Pornhub owner broke law by not getting valid consent for content: watchdog [Video]

Canada’s privacy watchdog says the operator of Pornhub and other pornographic websites broke the law by allowing intimate images and video of a woman to be shared on its platforms without obtaining the woman’s consent.

The privacy commissioner’s final report on its years-long investigation into Montreal-based Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, released Thursday found “significant” issues with the way the company obtains consent for the uploading of amateur pornographic content, which the office says had “devastating” effects on the complainant and other victims that Aylo has refused to take responsibility for.

“I call this ‘image-based abuse,’” Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne said at a press conference following the report’s release.

The investigation was launched after a complaint from a woman whose ex-boyfriend had uploaded an intimate video and other images of her to Aylo websites without her permission in 2015.

Despite getting the company to remove the video and images from its platforms, the report says the woman’s images had been shared to several …