
Porn site to pay $12.7M to women who didn't know videos would be posted - nwrk
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/03/girlsdoporn-site-pay-127m-women-didnt-know-videos-posted
======
ajmurmann
> In November 2015 60 emails and phone calls called for her to be expelled.
> The emails went to the dean of the law school, and to the head of the
> student body with links to the video.

What kind of evil person does this? Is there anything these monsters can be
prosecuted for? At least the people who made the movies had a motive in greed.
The people who sent these emails wouldn't even gain anything. They are clearly
nothing but malicious, bigoted and evil.

~~~
kikim0ra
Can you be more specific on why you think the people who sent emails are
"evil" and deserve to be judged? And I'm talking about moral aspect here, not
legal.

> They are clearly nothing but malicious, bigoted and evil.

Try to look at it this way. Jane Doe lived in a society (family, coworkers,
friends) where she was respected and was considered to be good, ethical and
honourable person. At the same time she wanted to play in porn. Maybe because
she was just curious, or being filmed during sex was her secret fantasy (you
know, it can be a big turn-on to imagine other people watch your sex), or she
wanted some quick money, or something else. The problem was that playing in
porn was unacceptable in her society. We don't know why they thought so, maybe
their perception of sex was different from hers and they didn't like people to
to it publicly, or they also had this fantasy of playing in porn but never had
courage to actually do it, or something else. Whatever were the reasons of the
society and of Jane, I don't judge them.

So Jane encountered this dilemma. She wants to keep the respect she has in the
society, and she wants to play in porn -- two wishes are incompatible. Jane is
smart, and she decides to play in porn making sure the society never finds
out. It looks like a win-win sutuation for her. I hope, she realizes that
there's a risk of being caught at this point.

People who film the porn promise Jane not to publish the videos online. And
they break their promise. This is obviously a "bad", "evil" and immoral thing
to do. I think we all agree that not keeping our promises is immoral.

Someone encounters Jane's video online, and assumes that the society Jane
lives in is very likely to consider this immoral, and Jane has probably played
in the video secretly. And this person has the choice: to report Jane and act
in the society's interest, or not report Jane and act in her interest.

I don't think we should be concerned here with only Jane's interests, people
around also have their wishes and feelings. If she's a teacher, her students
parents may not want a porn actor to teach their children, and that's their
preference which, I think, we should respect too. Her parents may be
traditionalists and they may want to know if their daughter is doing something
that they consider immoral. Jane is not the only person who has feelings here.
So why shouldn't the person email Jane's friends and parents and tell them
that she's lying to them?

\--

You might notice that I'm writing this comment from an account I just created.
When I did this I also had a choice similar to Jane's.

Most of the people around me now are strongly liberal. And when we discuss
something related to women, sex and slut shaming, it's not very favorable to
express anything except sorrow for women and judgement for anyone who caused
them trouble. But I have many other thoughts on this subject (like the ones I
expressed above about Jane), and I'm afraid my friends will not like this. So
I did the same choice Jane did, I decided to do what I want secretly and
anonymously.

And if somebody finds out my real name and decides to inform people I know
about this terrible sexist pig they invite to parties and spend time with, I
won't judge that person. They're just acting in other people's interests, not
mine.

~~~
eweise
"Can you be more specific on why you think the people who sent emails are
"evil" and deserve to be judged" Sure. they did something to harm another
person without any real benefit to society. I know you argue that "her
students parents may not want a porn actor to teach their children" but of
course there is no actual harm of a porn actor teaching children. Parents only
object to the idea that a porn actor is teaching their children, which might
never be known if the emails were not sent. What if you were a teacher and
also liked to engage in S&M. Someone takes a picture of you through your
bedroom window and sends it to your school. Do you think parents want some
teacher with a weird kink teaching their kids? Would you feel ok about losing
your job in such a situation?

~~~
wruza
So if a murderer teaches children (never murdering them) or a fraudster, or a
stripper, then that’s okay if no one knows? People avoid them for a good
reason.

The image drawn in the story is far better than reality is. At least one of
these “girls” was charged of theft and underage alcohol, with issued arrest
warrants. You know the lack of morality doesn’t come alone, otherwise it would
not be a big deal.

>Someone takes a picture of you through your bedroom window and sends it to
your school

Having fun behind closed doors is normal. Doing that on camera for
redistribution is not. If you were spied on, you’re a victim. If you shoot pro
porn consciously, you’re blamed. Social reaction supports that de facto,
that’s what this case is about. Is it that hard?

~~~
jddj
You can't really wield 'social reaction' like that.

In many western societies in 2020, for example, many people's learned reaction
to loud puritanism is to casually wonder what skeletons are being so
desperately hidden.

