DaftSex.com will soon lose its domain name. MindGeek defeated the pirate site in court and also secured more than $32 million in damages. The verdict comes after the court previously denied a broad injunction that required hosting and CDN providers to take action as well.
In a recent case filed at the federal court in the District of Washington, MindGeek went after Vasily Kharchenko, the alleged operator of Daftsex.com, Artporn.com, Biqle.com, and Daxab.com.
These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek’s side for years, and sending hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices made little difference. So, in 2020, MindGeek obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare to unmask their operator, which eventually led to Kharchenko.
MindGeek accused the operator of mass copyright infringement and argued that he personally uploaded 2,143 of its copyrighted works to the sites. Through the court, the company hoped to stop these infringements and receive compensation for the damages suffered.
Mindgeek requested $15,000 for each of the 2,143 copyright-infringing works that were at stake in the lawsuit.
“[A]ctual damages could be calculated at over $1,248,750,000, thus statutory damages of $32,145,000 are appropriate for Defendants’ willful infringement. Only a large award will serve to deter these arrogant Defendants from future illegal action,” Judge Settle writes.
The Judge also agreed to an injunction that requires Verisign to sign over Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com, to Mindgeek’s registrar EuroDNS. This means that MindGeek will effectively seize control of the domains with millions of visitors.
It’s not likely they’ll ever fully get paid the $32 million in damages, but they will, at the very least, get control of the domain names.