YouPorn

YouPorn is a free pornographic video sharing website and one of the 100 most accessed websites in the world. Since launching in August 2006, it grew to become the most popular pornographic website on the internet, and, in November 2007, it was reported to be the largest free pornographic website as well.[2]

YouPorn
Screenshot
Screenshot of YouPorn home page.
Type of site
Pornographic video sharing
Available inEnglish, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Turkish, Polish and Russian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Romanian
FoundedAugust 2006
Headquarters
Limassol
,
Cyprus
Country of originUnited States
OwnerMG Freesites Ltd.
(MindGeek)[1]
URLyouporn.com
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedAugust 26, 2006 (2006-08-26)
Current statusActive
Content license
Gratis; youporninhd.com is proprietary

The site is completely free and ad-supported, with estimated monthly ad revenue of $120,000 in 2007.[3]

Ownership

The domain name was registered by a company in December 2005.[4] YouPorn's own site reports that its owner is Midstream Media International N.V., seated in Willemstad, the capital city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.[5] Sunny Freeman, a reporter pursuing a graduate degree in journalism at UBC, wrote one article in The Tyee calling the company "German-based".[6] The site is run from a hosting service in Texas.

In 2011, YouPorn was purchased by the adult-entertainment and IT company Manwin, owners of other popular pornographic websites such as Pornhub[1] and SpankWire based in Luxembourg.[7]

Bandwidth

As of 2012, ExtremeTech reported YouPorn transferred an average of 950 TB per day,[8] up from a reported figure of 3 TB per day in 2006.[9]

Response

Concerns have surfaced over the inability to verify the age of the persons depicted in the videos, the possibility of copyrighted 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.[6] In 2007 Vivid Entertainment took legal action against YouPorn, claiming that the streaming of copyrighted material was depriving it of revenue.[10]

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.[11]

Data Breaches

In February of 2012, the site was hacked, with the details of over 1 million users leaked onto the internet. MindGeek blamed this on the failings of a third-party chat service.[12]

Blocking

Germany

German law does not allow hardcore pornography without an effective age verification system, and the German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (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 (google.de) classified YouPorn.com as a hardcore pornography website[13] and replaced it with a link to Chilling Effects, claiming that a "German regulatory body reported illegal material".[14]

Following a request by Kirchberg, the owner of a competing pornography service (now defunct),[15] 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,[16] 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.[17] Kirchberg then sued, alleging that Arcor aided unfair competition by YouPorn, and on October 19, 2007 obtained a temporary injunction ordering Arcor to resume limiting the accessibility to YouPorn.com.[18][19] On October 23, 2007, Arcor started to control access to YouPorn again, this time with a DNS-based approach that is easily circumvented,[20] and successfully filed an appeal against the injunction.[21]

Kirchberg has sent notices to 19 German ISPs demanding that YouPorn be granted access limitations, but none have complied.[22] Efforts by Kirchberg to obtain injunctions regarding YouPorn from internet providers in Kiel and Düsseldorf were unsuccessful.[23][24]

Singapore

In May 2008 it was reported that Singapore had blocked access to YouPorn and RedTube, in what a government officials described as "a symbolic statement".[25]

Sri Lanka

In July 2009 Sri Lanka blocked access to 12 porn web sites including YouPorn, RedTube, Xvideos and Xhamster. On July 25, 2009 Sri Lanka Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachchi ordered the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission to block those 12 websites from all local Internet Service Providers.[26][27]

History

Viewers

As of 2009, three of the largest porn sites "RedTube, YouPorn, and Pornhub -- collectively make up 100 million unique visitors".[28]

Team YP

YouPorn sponsors an esports team known as Team YP.[29][30][31] In July 2014, YouPorn stated their intentions to enter the professional esports scene by sponsoring either a Dota 2 or League of Legends team.[32] On December 3, 2014, YouPorn announced their official entry into the Dota 2 scene with the acquisition of a Spanish team previously known as Play2Win. On June 9, 2015 Team YP announced that they had signed Super Smash Bros. player Jason "Bizzarro Flame" Yoon.[33] Team YP's Street Fighter division consists of Valentin "Valmaster" Petit and Anton "Filipin0man" Herrera with the former being signed on September 23 and the latter being signed on October 8.[34][35] In October 2015, Team YP announced they were searching for a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team.[36] They stated they wanted one all-male and one all-female team.[37][38] On November 13, 2015, Team YP signed Team Phenomenon and New Era as their all-male and all-female teams respectively. As of June 2019, Team YP is not sponsoring any players. Team YP formerly had teams competing in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch, Street Fighter, and Super Smash Bros..