I'd be much more comfortable with my children's math teacher stripping or
doing porn than being some puritanical moral crusader, just based on recent
history.

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01100011
My wife fell victim to this before we met. I'm curious how we'd go about
filing a case against the website. I send a message to the FBI a few years ago
and never heard anything.

~~~
sp332
Battling Against Demeaning and Abusive Selfie Sharing (BADASS) has a lot of
experience helping people get the content legally taken down from hosting
sites. [https://badassarmy.org](https://badassarmy.org)

~~~
avh02
thanks for bringing this to my attention, sent a small donation their way

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dannyw
This is disgusting.

I am sure you can find enough people in the world who would voluntarily do
this without coercion. Getting people drunk in another city/state (?) and
coercing them to do something else is rape territory, and I hope everyone
involved faces criminal justice for that

It's strange that the site is still up? I'm not visiting but, but how can
there be civil and criminal charges and the site is still up...

~~~
zozbot234
> Getting people drunk in another city/state (?) and coercing them to do
> something else is rape territory

The "other state" part would make it human trafficking too. Being transported
to a different city might also be enough, it depends on how the laws are
worded.

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mysterydip
(no disrespect intended to the victims in this story when I say this)

This is a cautionary tale in the world we live in today: Once something is
recorded, it could be anywhere. Even without willful intent on the part of the
owner, phones get lost or stolen, old hardware gets sold on ebay, cloud
accounts get compromised, etc.

Have fun, but be careful.

~~~
erikpukinskis
This does indeed come off as disrespectful.

These videos weren’t “leaked”, they weren’t found on someone’s old phone.

The people who shot the video LIED to the participants in order to coerce
participation. They paid other people to lie to them as well in order to
create a more complete deception. Then they posted the videos in exactly the
way they said they would not do.

They also provided drugs and alcohol to the participants before offering
paperwork.

This is fraud, pure and simple, thus the monetary reward. And your comment
here comes across as patronizing at best. You read an article about criminal
behavior and then blamed the victims of the crimes.

“Have fun”? These are desperate people desperately trying to negotiate a
contract so they can survive. This is not some kids having sexy time.

~~~
mysterydip
My comments were not about the people in this story directly. I am certainly
not blaming them for what happened.

My point is, if you don't control the source of the recording (whatever it may
be), you can't control what happens to it. With how easy it is to share any
data these days, it could go places you don't want it to very quickly.

"Have fun" was a general comment for people. Look at all the political fallout
that has happened to various people over pictures from decades ago that have
resurfaced, for one example.

Here's another (older) example of what I mean:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Kid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Kid)

~~~
wilsonfiifi
Honestly, I don’t think you need to defend your comment any further to appease
anyone who would be potentially offended by reading it. “Do not knowingly film
your sexual encounter(s)” period. It’s a general cautionary statement and
should be treated as such.

------
userbinator
_“I’m always paranoid when I meet new people that they have seen my video or
[when I] meet new people [they] are going to say, ‘I know you.’”_

That reminded me of a comment I saw in a discussion about being worried that
someone would find out your real identity by noticing your profile on a fetish
site --- and thus the correct response to that is "I know you watch porn."

~~~
iamthirsty
I mean, I anecdotally feel like a majority of people watch porn now-days, so
not really a heartbreaking retort.

~~~
hawaiianbrah
I’ve always wondered about that stat. What does “watch porn” mean? 1x a year?
1x a month? 1x a week? I think people assume the rate is higher than it really
is.

~~~
coldtea
There are stats available from porn sites. E.g.:

Now we’re not saying that size matters, but 2018 was an impressively big year
for Pornhub and its users. Visits to Pornhub totaled 33.5 billion over the
course of 2018, an increase of 5 billion visits over 2017. That equates to a
daily average of 92 million visitors and at the time of this writing,
Pornhub’s daily visits now exceed 100 million.

2018 saw Pornhub’s average visit duration grow by 14 seconds to 10 minutes and
13 seconds.

[https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-
review](https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2018-year-in-review)

Relevant:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/09/everybody...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/09/everybody-
lies-how-google-reveals-darkest-secrets-seth-stephens-davidowitz)

Book: [https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-
Really/...](https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Lies-Internet-About-
Really/dp/0062390856)

~~~
hawaiianbrah
Unless I missed it, I didn’t see something as plain as “X million in the US
watch porn at least 1x a week” or something like that, which is what I’m
curious about.

~~~
coldtea
They say "Once again, the United States continues to be the country with the
highest daily traffic to Pornhub".

The give a graph of top 20 countries, which they say represent an aggregated
80% of their traffic.

The US is first, and take around 40-50% of that traffic.

Let's go with 40%. Of 80% that's ~ 32% of total.

They also say: "Pornhub’s daily visits now exceed 100 million".

This means 32% of 100M, so around 32M americans visit Pornhub alone each day.

And that's just one porn network. Along with Pornhub (which is however the
most visited) there are also XVideos, XHamster, XNXX, Redtube in the list of
Top 50 most popular websites.

