Potentially thousands of Pornhub users could be exposed by a court order which seeks to reveal the identities of those who uploaded copyrighted pornographic material to the site.
“The folks at Seychelles-based Foshan Ltd. (which operates porn websites under the “Wankz” brand) recently sought a subpoena requiring that Pornhub turn over the information on users accused of posting videos taken from one of Foshan’s sites,” reports The Consumerist. “A federal court in Los Angeles recently granted that subpoena, which includes a nearly 90-page list of all the allegedly infringing material. We didn’t count each title, but there appear to be somewhere between 1,600 to 2,000 videos referenced in the subpoena.”
“The subpoena gives Pornhub until May 1 to turn over the ‘names, email addresses, IP addresses, user history, posting history, physical addresses, telephone numbers, and any other identifying or account information’ for these users,” they continued, adding that “The company can also try to fight the order in court.”
Filesharing blog TorrentFreak claimed in their article that this sort of approach towards copyright infringement is unusual, with affected companies usually opting for a video take-down route.
“It is unclear what Foshan is planning to do if they obtain the personal information of the uploaders. It is likely, however, that they’re considering legal action against one or more persons, if the evidence is sufficient,” TorrentFreak claimed. “As far as we’re aware, this is the first time that a rightsholder has used a DMCA subpoena to obtain information about Pornhub uploaders. And since its a relatively cheap and easy way to expose infringers, this might not be the last.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.
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