Ltd. Defendant’s objective was to unlawfully display Plaintiff’s property for financial gain. There is no other plausible objective,” the motion states.

“Defendants’ illegal actions were not a momentary lapse, but part of a sustained commercial enterprise. To deter others from the same temptation, a large award is appropriate. Defendants willfully infringed 7,818 of Plaintiff’s works on 51,375 separate and distinct webpages resulting in millions of views. The sheer volume of infringements indicates the willfulness of Defendant’s actions and the value of using Plaintiffs content.”

For willful copyright infringement, MG Premium requests a total of $117,270,000 in statutory damages plus $4,670.47 in attorney’s fees and costs. The company also seeks a permanent injunction against the defendant and anyone acting on their behalf from infringing any of its copyrighted works moving forward.

Verisign should also hand over the PornEZ.net domain, while Cloudflare and Namecheap should be enjoined from continuing any service contracts or services to the defendant. It’s unclear whether that should also apply to any future business, but without being able to identify the defendant more positively, that could prove impossible.

The complaint, motion for default, declarations, and proposed order can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

When an opponent fails to defend themselves in an ordinary fight, things tend to be over pretty quickly. The same isn’t true for copyright lawsuits.

In early October 2021, MG Premium – a subsidiary of adult entertainment giant MindGeek – filed a copyright complaint at a district court in Washington. It targeted Daftsex.com, an adult ‘tube’ site offering MG-owned videos from the Brazzers and Digital Playground series, among others, to dozens of millions of users every month – for free.

Daftsex had little chance of winning in court and completely ignored the lawsuit. It still took more than a year to conclude but with a damages award of $32 million and a broad injunction that included domain seizures, MG Premium prevailed in the end. In reality, however, very little had changed.

Domain Seizures Immediately Countered

Verisign was ordered to sign several domains over to MG Premium, including Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com. Daftsex responded by switching to new domains – Daft.sex, Dsex.to, biqle.ru and biqle.org. The site took a traffic hit but managed to stay online.

Meanwhile, MG Premium redirected its newly acquired domains (and millions of former Daftsex users) to MindGeek-owned RedTube. Despite an external move to undermine domain transfers , the opportunity to convert pirates into paying customers would’ve been useful.

Unfortunately, further opportunities quickly dried up. Seized domain Daftsex.com received more than 41 million visits in November 2022. A month later, traffic plummeted to 6.5 million. According to SimilarWeb data, in January 2023, just three months after MindGeek took control, the domain received just two million visits.

In parallel, Daftsex continued to rebuild its traffic on new domains. In January 2023, Daft.sex received 22.7m visits and Dsex.to 5.7 million. In the background, MG Premium renewed its legal efforts to take the site down.

Contempt of Court

In December 2022, MG Premium filed a request to reopen the case so that alleged Daftsex owner Vasily Kharchenko held in contempt of court ( 1 ). Declarations in support were filed by Jason Tucker of anti-piracy company Battleship Stance, and MG Premium’s Anti-Piracy Strategy Manager, Steven Salway, a former Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit detective ( 1 , 2 )

In addition to the court holding Kharchenko in contempt, MG Premium requested permission to take over the new Daftsex domains – Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org. Since Daftsex is using a Twitter account to communicate with its user community, MG Premium wants the court to issue an order compelling Twitter to shut down the account or transfer it to MG Premium.

As things stand today, none of those things have happened and Daftsex just keeps on growing. That doesn’t mean that MG Premium is simply letting it happen though.

DMCA Takedown Campaign Begins

Within hours of Daftsex announcing its new domains last November, MG Premium began sending DMCA notices to Google, hoping to make daft.sex, dsex.to, and biqle.org less visible in search results.

That went on to become what is almost certainly the largest and most intense DMCA notice-sending campaign by a copyright holder against a single site since the DMCA was introduced in 1998.

The first DMCA notices targeting daft.sex and dsex.to were sent to Google on November 14 and 21, respectively. In the first week, Google recorded takedown requests for 937,952 Daft.sex URLs and 941,424 URLs belonging to Dsex.to, but that was just a taster of things to come.

Largest Ever Copyright Holder Campaign Against Single Site

According to Google data – an entry dated January 9, 2023, covering a single week – Google received DMCA notices requesting the removal of 4,686,019 Dsex.to URLs. An entry dated January 16, again covering a single week, states that Google received DMCA notices requesting 5,025,742 Daft.sex URLs to be taken down.

