TORONTO — A Canadian personal injury law firm issued a press release today announcing that it has initiated a $500-million lawsuit against MindGeek over user-generated content on Pornhub.
North York, Ontario law firm Diamond and Diamond — whose phone line spells out 1-800-567-HURT — is representing Ontario resident Christine Wing, who claims that MindGeek’s flagship tube site Pornhub “failed to properly screen sexual content uploaded to the Pornhub.com domain,” according to the release published by Newswire.ca.
Diamond and Diamond is proposing a class action involving “any or all individuals in Canada who appeared in sexual content disseminated by the defendants, including intimate videos or images. Such content may include sexual abuse material, child sexual abuse and all other nonconsensual intimate content.”
The lawsuit mimics the strategy of previous attempts to litigate liability for Pornhub and MindGeek over third-party user-generated content, or UGC — attempts often spearheaded by religiously inspired anti-porn crusading groups such as NCOSE.
Plaintiff Wing alleges that in May 2020, without her knowledge or consent, three “intimate videos of her” were uploaded to the site, the release claims.
Diamond and Diamond’s head of commercial and civil litigation, Darryl Singer, said, “It is astonishing how little safeguards Pornhub had against harm. We're talking about a business built on under-age, nonconsensual and pirated content.”
Canada, unlike the U.S., does not have codified Section 230 protections shielding online platforms from litigation over UGC.