{"id":1581616,"date":"2022-07-31T19:31:56","date_gmt":"2022-07-31T23:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1581616"},"modified":"2022-07-31T19:32:22","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T23:32:22","slug":"reasonable-to-conclude-visa-knowingly-helped-monetize-child-porn-says-judge-in-pornhub-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/reasonable-to-conclude-visa-knowingly-helped-monetize-child-porn-says-judge-in-pornhub-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasonable To Conclude Visa Knowingly Helped Monetize Child Porn, Says Judge In Pornhub Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freasonable-to-conclude-visa-knowingly-helped-monetize-child-porn-says-judge-in-pornhub-case%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1581616&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">A federal judge ruled on Friday that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly \u2018intended to help monetize child pornography\u2019 on Pornhub and other sites operated by its parent company, MindGeek.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California wrote, \u201cVisa knew that MindGeek\u2019s websites were teeming with monetized child porn,\u201d in the\u00a0<em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Fleites v. MindGeek<\/em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pershingsquarefoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/031138281455.pdf\">lawsuit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cWhen MindGeek decides to monetize child porn, and Visa decides to continue to allow its payment network to be used for that goal despite knowledge of MindGeek\u2019s monetization of child porn, it is entirely foreseeable that victims of child porn like plaintiff will suffer the harms that plaintiff alleges,\u201d Carney wrote.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Plaintiff Serena Fleites filed the lawsuit last year, alleging MindGeek violated federal sex trafficking and child pornography laws. Such violations led credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard to suspend processing payments on Pornhub following a New York Times report revealing illegal content on its website.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Fleites alleges a former boyfriend pressured her into making a sexually explicit video and uploaded it to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent when she was 13 years old. The video garnered millions of views and spiraled the plaintiff\u2019s life out of control.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cWhile MindGeek profited from the child porn featuring Plaintiff, Plaintiff <span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">was intermittently homeless or living in her car, addicted to heroin, depressed and <span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">suicidal, and without the support of her family,\u201d the lawsuit reads.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Variety <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2022\/digital\/news\/pornhub-visa-child-pornography-court-ruling-1235330052\/\">reports<\/a> the plaintiff\u2019s lead attorney, Michael Bowe, said, \u201cthe court\u2019s holding that our detailed complaint adequately pleads Visa was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to monetize child porn means Visa and other credit card companies are finally going to face the civil and perhaps criminal consequences of \u2026 this unconscionable and illegal activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Carney denied Visa\u2019s motion to dismiss the claim that the company violated California\u2019s Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits false advertising and illegal business practices.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">A Visa spokesperson told Variety the company \u201ccondemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The spokesperson called the pre-trial ruling disappointing and said it mischaracterized Visa\u2019s role, policies, and practices.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cVisa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">MindGeek also weighed in, issuing a statement that said the court has not ruled on the veracity of the allegations and is required to assume all of the plaintiff\u2019s claims are true and accurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cWhen the court can actually consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff\u2019s claims will be dismissed for lack of merit,\u201d a spokesperson from MindGeek told Variety. \u201cMindGeek has zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Pornhub\u2019s parent company also claims to have banned uploads from anyone who has not submitted government-issued identification that passes a third-party verification.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The company said it eliminated the ability to download free content, integrated several leading technology platforms and content moderation tools, and instituted digital fingerprinting of all videos found to violate its rules against non-consensual content and child sexual abuse.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cPolicies to help protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations around the world,\u201d MindGeek\u2019s spokesperson said. \u201cAny insinuation that MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is categorically false.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The judge\u2019s ruling comes a month after MindGeek denied allegations from a non-profit organization that more than half of its employees were likely laid off following the resignation of two of the company\u2019s top executives on the same day.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Last month, MindGeek\u2019s former chief executive officer, Feras Antoon, and ex-Chief Operating Officer David Tassillo resigned after more than a decade of running the adult website company, though both remain shareholders of the company.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">However, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the non-profit that made the allegations, said in a statement Wednesday that the reported layoffs, which come from layoffstracker.com, \u201care more evidence that the infrastructure of the pornography industry is crumbling and that MindGeek needs to be investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u201cIt is no coincidence that MindGeek\u2019s two top executives have fled amid a growing number of lawsuits we and other law firms have filed on behalf of sex trafficking survivors whose abuse has been shown on Pornhub,\u201d Dawn Hawkins, CEO of the center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/pornhub-parent-company-denies-reports-that-employees-are-fleeing\">said<\/a>. \u201cAnd because of the intense outcry from survivors, advocates, corporations, and even from news outlets like the New York Times, The New Yorker, and the BBC that revealed Pornhub\u2019s criminality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">However, MindGeek told The Daily Wire such allegations are \u201ccategorically false.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Still, Hawkins asserts Pornhub profited from mass distribution of filmed sexual crimes and non-consensually recorded<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge ruled on Friday that it was reasonable to conclude that Visa knowingly \u2018intended to help monetize child pornography\u2019 on Pornhub and other sites operated by its parent company, MindGeek. U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California wrote, \u201cVisa knew that MindGeek\u2019s websites were &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1581634,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1581616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1581616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1581616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1581634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1581616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1581616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1581616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}