Data shown in Google’s charts lag a little behind actual notices received but between November 14, 2022 and February 20, 2023, Google received ~11,000 individual requests from MG Premium targeting daft.sex.

Total daft.sex URLs requested for removal until March 3, 2023: ~45.6 million .

Between November 21, 2022 and February 20, 2023, Google received around ~11,000 individual requests from MG Premium targeting dsex.to.

Total dsex.to URLs requested for removal until March 3, 2023: ~45.6 million

URLs requested for removal overall (both domains combined): 91+ million

To put these figures into perspective, the number of URLs requested for deletion against The Pirate Bay’s .org domain currently sits at 6,008,980 – after being targeted since 2012.

Majority of Notices Had No Immediate Effect

Since Google reports what action it takes after receiving a DMCA takedown notice, we can see that the vast majority of these notices failed to have any immediate effect.

When considering all MG Premium notices sent to Google, targeting both daft.sex and dsex.to URLs, close to 80% were reported by Google as ‘not in index’, meaning that the reported URLs were absent from Google’s search so couldn’t be removed.

That raises the obvious question of why so many URLs reported by MG Premium as infringing were unrecognized by Google.

TorrentFreak requested comment from MG Premium on Saturday evening but received no response, most likely due to the timing.

We’ll publish an update if we receive a response, but we suspect that other factors could be at play here that only MG Premium will be able to properly explain.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Adult entertainment conglomerate MindGeek owns several of the largest ‘free’ tube sites including Pornhub.

In the early days, these sites thrived on pirated content but over time, that changed . Today, MindGeek itself is one of the most protective copyright holders in the industry.

MindGeek subsidiary MG Premium, for example, has many thousands of works registered at the US Copyright Office. To prevent these videos from being shared online without permission, the company regularly takes legal action.

Victory Against DaftSex

In a recent case heard at a federal court in the Western District of Washington, MindGeek won a default judgment against Vasily Kharchenko, the suspected operator of Daftsex.com, Artporn.com, Biqle.com and Daxab.com.

These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek’s side for years and MG Premium accused their operator of mass copyright infringement. DaftSex alone was good for dozens of millions of monthly visits.

The adult media company won by default after the defense failed to appear. Kharchenko was ordered to pay more than $32 million in damages and an injunction required domain name registry Verisign to sign over the valuable domain names to MG Premium.

Court Order Hijack Attempt

Apparently, someone had been keeping a close eye on the case. Shortly after the court issued its order, Verisign received an email from an MG Premium imposter trying to seize ownership of the contested domain names.

The identity of the imposter is unknown, but a new court filing MG Premium suggests that it could be Kharchenko’s attempt to retain control over the domain names. For as long as it lasts.

“On November 10, 2022, just days after this Court entered the Order of Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction, a fraudulent letter was sent to Verisign, Inc. purportedly from MG Premium requesting Verisign, Inc. to unlock the domains and send authorization codes to mgpremiumltd@gmail.com.”

“This is a fake letter, not sent by MG Premium. It is suspected Defendant Kharchenko may have sent this fake letter in an attempt to thwart the Court’s Order and the loss of the domains,” MG Premium writes.

The bold move ultimately failed, as the real MG Premium was already in touch with Verisign at that point. However, it was clear that someone had tried to hijack the court’s order.

Motion for Contempt and Sanctions

MG Premium suspects that DaftSex’s operator sent the email. Despite the court order and injunction, the pirate site is not giving up. After the domains were eventually signed over to MG Premium, the sites switched to new domains including Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org.

These new domains were made public through DaftSex’s Twitter account and remain in operation today.

To address this problem, MG Premium submitted a motion for contempt and sanctions against the site operator. And since more monetary damages aren’t going to help, the sanctions should be focused on taking all replacement sites offline. MG Premium also wants the Twitter account suspended.

“The Court must unfortunately look at Defendant Kharchekno as an irresponsible teenager who simply cannot follow simple rules nor show any respect to others, including the rule of law,” MG Premium writes.

“To force obedience with the Court’s Order, the Court should take away the utilized domains and the Twitter account promoting those domains. There is simply no other way to get this behavior to cease.”

The court has yet to rule on this motion but if MG Premium successfully takes over the new domain names, any new hijacking attempts will lack the element of surprise. Even then, MG Premium may have to return to court if DaftSex switches domains again.

—

A copy of MG Premium’s request for a finding of contempt and associated sanctions against Daftsex and its operator Vasily Kharchekno is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

MindGeek is one of the leading players in the adult entertainment industry.

