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- A Toronto-based law firm began a 3-year independent monitorship of Pornhub's parent company Friday.
- The monitorship is part of a deferred-prosecution agreement Pornhub's owners agreed to in December.
- The monitor will assess Pornhub's content screening and any allegations of illegal content.
A Toronto-based law firm has begun a three-year independent monitorship of Pornhub and its parent company, Aylo Holdings.
Department of Justice approval of Henein Hutchinson Robitaille LLP was revealed Friday in a letter to US District Judge Brian M. Cogan, who will oversee the monitorship.
The firm will review how Aylo responds to takedown requests and screens for illegal content — including child-sexual-abuse images and non-consensual videos of sexual assault and trafficking — on its flagship website Pornhub and such sister sites as YouPorn and RedTube.
The monitorship is part of a deferred prosecution agreement between Aylo and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who charged the company with money laundering in December.
As part of that agreement, Aylo — formerly MindGeek— admitted profiting from videos produced by the sex trafficking ring Girls Do Porn. In addition to agreeing to independent monitoring, Aylo officials paid a $1.8 million fine and agreed to undisclosed additional payments to victims whose images appeared on the company's platforms.
To date, five Girls Do Porn employees have pleaded guilty in San Diego to federal sex trafficking charges. Accused Girls Do Porn mastermind Michael James Pratt was extradited to California from Spain in March. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a possible trial.
Aylo is owned by the Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. Two firm officials, partner Solomon Friedman and spokeswoman Sarah Bain, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. "Aylo confirms that as required by our DPA, we have retained a monitor," a spokesperson said.
Bain has previously told Business Insider that Aylo has taken significant steps to keep illegal content off the site, including through increased human monitoring and the use of AI technologies that can identify possible child-sexual-abuse images.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn declined to comment on the monitorship.
Anti-trafficking activist and author Laila Mickelwait has lobbied for Pornhub to be taken down in its entirety and its owners prosecuted.
"But at the very least, this new monitor must force Pornhub and all porn tube sites owned by Aylo/MindGeek to immediately take down every video where the individuals in the videos were not reliably verified for age and consent," said the author of "Takedown: Inside The Fight To Shut Down Pornhub For Child Abuse, Rape, and Sex Trafficking."
"This means taking down potentially millions of unverified images and videos because the site is still infested with illegal content."