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Adult entertainment conglomerate MindGeek won a major court battle last month against Daftsex.com. In addition to millions of dollars in damages, the court issued an injunction allowing the rights holder to take over this and other domains. Interestingly, 'someone' tried to hijack the process by posing as MindGeek in an email to the Verisign domain registrar.
Adult entertainment conglomerate MindGeek owns several of the biggest 'free' tube sites, including Pornhub.
At first, these sites thrived on pirated content, but over time, that changed. Today, MindGeek is one of the most protective copyright holders in the industry.
MindGeek's subsidiary MG Premium, for example, has thousands of works registered with the US Copyright Office. To prevent these videos from being shared online without permission, the company regularly takes legal action.
victory against daftsex
In a recent case heard in federal court in the Western District of Washington, MindGeek won a default judgment against Vasily Kharchenko, the alleged operator of Daftsex.com, Artporn.com, Biqle.com, and Daxab.com.
These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek's side for years and MG Premium accused their operator of massive copyright infringement. DaftSex alone was good for tens of millions of monthly views.
The adult media company won by default after the defense failed to appear. Kharchenko was sentenced to pay more than $32 million in damage and a court order required domain name registrar Verisign to cede the valuable domain names to MG Premium.
Attempted kidnapping by court order
Apparently, someone had been keeping a close eye on the case. Shortly after the court issued its order, Verisign received an email from an MG Premium imposter attempting to seize ownership of the disputed domain names.
The identity of the impostor is unknown, but a new MG Premium court filing suggests it could be Kharchenko's attempt to retain control over domain names. While it lasts.
โOn November 10, 2022, just days after this Court entered the Final Judgment Order and Permanent Injunction, a fraudulent letter was sent to Verisign, Inc. purporting to be from MG Premium requesting Verisign, Inc. to unlock the domains and send authorization codes to [emailย protected]โ
โThis is a fake letter, not sent by MG Premium. It is suspected that the defendant Kharchenko may have sent this false letter in an attempt to thwart the court order and the loss of the domains,โ writes MG Premium.
The bold move ultimately fell through, as the actual MG Premium was already in contact with Verisign at the time. However, it was clear that someone had tried to hijack the court order.
Contempt Motion and Sanctions
MG Premium suspects that the DaftSex operator sent the email. Despite the court order and court order, the pirate site is not giving up. After the domains were finally registered with MG Premium, the sites switched to new domains, including Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org.
These new domains were made public through the DaftSex Twitter account and are still in operation today.
To address this issue, MG Premium filed a contempt action and sanctions against the site operator. And since more monetary damages won't help, penalties should focus on taking all replacement sites offline. MG Premium also wants the Twitter account to be suspended.
โUnfortunately, the court must view the defendant Khaarchekno as an irresponsible teenager who simply cannot follow simple rules or show respect for others, including the rule of law,โ writes MG Premium.
โTo enforce compliance with the Court's Order, the Court must remove the domains used and the Twitter account promoting those domains. There is simply no other way to make this behavior stop."
The court has yet to rule on this motion, but if MG Premium successfully takes over the new domain names, any further hijacking attempts will lack the element of surprise. Even then, MG Premium may have to go back to court if DaftSex changes domains again.
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A copy of MG Premium's request for a contempt finding and associated sanctions against Daftsex and its operator Vasily Kharchekno is available. here (pdf)
