Pornography
USA – Child sex abuse survivors sue Pornhub over abuse footage
Two people who were sexually abused as minors have filed suit against Pornhub and its owner, Mindgeek, over videos of their abuse being uploaded to the popular pornography website. According to the lawsuit, Pornhub profited from these and other child pornography videos, making it culpable in the sex trafficking of two underage individuals. The complaint went on to argue that “MindGeek completely fails to control the torrent of videos available on its sites depicting children being molested, rapes of children and adults, persons who are incapacitated and otherwise unwilling participants.” These individuals join others who have gone before them and as result got credit card companies to quit liaising with Pornhub as well as millions of videos removed from their database. More
USA – Mississippi lawmakers considering bill to outlaw ‘revenge porn’
The state of Mississippi could join 46 states in punishing people for “revenge porn.” The bill, Senate Bill 2121, that passed the Mississippi Senate has set penalties for people who share intimate visual material of another person without that person’s permission and with the intent to cause harm. The material could include pictures shared during a relationship that was only intended to be seen by the recipient. It could also include images of someone being molested. The bill defines the material as photos or videos of a person’s private body parts that are exposed or engaged in sexual conduct. More
New Delhi – TikTok faces Complaints in Europe for Failure to protect children
TikTok the popular Chinese short video app, faces complaints in Europe for failure to protect children from harmful content. The bigger concern though is children and teenage users being exposed to hidden advertising and potentially harmful content on the app. The processing of users’ personal data has also been termed misleading. The Madras High Court had imposed a temporary ban on Tiktok in 2019 as it found the app hosting content related to child pornography. TikTok had informed the Court that they are using technology to ensure that obscene content is not spread via the app. The Indian government also imposed a ban on the app. More
Philippines – ISPs can’t automatically block child porn on servers
Internet Service Providers can only block websites containing child sexual exploitation materials as soon as they are flagged, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) claims. Pornography cannot be detected automatically. Lawyer Omar Sana from DICT explained the limits of ISP capabilities, especially due to conflicting laws that prevent user monitoring as well. Sana said the blocking that ISPs can do is on a domain level. This means if involved agencies can identify the domain name and/or the IP address of the malicious content, the ISPs can proceed to block it. More
USA – Man downloaded child pornography images through file-sharing service
Neil A. MacDonald, 21 who downloaded hundreds of images and more than two hours of videos of child pornography through a file-sharing service, named Mega, was sentenced to 16 months in jail. Beck said it was part of an international investigation involving a cloud-based file sharing service called Mega. Around a quarter of the images showed real children. Upon his release, MacDonald must put his name on the sex offender registry where it will stay for 20 years. MacDonald is prohibited from contacting or being around anyone under the age of 16 years of age for five years and is not allowed to use any device that connects to the internet without permission from his probation officer. More