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Privacy The Internet

Popular Porn Site Must Delete All Amateur Videos Posted Without Consent (arstechnica.com) 55

Posted by BeauHD from the privacy-violations dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An Amsterdam court today ordered one of the largest adult entertainment websites, xHamster, to remove all amateur footage showing recognizable people in the Netherlands who did not consent to be featured on the site. The ruling followed complaints raised by the Expertise Bureau for Online Child Abuse, known as EOKM, which identified 10 videos where xHamster could not verify it had secured permission from amateur performers to post. The court found that this violated European privacy laws and conflicted with a prior judgment from the Amsterdam court requiring porn sites to receive permission from all performers recognizably featured before posting amateur videos.

According to EOKM director Arda Gerkens, this ruling will require xHamster to clean up its site and is part of EOKM's larger plan to stop all porn sites from distributing amateur footage without consent. The Amsterdam court has given xHamster three weeks to comply with the order and remove all footage posted without consent, or face maximum fines per video up to $32,000 daily. Lawyers assisting EOKM on the case said the verdict had "major consequences for the entire porn industry," including bigger sites like Pornhub, which already was required to remove 10 million videos, as Vice reported in 2020. "Now it's xHamster's turn," Otto Volgenant of Boekx Advocaten said in EOKM's press release, noting that 30 million people visit xHamster daily.

On xHamster, only professional producers and verified members can upload content. The website requires everyone who creates an account to upload an ID and share a selfie to become verified. Before any verified member's upload is made public, xHamster moderators -- a team of 28 who use software approved by EOKM to identify illegal content -- conduct a review to block any illegal content. The website's terms of service require that each uploader provides a consent form from each person recognizably featured in all amateur content. Hammy Media told the court that it had already removed all violating content that EOKM had flagged in the case and provided assurances that moderators check to ensure the uploader is the same person as the performer. However, in his order, judge RA Dudok van Heel wrote that "it is sufficiently plausible for the time being that a large amount of footage is being made public on xhamster.com, of which it cannot be demonstrated that permission has been obtained from the persons who appear recognizable in the picture."
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Popular Porn Site Must Delete All Amateur Videos Posted Without Consent More

Popular Porn Site Must Delete All Amateur Videos Posted Without Consent

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  • What a shame.

    • Is anybody vain enough to think their non-consensual video will ever be seen in such a vast sea of naked people?

      If it is, it's probably because the person who non-consensually uploaded it made sure that people saw it. Not because it was on xHamster.

      If xHamster bans a person like that that they'll just find another way to do it.

    • Why does the site have to comply with Netherland laws if not hosted there? Just block the whole site in the Netherlands. I don't think that market is big enough to justify deleting a large portion of one's content just because it's not fully trace-able to origin.

  • Ok..who is electing these people exactly?

    Sheesh.

    ;)

    • They elect themselves (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Funny how a bunch of activists (or just the one, really) can whip up a legal person with a bombastic name like "Expertise Center for $whatever" and they're instant experts on the topic of $whatever. Much like the "internet watch foundation" (uk do-gooder anti-child porn group) managed to wrangle themselves into a position of authority over all of the UK's web traffic (using BGP announcements of badness and forcing ISPs to filter on AS to stamp out bad content, talk about over-reach).

      These are often small

  • your mom (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Your mom consented.

  • Copyright is not enough (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Frank Burly ( 4247955 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @05:36PM (#63445346)

    This is a first step, but it is so easy to deepfake anyone that we will soon be petitioning the government to protect our likeness from use in data models and from use in various ai-generated scenarios (including porn).

    It's a small thing now to remove our likenesses from the public domain, but the longer we wait the more money it will cost.

    • This is a first step, but it is so easy to deepfake anyone that we will soon be petitioning the government to protect our likeness from use in data models and from use in various ai-generated scenarios (including porn).

      It's a small thing now to remove our likenesses from the public domain, but the longer we wait the more money it will cost.

      Not saying it won't matter, but context is everything with nudity. People regularly get naked around strangers in locker rooms, or even people of the opposite gender on nude beaches. And actors and actresses who will happily appear naked onscreen would be terrified to do the same out of character.

      There's a big difference between an actual video of a person, taken when they were nude and in a private moment, and a deep faked likeness of them doing the same.

      • Re:Copyright is not enough (Score:5, Insightful)

        by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @06:01PM (#63445424)

        There's a big difference between an actual video of a person, taken when they were nude and in a private moment, and a deep faked likeness of them doing the same.

        Actually there's close to no difference. Both are psychologically destructive (talking of younger subjects, or fragile people, or people with a reputation to keep). Teenagers have committed suicide in the past over obvious image manipulations. Legally, there's not much difference either. It's still a porn of someone who has not consented to the upload. If a recognizable character is underage, you are into big trouble for both true and fake videos.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The fakes are getting so good now that it is becoming impossible to tell if they are real or not just by looking at them. That could cause people serious problems in real like, such as being fired from their job.