See also

References
  1. O'Connor, Maureen (June 2017). "Pornhub is the Kinsey Report of our Time". New York Magazine: 30–39.
  2. "Special Report with Brit Hume." Broadcast: November 21, 2007
  3. Obscene Losses, Portfolio, October 15, 2007
  4. Warum zeigen immer mehr Menschen ihre privaten Sexfilme im Internet?, Bild.de, November 14, 2006. (in German)
  5. YouPorn.com Hit With 'History-Sniffing' Lawsuit, XBIZ, December 6, 2010
  6. Porn 2.0, and Its Victims, The Tyee, July 6, 2007
  7. Manwin Acquires YouPorn.com – AVN ID, created October 20, 2007
  8. "Just how big are porn sites?". extremetech.com. April 4, 2012. Retrieved June 16, 2017.
  9. Bild.de verursacht Pornowelle, November 15, 2006 (in German)
  10. "Home porn gives industry the blues", guardian.co.uk, December 16, 2007
  11. Moran, Caitlin (September 24, 2007). "A good role model for the sexually naive". The Times. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011.
  12. "Personal details of over one million YouPorn users leaked in security breach". Metro. February 23, 2012. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
  13. Search results for "youporn" on google.de delivering many comments from blogs
  14. "German regulatory body reported illegal material — Chilling Effects Clearinghouse". Chillingeffects.org. Retrieved December 8, 2010.
  15. Konrad Lischka (October 22, 2007). "Jugendschutz: Abmahnwelle drängt Internetanbieter zur Web-Zensur" [Child Safety: warning wave forces ISPs to web censorship]. Der Spiegel (in German).
  16. Arcor blocks access to porno pages, Heise Online, September 11, 2007 Archived September 15, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  17. Arcor sperrt Youporn.com (in German)
  18. Landgericht zwingt Arcor zur Porno-Zensur, Spiegel Online, October 19, 2007. (in German)
  19. Arcor muss YouPorn sperren, Heise Online, October 19, 2007. (in German)
  20. Arcor blockiert Zugang zu Youporn, Spiegel Online, October 23, 2007. (in German)
  21. Heise.de: Arcor muss YouPorn nicht mehr sperren. Heise.de, April 15, 2008. (in German)
  22. Abmahnwelle drängt Internetanbieter zur Web-Zensur, Spiegel Online, October 22, 2007. (in German)
  23. Golem.de: Gericht: Provider muss keine Pornoseiten sperren, September 23, 2007. (in German)
  24. Weiterer Antrag auf Sperrung von Pornoseiten zurückgewiesen, Heise Online, December 13, 2007. (in German)
  25. Singapore bans two porn websites in symbolic move, Reuters, May 23, 2008
  26. Sri Lankan court blocks porn websites, India Express, July 25, 2009
  27. Sri Lanka court blocks porn websites Archived October 3, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, Brisbane Times, Australia, July 25, 2009
  28. Lanxon, Nate (May 22, 2009). "Twitter more popular than free porn: fact! | CNET UK". Crave.cnet.co.uk. Retrieved May 23, 2013.
  29. Morris, Chris (December 3, 2014). "Porn company to be official sponsor of eSports team". CNBC. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  30. Plunkett, Luke (December 3, 2014). "YouPorn Now Has An eSports Team". Kotaku. Retrieved June 22, 2019.
  31. McWhertor, Michael (December 3, 2014). "YouPorn has found its eSports team, will compete in Dota 2 tournament this weekend". Polygon. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  32. Lien, Tracey (July 11, 2014). "YouPorn is considering sponsoring a Dota 2 or League of Legends team". Polygon. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  33. Khan, Imad (June 9, 2015). "YouPorn's esports team picks up a Smash player". The Daily Dot. Retrieved June 21, 2015.
  34. Kuri R. "Valmaster Joins Team YP". gamerassaultweekly.com. Gamer Assault Weekly. Retrieved November 2, 2015.
  35. Rosen, Daniel. "Team YP signs Filipin0man". thescoreesports.com. The Score eSports. Retrieved November 2, 2015.
  36. "Team YP on Twitter: "We are looking for a CSGO team! Let your favorite unsigned, awesome teams know!"". Twitter. YouPorn (Team YP). October 13, 2015.
  37. "Team YP officially searching for two Counter-Strike Global Offensive teams". YouPorn (Team YP). October 26, 2015.
  38. "Team YP seek two CS:GO teams". HLTV.org. October 27, 2015.
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