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(formerly MindGeek), a major Canadian adult entertainment conglomerate sometimes referred to as the ‘Amazon of porn,’ filed a lawsuit against a major piracy site and won a $90 million (approximately 14 billion yen) damages judgment. However, recovering the damages is expected to be extremely difficult, highlighting the difficulty of recovering the damages caused by piracy. Aylo Wins $90 Million Default Judgment Against Porn Piracy Network * TorrentFreak Aylo’s copyright enforcement department had sent over 10,000 DMCA takedown notices to pirate sites after identifying multiple instances of copyright infringement for adult content. However, these notices were unsuccessful in removing the infringing videos, so in early 2025, Aylo filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington targeting eight adult pirate sites. All eight sites were believed to be operated by the same person, Anton Popravkin.
Freelance content writer for porn affiliate blogs Conran Thomas said porn piracy can operate in a similar way to music piracy on sites like YouTube.
The industry routinely claims that it is being decimated by piracy—it’s even worse off than the mainstream film business. (In 2007, the now-defunct Portfolio did a terrific piece on this, called “.”) In part, that’s due to the huge (indeed, record-setting) box office numbers put up by theaters in the last few years. Porn, which is highly dependent on individual sales to home users, doesn’t have the theatrical revenue stream and is therefore more at risk from the free Flash-based “tube” sites that now cater to every kind of fetish. These sites, modeled after YouTube, are awash in copyrighted content.
In the last five years, since Braun made Star Wars XXX, the porn industry has been gutted by piracy. Raincoaters (the term for folks who watch and wank and then click out) have their choice of avenues for watching fast, free porn via tube sites like PornHub and torrent sites like KickAss and The PirateBay.
Instead of crushing the major players of piracy the way the music industry was able to, porn got coopted by them: Mindgeek, the parent company that owns Pornhub, Youporn, and many other popular free porn sites, now owns Brazzers, Digital Playground, and other properties that were created by its one time competitors. (Mindgeek was reached for comment but did not respond to interview questions by press time.)
