Pornhub has been under fire recently when the adult video site was sued by 34 women who claim they featured without consent in material depicting rape, sexual abuse, revenge porn, or photos of them while they were children.
"This is a rape case, not a pornographic case," the plaintiffs said in their statement of claim, characterizing the website as "possibly the greatest non-regulatory storehouse of child pornography in North America and well beyond."
MindGeek, the notorious adult entertainment company that operates Pornhub, is accused by its attorneys of being a "typical criminal operation" with a business strategy centered on exploiting non-consensual sexual content.
According to the lawsuit, MindGeek owns more than 100 pornographic websites, including Pornhub, RedTube, Tube8, and YouPorn, and receives around 3.5 billion hits each month.
"I'm hoping (the lawsuit) will encourage Pornhub, and then other firms in this sector, to put in safety precautions so that this doesn't happen to anybody else," Rachel, one of the plaintiffs, told AFP on Friday.
The 38-year-old Canadian, who spoke on the condition that her real identity not be published, recently detailed to AFP her years-long battle to get a video of her being sexually abused by her own husband as she lay unconscious deleted off the internet. Although Pornhub removed the video, it had already gone to a slew of other websites.
"Today is a historic day," said Laila Mickelwait of the Traffickinghub campaign, which was backed by 2.2 million individuals who signed an online petition to shut down Pornhub and hold its leadership accountable.
"This lawsuit proves that Pornhub and its parent firm Mindgeek are more than just a software business that makes (content) moderation blunders," the sex trafficking specialist stated in a video statement posted to Twitter.
Since the New York Times published an article in December 2020 accusing Pornhub of uploading illegal content online, including child pornography and rape films, which it has denied, the porn company has faced a rising backlash.
"Why does Canada host a corporation that broadcasts rape films throughout the world?" asked its author, Nicholas Kristof, adding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a feminist.
The public outrage prompted Canadian MPs to question MindGeek officials about alleged abuses in February, while Mastercard and Visa halted payments on Pornhub. The two payment processing firms are also mentioned in the action, and they are accused of "knowingly" benefiting from trafficking while providing merchant services to MindGeek.
A Canadian parliamentary committee issued 14 proposals for regulating internet platforms on Thursday.