Who owns and operates major porn tube sites?
These include sites like Free Porn Videos - XVIDEOS.COM and xHamster's FREE Porn Videos.
Do these sites have legitimate investors? Or are they sort of mom and pop shops with possible gang connections or operating illegally?
Is there any good investigative journalism on this topic?
Do these sites have legitimate investors? Or are they sort of mom and pop shops with possible gang connections or operating illegally?
Is there any good investigative journalism on this topic?
1 Answer
Siri, adult film performer, site own... (more) adult film performer, site owner and producer157 upvotes by Quora User, Joseph Boyle, Matt Hastie, (more)Loading...
Many tube sites are owned by multi-billion-dollar corporation MindGeek (Formerly Manwin), which also owns Brazzers, Digital Playground, Reality Kings, Mofos, Twistys, and parts of Playboy and Wicked Pictures. The tube sites MindGeek owns include YouPorn, Pornhub, Tube8, XTube, and ExtremeTube. However, despite being owned by a "porn company" these sites are still bad for the porn industry and its employees and performers. The tube sites that MindGeek owns do absolutely nothing to prevent users from uploading pirated content from other (non-MindGeek-owned) adult film studios. In fact, the more pirated content hosted on MindGeek's tube sites, the more MindGeek profits from advertising revenue. It's kind of like how Wal-Mart intentionally builds Wal-Marts in small towns and drives prices down to a level that no local business could ever compete with, thereby shutting down all of the mom-and-pop stores, and leaving the town with only one choice of where to shop: Wal-Mart.
Except imagine that Wal-Mart did that, and then to top it off went into the mom-and-pop shops and literally stole all of their products to be resold at Wal-Mart.
MindGeek's goal is to own as much of the porn industry as possible, and so far they're pretty successful with that. Every porn performer who wants to be successful must work for MindGeek-owned companies -- they're the biggest and highest-budget companies. At the same time nearly every performer dislikes MindGeek-owned companies on some level, because they are the soul-less Wal-Mart of porn.
It's very hard to find any revealing information about other tube sites such as xhamster and xvideos. Xhamster has an address in Cyprus, which is where many porn tube sites/piracy and torrent sites will register their business if they want to infringe on copyright law while making it very hard for the copyright holders (who are often in the United States) to sue the company.
A whois search of xvideos reveals that the domain is registered in Prague, Czech Republic. While there are a number of legit adult studios producing porn in Eastern European countries, they are more so a hotbed of porn piracy and copyright infringement.
From personal experience I know how hard it is to get my copyrighted content removed from tube sites - even the purportedly "legit" ones that porn magnate MindGeek owns still force copyright holders to jump through hoops to get our content removed from tube sites.
There is no such thing as a "mom and pop" free porn site, I'm sorry. The largest, most popular tube sites are owned by large corporations (or simply extremely wealthy individuals) seeking to profit by stealing other people's copyrighted material, and organizations that promote piracy of all online media.
So just know that every time you log on to a tube site, you're definitely hurting performers like me, who work hard and pay out of my own pocket to produce original content for my own website. And you're hurting the non-MindGeek-owned companies like Naughty America, Bang Bros, and many of the mainly-DVD-release studios like Vivid, Girlfriends Films, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, and New Sensations/Digital Sin. Many of those companies continually have to cut their budgets as a direct result of piracy and tube sites.
If you're the kind of person who only shops at Wal-Mart, hates supporting small and local businesses, and would rather steal something (if it's easy enough to get away with) than pay for it, despite the moral implications therein, then I wouldn't expect you to watch porn anywhere but on tube sites. But if you're a person who generally thinks it's a good idea to shop small and local businesses, and you don't like to steal, then please consider not supporting tube sites. Every time you log on, you are in fact helping put me and thousands of other adult industry workers out of a job.
Here are some legitimate sources of free porn. These sites do not distribute pirated content nor support those who do. They do generate $$ from ad revenue but they do it with respect for the content owners and copyright holders.
Freeones: the Ultimate Supermodels
Woodrocket - The Future Of Porn!
My Daily Tube - Free HD Porn Tube Videos (the only tube site I'm aware of that ACTUALLY only uploads legit 3-10 minute clips with permission from content owners. No pirated stuff here).
Except imagine that Wal-Mart did that, and then to top it off went into the mom-and-pop shops and literally stole all of their products to be resold at Wal-Mart.
MindGeek's goal is to own as much of the porn industry as possible, and so far they're pretty successful with that. Every porn performer who wants to be successful must work for MindGeek-owned companies -- they're the biggest and highest-budget companies. At the same time nearly every performer dislikes MindGeek-owned companies on some level, because they are the soul-less Wal-Mart of porn.
It's very hard to find any revealing information about other tube sites such as xhamster and xvideos. Xhamster has an address in Cyprus, which is where many porn tube sites/piracy and torrent sites will register their business if they want to infringe on copyright law while making it very hard for the copyright holders (who are often in the United States) to sue the company.
A whois search of xvideos reveals that the domain is registered in Prague, Czech Republic. While there are a number of legit adult studios producing porn in Eastern European countries, they are more so a hotbed of porn piracy and copyright infringement.
From personal experience I know how hard it is to get my copyrighted content removed from tube sites - even the purportedly "legit" ones that porn magnate MindGeek owns still force copyright holders to jump through hoops to get our content removed from tube sites.
There is no such thing as a "mom and pop" free porn site, I'm sorry. The largest, most popular tube sites are owned by large corporations (or simply extremely wealthy individuals) seeking to profit by stealing other people's copyrighted material, and organizations that promote piracy of all online media.
So just know that every time you log on to a tube site, you're definitely hurting performers like me, who work hard and pay out of my own pocket to produce original content for my own website. And you're hurting the non-MindGeek-owned companies like Naughty America, Bang Bros, and many of the mainly-DVD-release studios like Vivid, Girlfriends Films, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, and New Sensations/Digital Sin. Many of those companies continually have to cut their budgets as a direct result of piracy and tube sites.
If you're the kind of person who only shops at Wal-Mart, hates supporting small and local businesses, and would rather steal something (if it's easy enough to get away with) than pay for it, despite the moral implications therein, then I wouldn't expect you to watch porn anywhere but on tube sites. But if you're a person who generally thinks it's a good idea to shop small and local businesses, and you don't like to steal, then please consider not supporting tube sites. Every time you log on, you are in fact helping put me and thousands of other adult industry workers out of a job.
Here are some legitimate sources of free porn. These sites do not distribute pirated content nor support those who do. They do generate $$ from ad revenue but they do it with respect for the content owners and copyright holders.
Freeones: the Ultimate Supermodels
Woodrocket - The Future Of Porn!
My Daily Tube - Free HD Porn Tube Videos (the only tube site I'm aware of that ACTUALLY only uploads legit 3-10 minute clips with permission from content owners. No pirated stuff here).
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