Formerly known as Manwin, MindGeek conquered the online adult market over the past decade by offering free porn to the masses.

The Copyright Switch

With help from user-uploaded videos, the company created massive databases of adult entertainment, much to the frustration of incumbent adult industry companies that often found pirated copies of their content on the site.

This bold business model paid off with billions of visits that provided a sizable revenue stream through sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, Redtube, Tube8, Xtube, and dozens of others. And as MindGeek’s stature rose, it also transformed into a major rightsholder itself.

This imperium also includes a lot of copyrighted content. MindGeek subsidiary MG Premium, for example, owns brands including Brazzers and has more than 10,000 works registered at the US copyright office which it actively protects.

MindGeek’s subsidiary regularly files lawsuits against ‘pirate’ tube sites and users of peer-to-peer networks . The most impressive numbers come from its DMCA takedown campaign, which has been ramping up for over a decade.

121 Million URLs Since January

At the time of writing, MG Premium is the most prolific sender of DMCA notices to Google, according to the search giant’s transparency report. Since January this year, the adult company asked the search engine to remove more than 121 million allegedly infringing URLs.

MindGeek’s subsidiary officially began sending takedown notices in 2014 and since then has submitted well over half a billion links; 561,222,215 to be precise.

These numbers make MG Premium the copyright holder behind most DMCA notices to Google overall. The company reported nearly twice as many notices as the runner-up, anime publisher Viz Media. Music Group BPI reported slightly more URLs but it represents multiple rightsholders.

~60% Removal Rate

Not all reported URLs were removed from Google’s search results. The totals also include duplicates and URLs that were not indexed. For 1.6% of the links, Google decided not to take action, which suggests that no infringing content was found. This remaining 60.% was indeed removed, which translates to 327 million URLs

MindGeek also received DMCA notices for its own platforms. However, on PornHub, this number went down dramatically after the site started to verify uploaders.

All in all, it’s intriguing to see how MindGeek managed to transform itself from a company that was scolded for copyright infringement to one that protects (its own) copyrights at all costs.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Adult entertainment conglomerate MindGeek owns several of the largest ‘free’ tube sites including Pornhub.

In the early days, these sites thrived on pirated content but over time, that changed . Today, MindGeek itself is of the most protective copyright holders in the industry.

MindGeek subsidiary MG Premium, for example, has many thousands of works registered at the US Copyright Office. To prevent these videos from being shared online without permission, the company regularly takes legal action.

Daftsex Lawsuit

In a recent case, filed at the federal court in the District of Washington, MindGeek went after Vasily Kharchenko, the alleged operator of Daftsex.com, Artporn.com, Biqle.com and Daxab.com.

These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek’s side for years and sending hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices made little difference. So, in 2020, MindGeek obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare to unmask their operator , which eventually led to Kharchenko.

MG Premium accused the operator of mass copyright infringement and argued that he personally uploaded 2,143 of its copyrighted works to the sites. Through the court, the company hoped to stop these infringements and receive compensation for the damages suffered.

Default Judgment

Kharchenko remained silent and didn’t show up in court to defend himself. This left MG Premium with no other option than to request a default judgment seeking millions of dollars in damages and a broad injunction.

In the first instance, United States District Judge Benjamin Settle denied the injunction . The massive damages request wasn’t a problem but since third parties such as Cloudflare and FDC Servers were also targeted by the injunction, further evidence was required.

To justify such a “sweeping” order, the Judge asked MG Premium to provide more details about the contacts between the defendant and the third-party services.

MindGeek responded to this order with an updated request, leaving out most of the third-party services. The only one that remains is Verisign , the registry responsible for .com, .net, .cc, and .tv domain names.

Specifically, MindGeek wants Verisign to disable the Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com domains and transfer them to the porn conglomerate.

$32m Damages + Domain Seizures

MindGeek argued before the court that DaftSex alone had 125 million visits in June 2021. If these people all signed up for a Brazzers subscription at $9.99 per month, that would have resulted in over a billion dollars in revenue.

The adult entertainment company didn’t ask for a billion dollars in damages though. It requested $15,000 for each of the 2,143 copyright-infringing works that were at stake in the lawsuit. Judge Settle views this as an appropriate amount.

“[A]ctual damages could be calculated at over $1,248,750,000, thus statutory damages of $32,145,000 are appropriate for Defendants’ willful infringement. Only a large award will serve to deter these arrogant Defendants from future illegal action,” Judge Settle writes.

