A court gave Pornhub’s parent company control over websites and accounts associated with the operator of the controversial adult network Daftsex.com. The court found that Daftsex.com’s domains and accounts were created solely to unlawfully reproduce and distribute MindGeek Premium’s copyrighted content.
The Washington District Court held in its recent decision that Daftsex.com operator Vasily Kharchenko infringed thousands of MindGeek content copyrights by sharing the content on his websites such as DaftSex.com and others. The damages awarded to MindGeek amount to $32 million. In addition, the domain names and archives of Daftsex.com are also to be transferred to MindGeek.
After the transfer of these domains, Kharchenko set up the mirror websites Daft.sex, Dsex.to and Biqle.org to continue the business concept based on piracy. The court now granted MG Premium the right to take ownership of these infringing mirror domains as well.
MG Premium was also granted ownership of associated social media accounts used to redirect visitors to the mirror websites. Kharchenko did not respond in the new case, which allowed this transfer of the domains and accounts.
The ruling strengthens MindGeek’s anti-piracy efforts. Additionally, Kharchenko was ordered to pay MG Premium’s legal fees for the previous court case last year as well.
In an initial comment, Mindgeek said the rulings represent crucial steps toward eliminating illegal piracy and are aimed at restoring creators’ rights. While piracy persists, such rulings effectively thwart evasion and send a strong message about copyright protection.