A Group Of Women Sued Girls Do Porn For Coercing Them Into Doing Videos. Now They Own All The Rights – By Brianna Sacks (Buzzfeed) / Jan 2 2020
“It gives the power back to the people who had it taken away without their consent.”
Lured to San Diego by online ads seeking models for photo shoots, nearly two dozen women say they were pressured to sign dense contracts in hotel rooms where they were given drugs and alcohol and pushed into doing porn. A short time later, that footage was posted on GirlsDoPorn.com and other popular websites, where many of the women said viewers found and published their full names online, resulting in severe harassment.
Now, after a years-long legal battle, a California judge on Thursday not only ordered Girls Do Porn to pay the 22 women $12.7 million in damages, but took a rare — and potentially game-changing — step of granting them ownership rights to the content.
“It’s an extraordinarily unique and incredibly valuable decision,” Ben Bull, vice president and general counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told BuzzFeed News. “It will blaze a trail for other law firms and victims to come behind them and essentially do the same thing.”
The decision comes about four years after the women first took action against the San Diego–based adult film site, which creates and advertises videos featuring young “amateur” teens and college students who are usually about 18 to 20 years old.
In the 2016 lawsuit, the Jane Does, who were all between the ages of 17 and 22 at the time, said Girls Do Porn duped them into creating videos based on the understanding that the content would only be for a private collector, sold outside the US, or for a limited-release DVD.
Continue to article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/girls-do-porn-lawsuit-ruling-women-copyright-rights
