Don’t crack down on porn websites: Pornhub owner to govts amid legal troubles
Three months after buying Pornhub’s parent MindGeek, Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) founder Solomon Friedman has said that the governments should stop cracking down on porn websites and instead take pride in sexual expression and help to make porn normal and “boring”.
“I think society has moved in the direction where we are proud of sexual expression. The fact that it’s adult is going to be boring, just like the fact that (legalised) cannabis in Canada has become boring,” said Friedman in an interview with AFP.
Canadian private equity firm ECP had bought MindGeek earlier this year, bringing under its control a stable of other sites including YouPorn. However, the acquisition has also brought a sea of legal troubles. Its websites were pulled from the US state of Utah in May after they were ordered to verify the ages of users.
Also read: Pornhub parent Mindgeek bought by Canadian PE firm Ethical Capital
Courting trouble
In France, website owners and regulators have been locked in talks for months on how to make a 2020 age verification law work in practice. Two of MindGeek’s sites have not put in place any age verification and face a court ruling on July 7 that could ban them. “We do not want any underage users on our websites whatsoever,” said Friedman.
But he pushed back on the idea that the onus should fall on the websites, instead calling for the operating systems to find a solution. “We are strongly in support of age verification solutions that do two things: protect children effectively and do not expose personal data,” he said. “The only solution that accomplishes both of these goals is device or browser-based verification,” he said, adding that it would be “a very simple step for Google and Apple”.
Serious charges
MindGeek got into hot water in 2020 when The New York Times published allegations that its sites were hosting material depicting rapes and sex involving minors. The article led to heavy pressure from regulators in several countries, following which Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments.
Also read: How Mastercard’s new rules will affect adult content industry, sex workers
The owners spent two years trying to sell the firm, which is largely based in Canada but has a complex corporate structure spanning many of the globe’s tax havens, with its official headquarters in Luxembourg. The new owners — who include two lawyers, an ex-police officer and an Italian investor who made his fortune in the legal sale of cannabis — are keen to distance themselves from The New York Times allegations.
Friedman said the company had completely changed in the past few years. He boasted that eight million pieces of content had been taken down in 2021. “A content removal request automatically results in the content being removed. We review it after it’s removed,” he said.
