LOS ANGELES – A U.S. federal court has ordered MindGeek subsidiary Pornhub, based in Canada, to turn over personally identifying information about users accused of infringing intellectual property rights belonging to a Seychelles-registered content producer.
Foshan Ltd., corporate parent of Wankz, obtained a subpoena compelling Pornhub to produce “information sufficient to identify infringers … including but not limited to names, email addresses, IP addresses, user history, posting history, physical addresses, telephone numbers, and any other identifying or account information.” Foshan accuses Pornhub users of uploading more than 1,000 pirated videos to the tube site.
Like other user-submitted-content websites, Pornhub maintains a DMCA takedown policy.
“We take claims of copyright infringement seriously,” the site’s DMCA notice page states. “We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the ‘DMCA’) or any other applicable intellectual property legislation or laws. Responses may include removing, blocking or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity, terminating the user’s access to www.pornhub.com (‘Pornhub’), or all of the foregoing.
“If we remove or disable access to material in response to such a notice, we will take reasonable steps to notify the user that uploaded the affected content material that we have removed or disabled access to so that the user has the opportunity to submit a counter notification… It is our policy to document all notices of alleged infringement on which we act.”
In compliance with Pornhub’s policy, Foshan Director Philip Bradbury delivered a takedown notice, via email and postal mail, to attorney Lawrence Walters, who is Pornhub’s designated DMCA representative. According to court documents, Foshan filed the subpoena request when Pornhub did not respond within seven days.
The information Foshan seeks may or may not be available. According to Pornhub’s terms of service, “In the process of posting Content to the Website, you may be asked to provide some personally identifying information, such as your name, address, e-mail address, a password, and other documentation.” That is a fairly standard legal notice and does not indicate Pornhub actually collects such material. Although Pornhub warns users not to provide false information, that is not to say users won’t disguise their identities and their IP addresses.
Unless Pornhub appeals the court’s decision, the company has until May 1 to turn over the information sought by the subpoena.
