MONTREAL — An Ontario woman has asked a Quebec court to authorize a class-action lawsuit against Montreal-founded tech company MindGeek, alleging the company’s websites hosted videos of her being sexually abused as a child.

Filed in Quebec Superior Court on Dec. 29, 2020, the application targets five entities of MindGeek, which owns some of the world’s most popular pornography sites, including Pornhub. The claim alleges that the company—now headquartered in Luxembourg but with a large workforce still in Montreal—committed defamation, copyright infringement, negligence, unjust enrichment, fraud, and otherwise breached its duties “to securely and responsibly ensure that images and videos are posted with consent.”

It seeks $500 million in pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages, and $100 million in punitive damages, for those affected by the behaviour the claim alleges. “We believe there are thousands of people who have been affected by this,” said lawyer Louis Sokolov with the Ontario firm Sotos, which along with London, Ont.-based Siskinds is co-counsel in the application.

The applicant, an Ontario resident referred to as Jane Doe, alleges that a video of her abuse, recorded when she was approximately 12 years old, was published on Pornhub and other MindGeek sites. She became aware of the video in January 2020, when she saw a message from a male acquaintance sent several months prior, with a link to the video. According to the application, Doe filed out a takedown request with the company, though she only received an automated response. The applicant is unaware if the video was ever taken down, Sokolov said.

It’s the second recent legal claim against MindGeek. In December 2020, a group of 40 women, including three Canadians, filed a lawsuit against in a California court, saying the company made millions from sex videos published on the site without their consent.

Quebec is considered a plaintiff-friendly jurisdiction in which to file a class-action lawsuit. Sokolov told The Logic that since filing, he’s been contacted by a number of people who said they’d had material posted without their consent on Pornhub and other MindGeek sites. “You have the most extreme cases, such as where child sexual abuse material has been posted. You have the experience of people, whether it’s an intimate photo or video that they have sent on a private basis to a partner, and had that posted against their will and without their consent,” Sokolov said.

The claims in the application have not been proven in court. Neither MindGeek CEO Feras Antoon, COO David Tassillo nor chief legal officer Anthony Penhale immediately responded to The Logic’s requests for comment. 

MindGeek has been under intense scrutiny after media reports detailed how Pornhub and other MindGeek sites were hosting illegal content, including child pornography. This led Pornhub to impose new safety measures, including ceasing the ability to download videos and limiting uploads to verified users. It also announced it would beef up its content-moderation team. Mastercard and Visa both suspended payment services on Pornhub, though both are still available for use on MindGeek’s subscription sites, including Brazzers.

Yet Sokolov said the company never took steps to ensure consent from the people depicted in the videos uploaded to the site. “It doesn’t matter if you have one moderator or 1,000. If you’re not doing basic due diligence to make sure these people consent to the images on the website, then the whole system is faulty,” Sokolov said.