MindGeek Asks for $117 Million Settlement in Piracy Lawsuit

MONTREAL—MindGeek subsidiary MG Premium Ltd., in settling a federal lawsuit filed last January against porn piracy outfit PornEZ and its alleged owner, Nguyen Hoi, this week filed a motion for default judgement in the case requesting an award of more than $117 million in damages. The large sum is only a drop in the bucket compared to the potential per-month losses the company says it may have incurred due to the piracy of its content.  “By this lawsuit, MG Premium seeks to protect thousands of its copyrighted audiovisual works from blatant infringement by [the] defendants,” reads the initial complaint filed by attorney A. Eric Bjorgum, partner at Karish & Bjorgum, PC. Bjorgum filed the lawsuit in the Western division of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Karish & Bjorgum is a high-profile intellectual property law firm, which is representing the MG Premium business unit that is incorporated as a limited liability company in the Republic of Cyprus. Cyprus is the base for several adult entertainment companies, including business units owned by Montreal-based MindGeek and its ownership group, Ottawa-based private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners.  “The conduct that gives rise to this lawsuit is egregious and willful,” reads the complaint, adding, “[the] defendants own and operate a website engaged in the business of copying and distributing infringing audiovisual works. [The] defendants are [also] directly and knowingly involved in the trafficking of tens of thousands of pirated works—including thousands of works owned by MG Premium.” Torrent Freak reports that MG Premium filings with the court show the company identifying 7,818 of its copyrighted works being available on PornEZ. These works could be accessed via 51,375 web addresses and URLs. And, as Torrent Freak journalist Andy Maxwell characterized, “a more recent accounting reveals that the company submitted 19,586 DMCA notices in an attempt to remove 116,757 infringements” identified across the PornEZ ecosystem. “It's always good to see intellectual property holders enforcing their rights especially when the legal costs and fees associated with copyright enforcement actions are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination,” adult industry attorney Corey Silverstein told AVN in a reaction statement. “Unfortunately, cases like this tend to end the same way, with the Plaintiff receiving a massive default judgment with little avenues to enforce due to jurisdictional and asset limitations.” Based on numbers disclosed through filings in the case and Silverstein’s insights, MG Premium will never fully recover the financial losses linked to this particular piracy operation. While some might find a degree of irony in this and other actions in recent years by MindGeek against piracy perpetrators, given the onetime reputation of its marquee web property, adult tube site Pornhub, as a notorious culprit of such itself, the company has also for some time invested heavily in protocol and rebranding to repair its image as a legal and compliant purveyor of adult content. After Pornhub was dragged through the mud in 2020 by controversial journalist Nicholas Kristof and The New York Times opinion section, the company’s trust and safety program was overhauled. As a part of this overhaul, Pornhub deleted millions of videos and photos uploaded by random users. This was a major show of goodwill and compliance to not only law enforcement professionals but to copyright holders, intellectual property rights enforcement agencies, and other authorities. At the time of reporting, PornEZ.net is no longer live. AVN reached out to MindGeek for comment, but had not received a response as of post time.