Hundreds of people tricked into making explicit videos for porn websites have been awarded the rights to the videos and millions of dollars in damages, reports the BBC. The sites, GirlsDoPorn and GirlsDoToys, had been the subject of a long-running legal battle. The U.S. Department of Justice has ruled that rights to videos and images produced by the now-defunct sites belong to the women. More than 400 victims can now ask for the online footage to be removed. They are likely to enforce notices ordering the firms, including Pornhub and Google, to take down the material. GirlsDoPorn producer Ruben Andre Garcia was sentenced in the summer to 20 years in federal prison for coercing women into appearing in sex videos. The latest ruling is part of a restitution order from the prosecution of Garcia. Originally, women responded to advertisements for clothed modelling work and were told they would be highly paid for anonymous adult video shoots. According to the women who appeared in GirlsDoPorn videos, Garcia pressured them into filmed sex acts and lied about the true nature of the shoot. Garcia told the women that the videos would be published only on DVDs and sold overseas. In fact, he knew the illegally obtained videos were being posted online, including on Pornhub, one of the most visited websites in the world. Under the terms of the order, U.S. district judge Janis Sammartino has ordered Garcia to pay $18 million in restitution and hand over the video and image rights. Sammartino’s order grants the video rights to 402 GirlsDoPorn victims, who can now seek “takedown” notices, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, against websites that continue to allow the films to be shown. The women have been seeking justice against their traffickers since 2016.
