Porn portal Xhamster suffers a bitter court defeat: A Dutch district court in Amsterdam has ruled that amateur porn must be removed from the site if it features people residing in the Netherlands who have not consented to the publication of the content. Furthermore, Xhamster operator Hammy Media is generally no longer allowed to show amateur porn in the Netherlands where such consent has not been obtained from all persons shown, regardless of their place of residence.
According to the court, the porn portal now has three weeks to search through the available video material and delete content if necessary. According to the verdict, if the relevant content is still available after that, there are penalties: a fine of 10,000 euros must be paid per video if the content is not taken offline when requested, plus a further 500 euros for each day of retrieval. The maximum fine per video is 30,000 euros.
Stricter rules since 2021
The plaintiff in this case was the Dutch organization child protection organization EOKM, which, among other things, has dedicated itself to the fight against abuse recordings. As reported by Nltimes, the organization has already obtained a similar verdict against the porn site vagina.nl, prohibiting the distribution of secretly made recordings.
According to the judgment, Hammy Media defended itself, among other things, by introducing stricter requirements for content on Xhamster.com in October 2021. This was a reaction to the tightening of the usage rules of the credit card provider Mastercard. In 2020, the actions of Mastercard and Visa had already caused the porn portal Pornhub to delete millions of videos and stricter moderation.
Other lawsuits under consideration
Since Xhamster’s rule change, only professional producers and ID-verified members are allowed to upload content. If people other than the uploader were also shown in the content, they would have to have declarations of consent. A moderation team then checks the upload for illegal content. However, Hammy Media was not able to prove full consent for the ten film examples dealt with in the procedure, which EOKM had brought in. The chamber ruled against Hammy Media for violating data protection rules and with reference to a judgment from 2021.
Arda Gerkens, director of EOKM, welcomed the verdict, according to the press release: “I am glad that the court has again confirmed that this type of amateur images cannot simply be put online. The distribution of nude images in this way must be stopped, and all Porn sites play a part in that.” According to EOKM, the ruling will have far-reaching consequences for Xhamster.com – after all, millions of videos are online on the site without the express permission of the people depicted. Gerkens also announced plans to take legal action against other porn sites.
(sigh)
