LOS ANGELES—A federal judge on Friday struck down a motion by credit card company Visa to have a claim dismissed that it had violated California's Unfair Competition Law by processing payments for Pornhub and other MindGeek properties in a case alleging criminal conspiracy between the two companies to monetize child pornography, multiple news outlets reported Sunday.
The ruling, first reported by the New York Post, came from U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California. The case, filed in June 2021 by Serena Fleites, accuses Visa of knowingly facilitating the monetization of a pornographic video she says she was pressured into making by her then-boyfriend at the age of 13, which subsequently was uploaded to Pornhub without her knowledge or consent.
The specific claim upheld by Carney's Friday ruling, entertainment trade outlet Variety indicated in its own report, held that by processing payments for child porn, Visa was in violation of California's Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business acts and practices.
While Carney wrote in his ruling that "the court can comfortably infer that Visa intended to help MindGeek monetize child porn" by "knowingly provid[ing] the tool used to complete the crime," he also found that Fleites "simply has no basis for claiming Visa directly participated in the sex trafficking ventures that harmed her," and ordered her to provide "a more definite statement with respect to her common law civil conspiracy cause of action against Visa," Variety reported.
In a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for Visa said: “Visa condemns sex trafficking, sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse materials as repugnant to our values and purpose as a company. This pre-trial ruling is disappointing and mischaracterizes Visa’s role and its policies and practices. Visa will not tolerate the use of our network for illegal activity. We continue to believe that Visa is an improper defendant in this case.”
A spokesperson for MindGeek provided this statement to the outlet: “At this point in the case, the court has not yet ruled on the veracity of the allegations, and is required to assume all of the plaintiff’s allegations are true and accurate. When the court can actually consider the facts, we are confident the plaintiff’s claims will be dismissed for lack of merit. MindGeek has zero tolerance for the posting of illegal content on its platforms, and has instituted the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history.
“We have banned uploads from anyone who has not submitted government-issued ID that passes third-party verification, eliminated the ability to download free content, integrated several leading technological platform and content moderation tools, instituted digital fingerprinting of all videos found to be in violation of our Non-Consensual Content and CSAM [child sexual abuse material] Policies to help protect against removed videos being reposted, expanded our moderation workforce and processes, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations around the world. Any insinuation that MindGeek does not take the elimination of illegal material seriously is categorically false.”
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