“Make Porn Normal & Boring”: Pornhub Owner Advises Governments

The new owner of Pornhub has urged governments to stop the crackdown on porn websites and instead take pride in sexual expression and help to make porn normal and “boring”.

Pornhub now has a new owner. Three months back Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP) has taken over Pornhub’s parent MindGeek. Now this company also owns several other porn sites including YouPorn.

In an interview with AFP, ECP founder Solomon Friedman said, “I think society has moved in the direction where we are proud of sexual expression,” he said. “The fact that it’s adult is going to be boring, just like the fact that (legalised) cannabis in Canada has become boring.”

But following the acquisition the company is also facing legal troubles. Its porn websites were taken off the internet in the US state of Utah in May after they were ordered to verify the ages of users.

In France, website owners and regulators have been locked in talks for months on how to make a 2020 age verification law work in practice.

Two of MindGeek’s sites with no age verification facility face a court ruling on July 7 that could ban them.

MindGeek got into trouble when in 2020 the New York Times in an article alleged that its sites were hosting clips depicting rapes and sex involving minors. Following it, Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments to these websites.