~~~
hawaiianbrah
Yeah, I’m curious about the distribution therein. It’s obviously not the same
32M every single day, though I’m sure there are people who indulge daily. Are
20% of them daily users? And 60% weekly? etc

------
duxup
I wonder with facial recognition and etc if it would be possible that all
sorts of sites would get caught up in this sort of thing where previously they
thought they could just do whatever with the video and it likely wouldn't be
noticed?

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randyrand
was it hidden in the contract? just curious the extent of the lying.

~~~
Consultant32452
My understanding is the girls are told that the videos will go in some wealthy
dude's private collection or something like that. No one reads contracts.

~~~
RKearney
That seems to echo exactly what is stated in the article.

"They were promised that the footage would go straight to DVD for wealthy
buyers in other countries, in particular Australia and New Zealand, where the
defendants come from."

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sysbin
Each woman was seeking 2 million from what I've found online. The judgement
ended up being a payout of 12.7m sum and that's for splitting between 22
victims with their representation. I wonder how much each person walked away
with after their attorneys were paid. I've not witnessed justice in my life
but I like to think they will be happy with the judgement even though it's a
lot lower than they sought.

~~~
manquer
No amount of money is going to help them deal with trauma and problems they
are facing everyday. I see this more as punitive damage than actual
compensation for the harm the company did

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clSTophEjUdRanu
In the future everyone will know a pornstar and nobody will care

------
wruza
Reading through comments I feel like being from completely another world.
While an option is to simply stay silent, I struggle to understand how that
plot ends up unquestioned by everyone except lawyers. Is it self-censoring in
action? Because I feel self-censored.

~~~
TomMckenny
I think you are saying that we should treat the accused as just that: innocent
until proven guilty. Which is a very good policy. Especially since this
industry sees a lot of attacks on the grounds of of "immorality"

But in this case we have moved beyond merely accused. We have a completed
verdict in a real trail. And although the judicial system has flaws, in this
case the weaker parties actually won against the more powerful. And in several
instances too.

So I think it's reasonable people feel quite confident that the verdict was
correct and that the good guys won here.

~~~
celticmusic
that's my take on it too. I didn't fully read through all the details, but I
have to believe that courts did their due diligence and the women were
legitimately coerced by the website.

And I've just realized that 'legitimately coerced' out of context sounds like
an oxymoron.

~~~
ggm
_demonstrably coerced_

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amriksohata
Wow this post got a lot of comments

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hansdieter1337
If you don’t want a video of yourself in the Internet, don’t make a video. I
always assume that any picture I take can leak to everyone anytime. How naive
can you be? Someone pays you money to have sex with a stranger (prostitution
in my mind) and take a video of it. And she really thought they wouldn’t sell
the video?

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SkyMarshal
This whole thing is idiotic. The lying producers are assholes. The women are
idiots for trusting anything told to them in this context by complete
strangers motivated only by money. In the words of Shakespeare, "all are
punished".

 _> “These are millennial women who grew up with the internet – they knew the
consequences of pornographic videos ending up online which is why they asked
where the videos were going before they were lied to."_

I'm not sure they did, really. That last sentence should end with "knew the
consequences of pornographic videos ending up online which is why _they wisely
chose not to risk doing porn._ " Maybe college should teach mandatory classes
on risk management.

 _> Her life, she says, is irrevocably changed, and her hopes of a legal
career have been ended.

“I do not want a career as an attorney. My name is completely destroyed.”_

I hope somebody explains to her this isn't necessarily true. There are places
and firms in the country more sex-positive and/or forgiving where this won't
destroy her life and she can still be an attorney. She also pretty much has a
ready made career as an attorney focusing on sex-trafficking and similar
fields.

~~~
01100011
I hope you don't have kids. 18 year olds do dumb things. They're legally
adults but neurologically speaking that's questionable. My wife was still
reeling from an abusive and sexually exploitative relationship and trying to
survive when she was tricked into making porn under the guise of auditioning
for an off-camera job. Glad to know you think she's an idiot. Class act there
buddy.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
> They're legally adults but neurologically speaking that's questionable

Adolescence has been recently extended to 20-something years.

I think this is still not enough, looking at myself 30 years back and looking
at my children and their friends.

