The Utah exit followed an early battle in Louisiana, which has a similar age verification law. 'And what we found is not only does it comply with the law but it was an extraordinary investing opportunity, but it's an opportunity that required specialised skills,' he said.ĮCP decided that they had those skills and bought the company - though it has been a stiff test since then.

Solomon said his firm was brought in initially only to check that MindGeek was working within the law. In addition, uploaders had to provide identification, all content was scanned by algorithms to filter out copyright-protected material, and it is then viewed by company staff before it hits the web.

'A content removal request automatically results in the content being removed,' he said. He boasted that eight million pieces of content had been taken down in 2021 - a claim AFP cannot verify. The new owners - who include two lawyers, an ex-police officer and an Italian investor who made his fortune in the legal sale of cannabis - are keen to distance themselves from the New York Times allegations.įriedman said the company had completely changed in the past few years. The owners spent two years trying to sell the firm, which is largely based in Canada but has a complex corporate structure spanning many of the globe's tax havens, with its official headquarters in Luxembourg. The article sparked heavy pressure from regulators in several countries and Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments. MindGeek got into hot water in 2020 when the New York Times published allegations that its sites were hosting material depicting rapes and sex involving minors. 'The only solution that accomplishes both of these goals is device or browser-based verification,' he said, adding that it would be 'a very simple step for Google and Apple'. 'We are strongly in support of age verification solutions that do two things: protect children effectively and do not expose personal data,' he said. 'We do not want any underage users on our websites whatsoever,' said ECP founder Solomon Friedman in an interview with AFP.īut he pushed back on the idea that the onus should fall on the websites, instead calling for the operating systems to find a solution. Two of MindGeek's sites have not put in place any age verification and face a court ruling on July 7 that could ban them.

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. Its websites were pulled from the US state of Utah in May after they were ordered to verify the ages of users.

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