YouPorn
Encyclopedia
YouPorn is a free pornographic video sharing
website. Since starting in August 2006, it has become the most popular pornographic website
. In November 2007, it was reported to be the largest free pornographic website on the Internet. As of May 2011 it was the 83rd most popular website overall as of May 2011 (It has since been overcome by xvideos.com as of July 8th, 2011).
This Web 2.0
(or Porn 2.0
) site differs from many other pornographic websites in that it is completely free and ad-supported. One journalist reported that in May 2007 it generated a monthly ad revenue of $120,000 and that it was owned by Stephen Paul Jones.
was registered by a company in December 2005. Youporn site reports that the owner is Midstream Media International N.V. seated in Willemstad
which is the capital city
of Curaçao
, an island
in the southern Caribbean Sea
that forms a constituent country
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
. Sunny Freeman, a reporter pursuing a graduate degree in journalism at UBC, wrote one article in The Tyee calling the company "German-based". The site is run from a hosting service in Texas. The terms of service document explicitly refers to California law.
, Google
, and Quantcast
resources that enable tracking and potential linking to personally identifiable information
.
, an earlier pornographic video sharing site that debuted in July 2006 and generated some publicity, has since been overtaken in popularity by YouPorn, which debuted in August 2006. As of October 2007, YouPorn was the highest-ranked adult website according to Alexa
, ranging in the top 35 globally visited sites. In the same year the site was adding 15 million new users each month. Several other websites now use a similar concept; some serve only videos in a specific category. Several other sites collect and index links to the videos hosted on these sites. Some of the main rivals of YouPorn are Xtube
, Redtube
, Pornhub
etc.
Porn 2.0
sites such as these are seen as posing notable competition for paid pornographic websites and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography.
s of bandwidth each day, which has caused the site to go down at times due to the sheer volume of users and the large file size of the videos. When the online version of a German newspaper reported on YouPorn in November 2006, the site could not deal with the traffic surge, went down temporarily, and asked its users for an unmetered service provider in Europe.
Concerns have also surfaced over the inability to verify the age of the persons depicted in the videos, the possibility of copyright
ed videos being uploaded to the site, and the possibility of privacy violations when private sex tapes are uploaded without the consent of all involved parties. In 2007 Vivid Entertainment
took legal action against YouPorn, claiming that the streaming of copyrighted material was depriving it of revenue.
YouPorn has been called "a good role model for the sexually naive", as many of its homemade videos depict amateur couples having ordinary sex (known as "Amateur"), as opposed to the often unreal scenarios of commercial porn.
Court papers filed by Class Action Lawyers, Fears | Nachawati Law Firm, in the Central District of California show that that on December 6, 2010 two men have filed a class action lawsuit against Netherlands-based Midstream Media N.V., owners of YouPorn claiming the company’s sites use “history-sniffing” technology to hijack users’ personal information.
(Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) placed YouPorn on its index. As a result, since April 2007, the German site of the Google
search engine (
Following a request by a competing pornography service, German provider Arcor
categorized YouPorn and a few other porn sites as hardcore pornographic and also blocked access to the website at the routing level in September 2007, affecting over 2 million users. The German Pirate Party promptly opened a proxy server
so that Arcor customers could continue to easily access YouPorn.
Arcor lifted the block on September 17 because the IP address
-based filter which had been set up for YouPorn also affected other sites. Kirchberg then sued, alleging that Arcor aided unfair competition by YouPorn, and on 19 October 2007 obtained a temporary injunction ordering Arcor to resume limiting the accessibility to YouPorn.com. On 23 October 2007, Arcor started to control access to YouPorn again, this time with a DNS
-based approach that is easily circumvented, and successfully filed an appeal against the injunction.
Kirchberg has sent notices to 19 German ISPs demanding that YouPorn be granted access limitations, but none have complied. Efforts by Kirchberg to obtain injunctions regarding YouPorn from internet providers in Kiel
and Düsseldorf
were unsuccessful.
had blocked access to YouPorn and RedTube
, in what a government officials described as "a symbolic statement".
blocked access to 12 porn web sites including YouPorn, RedTube
, Xvideos
and Xhamster. On 25 July 2009 Sri Lanka Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi ordered the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to block those 12 websites from all local Internet Service Providers.
