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March 15

Pornhub

According to our article, this is "the single largest such website on the internet, hosting more videos than any similar site". However, the article does not really explain the legal situation with regard to copyright questions: How can all these videos be watched legally without paying?--Converto (talk) 18:46, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

afaik the company that owns it is MindGeek which also owns a ton of porn sites. So they're showing their own videos. They make money from ads, like most free sites.Sheila1988 (talk) 22:51, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

They have a "Content Remove Request?" page. That's not really a question and Wikipedia won't let me link it, but it otherwise seems like a perfectly reputable takedown notification system. Any illegal content you find simply hasn't been reported yet, and Pornhub can pass the blame to the uploader for that. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:09, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

More information on law and money, generally, at Porn 2.0. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:16, 15 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In this New York Times op-ed, Stoya notes "But this context is usually stripped out when a work is pirated and uploaded to one of the many “free tube” sites that offer material without charge. These sites are where the bulk of pornography is being viewed online, and by definition don’t require a credit card". 87.114.101.1 (talk) 23:03, 16 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If I remember Louis Theroux's Twilight of the Porn Stars correctly, I think at one point they said that the 2000s saw a boom in "Mom and Pop" (often quite literally) porn producers (using affordable digital video cameras and distributing on DVD). A decade later, these people were out of the business (having not made much money anyway). While their product is still copyright, they're not really in a position to police or defend that copyright very effectively. They might be able to sell the copyrights to some currently active company, but probably not for very much (and, as the production company was owned by the people appearing in the videos) they might want that part of their lives to quietly melt away. So if someone rips the DVDs and puts them on a tube site, it's unlikely that anyone is going to file the necessary takedown paperwork. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 00:30, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

While it's true that some of the content is commercial content of some sort hosted without the copyright owners permission, and some probably a fairly small amount is genuinely non commercial content which may or may not have the copyrights permission and may or may not have the permission of the participants i.e. truly user generated content; from what I've read a fair amount of the content is actually hosted with the copyright holders permission. The right holder comes to an agreement and probably gets some revenue and in addition links to their site etc. They probably also pay commissions to the porn sharing site for any signups which come from them. See [1]. I presume they only share some of their works, and sometimes maybe only part of the clip. I've never read stats on what percentage is what, although this would also depends on what you count (views, length, clip numbers). P.S. To be clear, I'm sure there are other stuff besides simple cases I outlined earlier, e.g. compilations, recently apparently videos where faces have been replaced etc; most likely most of these without the copyright holders permission. Nil Einne (talk) 04:23, 17 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@InedibleHulk: Considering your link to Porn 2.0, I am not quite sure about what exactly is meant with regard specifically to copyright law in the relevant section there when it says that "A 2007 decision by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the 2257 legislation (Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act) was unconstitutional and violated first amendment rights. The decision was overturned in a 2009 en banc rehearing." – What does that actually say about whether the material you find on porn tube sites is legal or illegal? And why? Sorry, but I am not very good at that legalese...--Converto (talk) 18:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that part has to do with copyright, perhaps misplaced. The rest of the section is on-point. Still general, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:26, 19 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]