Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.

The company controls an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyrighted works. When this content appears on third-party sites, it doesn’t hesitate to take legal action.

Last summer, for example, Aylo Premium sued the operators of PornXP, who were initially identified as “John Does.” As the case moved forward, Aylo pinpointed the alleged operator, Alex Abdullaev, in Kyrgyzstan. However, when Aylo sent someone to personally serve their suspect in the Central Asian country, no one answered the door.

Without a formal response from the defendant, Aylo eventually requested a default judgment at the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington. According to Aylo, the pirate site network cost them over $172 million per month in potential lost subscriptions, based on PornXP’s 17 million monthly visitors.

In an attempt to recoup part of the damage, the adult entertainment company requested $15,000 in damages for each of the 2,040 infringing works, totaling more than $30 million.

Court Grants $10m and Domain Seizures

In an order issued last month, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle issued a default judgment in favor of Aylo. While the Kyrgyzstani operator is held liable, the court reduced the requested damages by a third, to a little over $10 million.

“Aylo has demonstrated Abdullaev willfully infringed its copyrighted works and a statutory damages award is warranted and required. However, the Court in its discretion declines to award Aylo the $30.6 million it requests,” Judge Settle writes.

“The Court finds that only a fraction of the visitors would have paid for Aylo’s services. In its discretion and in the interests of justice, the Court will award $5,000 for each of the 2,040 offending works, totaling $10,200,000,” the order adds.

In these types of cases it is highly unlikely that the defendant will pay anything. More important, perhaps, is the domain seizure order that was also granted by Judge Settle. Specifically, the order specifies that registries have to disable and transfer the PornXP domains.

Porkbun Does Not (Have to) Comply

At first glance, it appeared that the order allowed Aylo to seize control of the PornXP domains. However, Aylo’s enforcement arm immediately ran into trouble when it asked the American domain registrar Porkbun to comply.

On December 19, Aylo’s attorney, Ethan Jacobs, asked Porkbun to transfer a dozen domain names, including pornxp.click, pornxp.club, pornxp.download, pornxp.lat, pornxp.one, and pornxp.pics. However, that didn’t go as planned, as Porkbun refused to comply.

In a response to Aylo, the company argued that the court’s order only commanded “registries” (which manage the domains) to disable and transfer the domains, not “registrars”, which are the companies that sell these domain names.

This distinction is more than just semantics. In the Internet ecosystem, registries and registrars have different technical capabilities and legal obligations. By specifically naming registries in the permanent injunction, registrars such as Porkbun are not required to comply.

Aylo Requests Amended Court Order

For Aylo, it is key that domain registrars are covered. Many of these companies, such as Porkbun, Namesilo, and GoDaddy, are based in the U.S. and directly subject to the court’s jurisdiction. The same doesn’t automatically apply to foreign domain registries, which may not comply with American court orders.

In response to Porkbun’s refusal, Aylo filed an ex parte motion last Friday, asking the court to amend the order to explicitly include the “registrars”. This would compel Porkbun to disable the PornXP domains. Yesterday, this amended order was signed by Judge Settle.

The updated injunction now outlines a specific technical process and names the registrars and registries. For example, it requires registrars like Porkbun, NameSilo, and Spaceship to change the registrar of record to EuroDNS, which will then move the domains into Aylo’s name.

For now, most of the roughly three-dozen PornXP domains listed in the legal paperwork remain active, either directly or through a redirect. That includes the Porkbun-linked domains, which will likely go offline soon after the registrar processes the amended order.

Interestingly, several domains that are linked to foreign domain registries remain online too. For example, PornXP’s .eu domain is managed by EURid which is linked to the European Commission, while the .me domain is sponsored by the Government of Montenegro. This suggests that these foreign entities
have not complied with the original injunction either. Whether that will change now that they are directly named has yet to be seen.

The American registries Verisign (.com) and the Public Interest Registry (.org) did comply with the injunction, however.

This isn’t Aylo’s first legal go-around. The company followed a nearly identical playbook in its previous battles against Goodporn and Daftsex , securing judgments of $2.1 million and $32 million, respectively. These sites also proved to be rather difficult to shut down, and their remnants can still be found online.

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A copy of the initial court order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle is available here (pdf) . The amended judgment can be found here (pdf) .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.