Video hosting service
A video hosting service allows individuals to upload video clips to an Internet website. The video host will then store the video on its server, and show the individual different types of code to allow others to view this video...
website. Since starting in August 2006, it has become the most popular pornographic website
Internet pornography
Internet pornography is pornography that is distributed by means of various sectors of the Internet, primarily via websites, peer-to-peer file sharing, or Usenet newsgroups...
. In November 2007, it was reported to be the largest free pornographic website on the Internet. As of May 2011 it was the 83rd most popular website overall as of May 2011 (It has since been overcome by xvideos.com as of July 8th, 2011).
This Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
(or Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0, named after the Web 2.0 is a concept of internet-based websites featuring user-generated content. These ideas are sometimes described as intermediate social networking mediums using dynamics contents such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting in ?tube as opposed to static contents in...
) site differs from many other pornographic websites in that it is completely free and ad-supported. One journalist reported that in May 2007 it generated a monthly ad revenue of $120,000 and that it was owned by Stephen Paul Jones.
Ownership
The domain nameDomain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
was registered by a company in December 2005. Youporn site reports that the owner is Midstream Media International N.V. seated in Willemstad
Willemstad
Willemstad can refer to:*Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao*Willemstad , a town in Moerdijk, the Netherlands*Willemstad , a hamlet near Marum, the Netherlands*Willemstad , a hamlet in the Netherlands...
which is the capital city
Capital City
Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....
of Curaçao
Curaçao
Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...
, an island
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
in the southern Caribbean Sea
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles....
that forms a constituent country
Constituent country
Constituent country is a phrase sometimes used in contexts in which a country makes up a part of a larger entity. The term constituent country does not have any defined legal meaning, and is used simply to refer to a country which is a part Constituent country is a phrase sometimes used in contexts...
of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Kingdom of the Netherlands
The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a sovereign state and constitutional monarchy with territory in Western Europe and in the Caribbean. The four parts of the Kingdom—Aruba, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Sint Maarten—are referred to as "countries", and participate on a basis of equality...
. Sunny Freeman, a reporter pursuing a graduate degree in journalism at UBC, wrote one article in The Tyee calling the company "German-based". The site is run from a hosting service in Texas. The terms of service document explicitly refers to California law.
Privacy
YouPorn employs Yahoo!Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, and Quantcast
Quantcast
Quantcast is a California based company that provides publishers and marketers with the ability to understand, deliver and reach their best audiences at a massive scale...
resources that enable tracking and potential linking to personally identifiable information
Personally identifiable information
Personally Identifiable Information , as used in information security, is information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual...
.
Competition
PornoTubePornoTube
PornoTube is an advertising-supported pornographic website that provides audio, videos, and photos of explicit sex for free.-Background:It allows its users to upload their own pornographic media . It is one of the highest-traffic pornographic sites on the Internet along with YouPorn and has been...
, an earlier pornographic video sharing site that debuted in July 2006 and generated some publicity, has since been overtaken in popularity by YouPorn, which debuted in August 2006. As of October 2007, YouPorn was the highest-ranked adult website according to Alexa
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
, ranging in the top 35 globally visited sites. In the same year the site was adding 15 million new users each month. Several other websites now use a similar concept; some serve only videos in a specific category. Several other sites collect and index links to the videos hosted on these sites. Some of the main rivals of YouPorn are Xtube
Xtube
XTube is a Netherlands-based pornographic video hosting service which allows users to share adult video content with others. Among other things, the terms of use of xtube.com state that users must be 18 years of age or older....
, Redtube
Redtube
RedTube is a Web 2.0, video sharing, pornography site which in November 2009, held an Alexa ranking within the World's top 100 sites. However by June 2014 it had fallen out of the top 100...
, Pornhub
Pornhub
Pornhub is a free ad-supported pornographic video sharing website which allows users to watch professional and amateur porn.It allows users to watch thousands of videos for free and the website also offers a paid for subscription service which give users extra benefits such as the ability to...
etc.
Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0
Porn 2.0, named after the Web 2.0 is a concept of internet-based websites featuring user-generated content. These ideas are sometimes described as intermediate social networking mediums using dynamics contents such as user-based categorizing, webcam hosting in ?tube as opposed to static contents in...
sites such as these are seen as posing notable competition for paid pornographic websites and traditional magazine and DVD-based pornography.