The Judge also agreed to an injunction that requires Verisign to sign over Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com, to MG Premium’s registrar EuroDNS. This means that MindGeek will effectively seize control of the domains, which have millions of daily visitors.

At the time of writing the domains have yet to be signed over. MindGeek expects this to happen fairly soon and is content with the outcome of the case.

“We are extremely pleased with the court’s decision, which is crucial to MindGeek’s fight to eliminate piracy of its content. Decisions such as this help contribute to restoring the rights of thousands of content owners who suffer because of illegal pirate sites such as Daftsex,” MindGeek informs TorrentFreak.

Jason Tucker of anti-piracy company Battleship Stance , who helps MindGeek to enforce its rights, notes that the domain seizures will be particularly useful to point adult entertainment fans to legitimate sources.

“The websites in this case have been causing financial harm to rights holders including MindGeek for a considerable amount of time. Daftsex.com, in particular, has built its own branding and recognition online. The seizure of the domain names in this case will direct consumers back toward legitimate content sources,” Tucker said.

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A copy of the default judgment and the permanent injunction, issued by United States District Judge Benjamin Settle, is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Mindgeek is without doubt one of the largest and most powerful adult entertainment conglomerates in existence today.

The company effectively transformed the porn industry in less than a decade, luring people in with a promise of ‘free’ content. Mindgeek owns Pornhub, one of the most visited websites on the Internet, and is also the driving force behind YouPorn, RedTube, Tube8, Xtube, and dozens of other sites.

Several of these tube sites became big by offering access to a wide variety of content, including pirated videos that were posted by their users without permission. That doesn’t mean that MindGeek is turning a blind eye to pirates. On the contrary.

MindGeek’s current empire includes companies that create video content and own the rights. MG Premium, for example, has many thousands of copyrighted adult videos in its repertoire under popular brands such as Brazzers, Digital Playground, MOFOS, and Reality Kings. These videos are often pirated and shared through external sites, presenting a problem for the company.

MindGeek Sues Daftsex and Artporn

To address this issue, MindGeek’s daughter company regularly goes to court. In a recent case, filed at the federal court in the District of Washington, Vasily Kharchenko, the alleged operator of Daftsex.com and Artporn.com, stands accused of mass copyright infringement.

These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek’s side for years but targeting their domains with hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices didn’t produce the desired result. So, in 2020, MindGeek obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare to unmask their operator. This quest eventually led to Kharchenko.

MG Premium alleges that the operator personally uploaded 2,143 of its copyrighted works to the sites. Through the court, the company hopes to stop these infringements. In addition, the company demands compensation for the damages suffered.

Thus far, the lawsuit has been a one-sided battle, as Kharchenko didn’t respond to the allegations at all. This prompted MG Premium to request a default judgment, asking for $15,000 in damages per infringement, for a total of $32,145,000.

Injuction Targets Verisign, Cloudflare, Namecheap and others

In addition, MG Premium also moved for a broad injunction that would require various third-party online services to cut their ties with the infringing sites and their alleged operator. The adult company believes that would help to shut down the piracy operation.

In addition to DaftSex and Artporn, the proposed injunction also includes Biqle.com and Daxab.com. The latter is a CDN for streaming videos, which is used by DaftSex and others. All these sites are allegedly run by Kharchenko.

Verisign, the registry responsible for .com, .net, .cc, and .tv domain names, is one of the third-party services mentioned in the proposed injunction. MindGeek wants Verisign to disable the Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com domains and transfer them to the porn conglomerate.

In addition, other domain name companies, hosting, and CDN providers should be compelled to cut their ties with the sites in question. Those companies include Cloudflare, FDC Servers, Namecheap.com, NameSilo and PrivacyGuardian.org.

An order of this magnitude would be very effective indeed, but the court had its reservations. Despite the fact that the accused failed to appear in court, United States District Judge Benjamin Settle denied the injunction.

Injuction Denied, For Now

According to the Judge, MG Premium should provide more details about the contacts between the defendant and the third-party services, in order to justify such a “sweeping” order.

“The Court is not prepared to issue a sweeping injunction against numerous nonparties based only on the conclusory, unsupported allegation that Vasily Kharchenko is in privity with them, or on the implausible claim that Kharchenko controls these entities,” Judge Settle writes .

This means that MG Premium must go back to the drawing board and submit a new motion for a default judgment, supported by additional evidence and analysis.

If the company eventually gets its way this could spell trouble for other pirate sites as well. In any case, it will be interesting to see how the case develops and what the potential aftermath might be.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.