          • We've been dealing with that for decades with doctored still images. I'm not saying that it is not an issue, but I suspect that eventually this will sort itself out when most people realize that just about anything can be faked and stop trusting video without additional evidence and context as much as they have in the past.

        • There's a big difference between an actual video of a person, taken when they were nude and in a private moment, and a deep faked likeness of them doing the same.

          Actually there's close to no difference. Both are psychologically destructive (talking of younger subjects, or fragile people, or people with a reputation to keep). Teenagers have committed suicide in the past over obvious image manipulations. Legally, there's not much difference either. It's still a porn of someone who has not consented to the upload. If a recognizable character is underage, you are into big trouble for both true and fake videos.

          A lot of that is a societal level puritanism that's still built into our psyches. I'm not sure why sexuality has such a "oh no, what if the neighbors found out consenting adults are touching each other" thing about it. Some people really let that get to them if someone finds out they're sexually active. Others can shrug it off and not care, but if you're one of those folks that grew up with that indoctrination, that human sexuality is inherently shameful and horrible and everyone should feel guilty and horr

  • But non-consensual videos on other sites are fine? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @05:46PM (#63445364)
    So when will the millions of videos on Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok etc. be deleted, where people appear that have not consented?

    It seems this is the kind of law that is arbitrarily enforced only against sites that certain groups do not like.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Videos on Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok tend to contain much less nudity and erotic content on average than videos on Pornhub or xHamster.

      • Wow. You need to find a teen to show you the skin and sex that you can see on youtube and tiktok. I have no idea about facebook as i haven't logged in in years.

    • So when will the millions of videos on Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok etc. be deleted, where people appear that have not consented?

      Perhaps they will be. The way laws are enforced generally requires corrective action to be taken against violators one at a time, and often only at the instigation of an aggrieved party. The fact that the courts aren't able to simultaneously take action against all the other sites you mention isn't necessarily an argument against the law in question. If you agree with the law in

    • So when will the millions of videos on Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok etc. be deleted, where people appear that have not consented?

      There's nothing arbitrary about the law. Or can you point to Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok, etc specifically ignoring the invalid processing of "data concerning a natural person’s sex life"?

      That's not made up, that's the specific text they are found in breach of.

  • weird, no amateurs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    its weird how there are no more amateurs, swingers or hotwives videos. this used to be a pillar/staple of porn but only professionally produced content is allowed now

    the kids are right. the internet was wayyyy better back in the olden days

    • Yeah, all the porn I was interested in watching is pretty much gone in the last few years. The super-produced "professional" kind with music in the background featuring porn star types never did much for me. Thankfully I beat my meat to yiff 90% of the time, so my daily routine is pretty much uninterrupted.

      But truly, a golden age of internet porn has passed. We have forgotten what the internet is for.

  • Is there something particular about xHamster and the netherlands? Like it being "the" site for revenge porn and the like... Like, revenge porn can be uploaded to many sites, but somehow in the netherlands xHamster naturaly coalesced/emerged* to be "the" site to do it

    There are weird things happeing in local markets all the time, For example, in the late '00s and early '10s, the most popular social network in brazil (and india) was not facebook, but Google's Orkut. Why? No one knows... Is one of those regiona

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      Possibly just because it's one of the biggest sites for user-uploaded porn. Pornhub and XVideos supposedly already cracked down on "amateur porn" and require some level of identity verification on uploads. xHamster already purged a huge amount of content, particularly photo galleries, but perhaps they're still applying lax standards for video uploads?

  • Will this enforcement be carried to non-porn sites like Youtube?
    What if the "actors" are virtual -- i.e. the video is animation or algorithmically created?
    • I am not a lawyer but my understanding is the courts ruled that virtual kiDDdy p00rn also illegal. No reputable web site would allow it. I expect the ruling applies to all virtual Pr0o0rn. Isn't censorship great. Arbitrary rules set but arbitrary people for arbitrary things, so that no citizen can follow them. That's why censorship is so popular with dictators.

    • Why would it? The enforcement specifically calls out a breach of the rule of data controlling for "data concerning a natural person’s sex life"

      If you use Youtube for that, you're probably already in breach of their ToS.

  • Another step to ending online anonymity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2023 @08:54PM (#63445724)
    This is a slow but irresistible trend - it is gradually becoming more difficult to interact online in any way without a link to your real identity. Combine that with increasing surveillance and privacy is becoming a thing of the past. The public doesn't care enough to change it, and there isn't much individuals can do.

    The goal here sounds laudable - but consider that it makes it impossible for performers who want to remain anonymous to do so.

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