Criticism and praise
YouPorn consumes more than three terabyteTerabyte
The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...
s of bandwidth each day, which has caused the site to go down at times due to the sheer volume of users and the large file size of the videos. When the online version of a German newspaper reported on YouPorn in November 2006, the site could not deal with the traffic surge, went down temporarily, and asked its users for an unmetered service provider in Europe.
Concerns have also surfaced over the inability to verify the age of the persons depicted in the videos, the possibility of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
ed videos being uploaded to the site, and the possibility of privacy violations when private sex tapes are uploaded without the consent of all involved parties. In 2007 Vivid Entertainment
Vivid Entertainment
Vivid Entertainment Group is an adult video producer, featuring a catalog of VHS and DVD titles and internet content. In 2006 it was described by Reuters as one of the handful of studios that dominate the U.S. porn industry....
took legal action against YouPorn, claiming that the streaming of copyrighted material was depriving it of revenue.
YouPorn has been called "a good role model for the sexually naive", as many of its homemade videos depict amateur couples having ordinary sex (known as "Amateur"), as opposed to the often unreal scenarios of commercial porn.
Court papers filed by Class Action Lawyers, Fears | Nachawati Law Firm, in the Central District of California show that that on December 6, 2010 two men have filed a class action lawsuit against Netherlands-based Midstream Media N.V., owners of YouPorn claiming the company’s sites use “history-sniffing” technology to hijack users’ personal information.
Germany
German law does not allow hardcore pornography without an effective age verification system, and the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende MedienBundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien
The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons is an upper-level German federal agency subordinate to the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. It is responsible for examining media works allegedly harmful to young people and entering these onto an...
(Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons) placed YouPorn on its index. As a result, since April 2007, the German site of the Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
search engine (
google.de) classified YouPorn.com as a hardcore pornography website and replaced it with a link to Chilling Effects, claiming that a "German regulatory body reported illegal material".Following a request by a competing pornography service, German provider Arcor
Arcor (Telecommunications)
Arcor is the second-largest fixed phone line provider in Germany. The company has been renamed to Vodafone AG & Co. KG on 8/1/2009. It is owned solely by Vodafone since May 2008, when Deutsche Bahn and Deutsche Bank sold their shares to Vodafone.# Its headquarters are in Eschborn near Frankfurt...
categorized YouPorn and a few other porn sites as hardcore pornographic and also blocked access to the website at the routing level in September 2007, affecting over 2 million users. The German Pirate Party promptly opened a proxy server
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
so that Arcor customers could continue to easily access YouPorn.
Arcor lifted the block on September 17 because the IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
-based filter which had been set up for YouPorn also affected other sites. Kirchberg then sued, alleging that Arcor aided unfair competition by YouPorn, and on 19 October 2007 obtained a temporary injunction ordering Arcor to resume limiting the accessibility to YouPorn.com. On 23 October 2007, Arcor started to control access to YouPorn again, this time with a DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
-based approach that is easily circumvented, and successfully filed an appeal against the injunction.
Kirchberg has sent notices to 19 German ISPs demanding that YouPorn be granted access limitations, but none have complied. Efforts by Kirchberg to obtain injunctions regarding YouPorn from internet providers in Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
and Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
were unsuccessful.
Singapore
In May 2008 it was reported that SingaporeSingapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
had blocked access to YouPorn and RedTube
Redtube
RedTube is a Web 2.0, video sharing, pornography site which in November 2009, held an Alexa ranking within the World's top 100 sites. However by June 2014 it had fallen out of the top 100...
, in what a government officials described as "a symbolic statement".
Sri Lanka
In July 2009 Sri LankaSri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
blocked access to 12 porn web sites including YouPorn, RedTube
Redtube
RedTube is a Web 2.0, video sharing, pornography site which in November 2009, held an Alexa ranking within the World's top 100 sites. However by June 2014 it had fallen out of the top 100...
, Xvideos
XVideos
XVideos is a free pornographic video sharing website. As of October 2011 it was the 51st most popular website overall, having overcome YouPorn since July 2011 as the most popular pornographic website in the world....
and Xhamster. On 25 July 2009 Sri Lanka Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi ordered the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to block those 12 websites from all local Internet Service Providers.