PornHub Owner Obtains Pirate Site Blocking Order From U.S. Court

Adult entertainment conglomerate Aylo, the parent company of PornHub, has booked a significant victory in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a subsidiary at a California federal court. A broad permanent injunction against video platform Goodporn requires third-party services, including domain registries, Internet providers and search engines, to block the pirate site's domain names. Goodporn, meanwhile, is taking countermeasures.

The name ‘Aylo’ may not sound immediately familiar but hundreds of millions of people visit its sites every month.

Formerly known as MindGeek, and Manwin before that, the company conquered the online adult market over the past decade by offering free porn to the masses.

Aylo is also the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as PornHub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of over 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm MG Premium protects this content by various means; it sends millions of takedown requests per week and full-blown lawsuits often enter the equation.

The Goodporn Lawsuit

MG Premium fought a lengthy court battle against DaftSex, which it won, and earlier this year a rather bizarre lawsuit against Goodporn swung in its favor.

The Goodporn case has many interesting twists and turns, with defendants claiming to be the victims, accusing Pornhub of being the infringing party. However, after the facades fell, MG Premium came out on top, so to speak.

In February, the court awarded MG Premium $2.1 million in damages. Injunctive relief was denied, however, which meant that domain takeovers or site-blocking orders were not an option. According to the court, there was no evidence of ‘irreparable harm’.

MG Premium Wanted More

MG Premium welcomed its win over Goodporn but was disappointed by the lack of a permanent injunction. Soon after the court released its order, the adult entertainment company filed a motion to amend the default judgment, urging the court to reconsider its initial decision.

MG Premium asked the court to consider a more significant award for damages. Instead of $1,500 for each of the 1,438 works in suit, it felt that $15,000 per work would be appropriate, for a total of $21.6 million in damages.

The company also stressed that damages alone would not act as a sufficient deterrent. In fact, damages may have little impact on the defendant at all.

“Monetary damages are not an adequate remedy in this matter. Defendants have been ordered to pay fees or sanctions to Plaintiff multiple times, and have never done so,” the adult entertainment company explained.

To have the best chance of stopping the infringing activities, MG Premium asked the court to issue a permanent injunction. According to the company, there certainly is irreparable harm, as Goodporn’s domain names remained online after the judgment was issued.

Court Greenlights Domain Seizures and Site Blocking

Presented with this request for an amendment, and the defendant’s subsequent opposition to it, U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi issued a new order this week, granting a permanent injunction.

Upon reconsideration, the Judge now acknowledges that there is indeed ‘irreparable harm’ as thousands of works continue to be shared without permission. In fact, all relevant factors weigh in MG Premium’s favor.

“Plaintiff’s evidence shows infringement of more than 50,000 videos either owned or licensed by Plaintiff,” Judge Scarsi writes.

“The scope of the injunctive relief requested in the instant motion is consistent with the injunctive relief prayed for in the first amended complaint, unlike the proposed order upon the motion for default judgment.”

This conclusion paves the way for a broad injunction that restrains the defendants from engaging in any copyright infringing activity going forward. More importantly, however, it also directs domain registrars to transfer the domains Goodporn.to and Goodporn.se domains to Aylo’s subsidiary.

The injunction also requires third-party services to block any related infringing activity for U.S. users. Those services include search engines, hosting companies, and Internet providers, as detailed below (emphasis added).

“Defendants, their agents, servants, officers, directors, employees, attorneys, privies, representatives, successors and assigns and parent and subsidiary corporations or other related entities, and any or all persons or entity acting in concert or participation with any of them, or under their direction or control, including any internet search engines, web hosting and Internet service providers, domain name registrars, domain name registries and other service or software providers are ordered, within five business days from Plaintiff’s service of the Judgment on those parties to block or use reasonable efforts to attempt to block access by United States users of the Goodporn Websites by blocking or attempting to block access to all domains, subdomains, URLs, and/or IP addresses that have as its sole or predominant purpose to enable to facilitate access to the Goodporn Websites.”

Site Blocking?

The permanent injunction is powerful and should ensure that the affected domains are no longer used to infringe. It may also come as a surprise to some, as pirate site blocking by U.S. Internet providers is rare to nonexistent.

A few months ago, there were new calls from major entertainment companies hoping to establish site blocking measures in the United States. However, those refer to non-existing ‘no-fault’ injunctions where third-party services face no liability. The Goodporn injunction, on the other hand, is targeted at services that “act in concert” with the infringing parties.

Residential Internet providers seem unlikely to welcome the injunction as it stands, but it’s still not clear that Aylo will ask for their cooperation. When we asked the company about it, we received an indirect answer.

“We take any infringement of our content and brands seriously and remain committed to protecting our intellectual property rights. We believe this amended judgment will contribute to deterring piracy and will help ensure consumers find our content through legitimate channels,” an Aylo spokesperson said.

It would make sense for Aylo to focus on taking down the domain names first, and that already appears to be happening. Goodporn.to is offline at the time of writing, and Goodporn.se will be inactive soon.

GPStatus Remains Online

The Court didn’t grant all amendments proposed by MG Premium. The damages remain unchanged at $2.1 million and the request to include the GPStatus.org domain, which broadcasts the most recent Goodporn domains, was denied as well.

“[N]either the declarations supporting the instant motion nor the broader record as the Court perceives it refer to GPStatus.org. As such, the Court declines to include the specific language regarding GPStatus.org to the extent that the website is not already covered by the injunction’s broader language,” the Court concludes.

Indeed, GPStatus.org remains online and reports that Goodporn will move to Sincity.is going forward, urging people to update their bookmarks.

“We have been informed by the Goodporn admin that their address has changed. The former addresses, Goodporn.to and Goodporn.se, will stop working soon. According to the admin, the new address is Sincity.is. Videos will fix in next 24-48 hours,” the site explains.

Obtaining an injunction as powerful as this amounts to a significant victory for Aylo and MG Premium. The measures are designed to make Goodporn more difficult to operate but it’s already clear that the ‘pirate’ site has no intention of throwing in the towel.

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A copy of U.S. District Court Judge Mark C. Scarsi’s order to amend the default judgment against the Goodporn defendants, including the injunction relief, is available here (pdf).

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