xHamster considering further appeal against Dutch court’s takedown order

Pornography platform xHamster is considering a further appeal against a Dutch appeals court ruling ordering it to remove all adult content featuring a Dutch person for which no explicit permission had been given. “At the moment, we are consulting with lawyers about further actions,” an xHamster spokesperson told NL Times.

On Tuesday, the Amsterdam Court of Appeals ordered xHamster to remove Netherlands-linked content without explicit permission within three days. The appeals court went a step further than the original ruling, which also said the platform had to remove unapproved content, but only after a complaint was filed. The appeals court ruling says xHamster, a site where users can upload content, has to actively find and remove these videos.

The ruling applies to videos featuring all Dutch people worldwide and people of all nationalities in the Netherlands who are not porn actors. Videos featuring any of these people and without explicit consent from them have to be removed. If Hammy Media, the company behind xHamster, fails to comply, it faces fines of 10,000 euros per video, increasing by 500 euros for every day that the video remains online. The maximum fine per video is 30,000 euros, and the maximum total fine is 500,000 euros.

xHamster said it was studying the ruling. “After the first ruling of the Dutch court, we removed absolutely all content that could be identified as Dutch by our technical and manual means,” the company said. “It is very important to keep in mind that user-generated content does not equal illegal content, and we have a previous ruling stating this.”

In practice, the ruling will mostly affect adult content uploaded to xHamster before October 2021. In that month, xHamster changed its terms and conditions so that uploads must be accompanied by a consent form.

The xHamster spokesperson emphasized that it voluntarily adheres to regulations, referring to the change in conditions in 2021. “Since 2021, we do not accept content without uploader verification and documents for the performers.” The platform described itself as “the rare responsible adult company.”

The case was brought against Hammy Media by Offlimits, a Dutch online abuse expertise center, after a woman from Weert found four videos of herself on the platform and couldn’t get them taken down.

Offlimits was pleased with the appeals court’s ruling. “It is often impossible for victims to remove footage from such large platforms due to legal costs and time,” director Robbert Hoving said. “Let alone if you are not even aware that you are on it. This ruling once again underlines that these types of images do not belong on the internet unless explicit permission has been given.”