Visa in litigation: allegation of monetization of child pornography on Pornhub

A lawsuit against the US payment service provider Visa has now been approved by California judge Cormac Carney. He claims that Visa should have known that the media company Mindgeek, which operates several porn websites, made money from child pornography. The judgment “Serena Fleites v. Mindgeek et al.” was issued by the judge last week, who is said to have simultaneously overturned Visa’s attempts to dismiss part of the lawsuit.

Visa is said to have provided the tool for a crime

Specifically, Visa is accused of helping Mindgeek monetize child pornography because it continued to provide payment processing services for major website Pornhub, knowing that child pornography was not moderated there. Visa and Mindgeek, among others, are said to have violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) and the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL).

The accusation is based on a video that was published on Pornhub, in which the plaintiff can be seen, who is said to have been a minor at the time of production. As a result, Pornhub was repeatedly informed that this video could be accessed on the website. Those responsible at Pornhub are said to have remained idle for weeks so that the video could be downloaded and published further and also made money, as The Verge explains. It was only when the New York Times reported on the subject that Visa is said to have stopped trading on the website.

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Judge Cormac Carney stated, “Visa lent Mindgeek a much-needed tool – its payments network – with the alleged knowledge that a plethora of child pornography was being monetized on Mindgeek’s websites.” According to the New York Times report and Visa’s Pornhub ban, Mindgeek then allegedly removed 10 million videos to assuage concerns. The indictment also states that Visa is not asked to monitor every single transaction, but only not to make its payment tool available to criminal activities.

Finally, Visa’s offense is compared with a similar case, namely the forwarding to child pornographic websites via the Google search engine. The difference to Visa is that Google did not knowingly provide a tool to complete a crime of funding Mindgeeks through child pornography. Opposite of Variety magazine Visa said the verdict was “disappointing” and the use of Visa’s network for illegal activities would not be tolerated. However, the financial services provider believes he is an improper defendant in this case.

Source: via The Verge