Porn site sued for showing videos made with hidden cameras

Foundation Stop Online Shaming and Helpwanted.nl are suing porn website Vagina.nl for sharing nude images without the permission of the people in them. In addition to professional porn, Vagina.nl also contains armature pornography, including secretly filmed material, the organizations said to the Telegraaf.

"With titles such as 'H&M hidden camera' and 'Secretly filming ex-girlfriend in the shower', images are posted online that were filmed with a hidden camera. This is very threatening," Willem van Lynden, board member of Stop Online Shaming said to the newspaper. According to Van Lynden, being secretly filmed can happen to anyone. "These images are then commercially exploited on the internet. That is a huge violation of the privacy of the people in the images."

Another problem is that Vagina.nl doesn't do any age checks, which could mean that there are nude images of minors on the site, Arda Gerkens, director of the online child abuse expertise agency EOKM under which Helpwanted.nl falls, said to the newspaper. Helpwanted.nl is an advice line for young people who are confronted with sexual abuse online.

The organizations are represented by Boekx Advocaten in their lawsuit against Vagina.nl. According to lawyer Otto Volgant, from a legal point of view, it is perfectly clear that sharing hidden camera footage is not allowed. "Try to take these videos down. This is very difficult for an individual victim. To make that easier, we are now tackling this collectively, on behalf of all possible victims."