MindGeek - owner of a variety of porn sites, including Xtube.com and Men.com - is taking on another major player in the streaming porn world. It filed a lawsuit this week claiming the owners of XNXX.com and XVideos.com have shared MindGeek content 100 million times without authorization. 

 

The company is now asking for $150,000 for each infringed film, and would also like a restraining order placed against any future infringement. 

 

"The XVideos websites are sites that purport to provide to members of the public adult-oriented audiovisual works uploaded by users," the suit said.  "Defendants … have copied to their servers millions of audiovisual works ostensibly uploaded by their users, including tens or hundreds of thousands of works owned by plaintiffs. Defendants then publicly performed, reproduced and distributed plaintiffs’ works to millions of people throughout the world, without any license, justification, or defense."

 

The defendants have claimed they are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) "safe harbor" regulations, which means they cannot be held responsible for videos posted by users. However, under "safe harbor" rules a company must immediately remove copyrighted material after receiving notice, and ban repeat offenders. MindGeek alleged that XNXX and XVideos failed to do either.

 

“By doing so, defendants have lost the ability to invoke the DMCA safe harbor and are liable for all of the infringements on their system," the suit said. "Accordingly, the court should enjoin defendants’ conduct and award damages to plaintiffs for defendants’ willful and deliberate infringement of thousands of their copyrights.”

 

What makes the lawsuit somewhat ironic is that MindGeek is no stranger to providing streaming content belonging to other porn companies. In fact the company has made millions of dollars with its own suite of tube sites, including Pornhub, XTube, YouPorn, and Redtube. 

 

And MindGeek has itself been accused of copyright infringement and of using the same "safe harbour" provisions of the DMCA to its advantage. Taking on a company like MindGeek isn't easy. According to adult film star Siri, MindGeek’s sites “force copyright holders to jump through hoops to get our content removed.” And many producers just don't have the money for a big legal fight.

 

Hush Hush Entertainment just filed suit against MindGeek, claiming that the company failed to deal with copyright infringement in at least 47 instances. It also accused MindGeek of hiding behind "safe harbor" rules, while failing to quickly respond to take-down notices.

 

So is MindGeek's lawsuit against XVideos and XNXX really about copyright? Or is this about removing the competition by any means necessary? 

 

MindGeek Files Infringement Suit Against XVideos.com Parent [XBiz]

 

Hush Hush Files Infringement Suit Against MindGeek [XBiz]