June 23, 2013 | Online

Russian torrent site agrees to back off ... a little

A popular Russian gay torrent site has agreed to work with Porn Guardian to remove content that violates certain companies' copyrights.  

Porn Guardian was established to help companies protect their material against online theft, sending take down notices and gathering evidence for court cases. The company discovered that many of the infringing files on tube sites actually came from this one Russian site.

“This is a giant step in the fight against digital piracy of adult content,” Porn Guardian partner Peter Phinney said. “It puts one of the most important, high-profile offenders on the right side of the law for the first time in years. We hope other torrent sites under pressure from our clients will follow this extraordinary example of a sea change in peer-to-peer sharing.”

In the agreement, Porn Guardian will be able to remove content instantly.

“We hope that by removing torrents virtually as soon as they appear, we will be able to stem the initial spread of stolen videos,” Phinney said. “This is huge for the gay side of adult.”

Of course, in reality this is only a partial victory for gay content producers. The Russian site has not committed to completely removing stolen material from companies not related to Porn Guardian, and probably has no intention of doing so anytime soon.