LOS ANGELES—Law firms are filing federal class action lawsuits against several adult entertainment platforms alleging user data privacy rights violations, AVN has learned after an investigation. The Srourian Law Firm PC, based in Los Angeles, and Siri & Glimstad LLP, based in New York with offices in Los Angeles, have filed separate lawsuits against major platforms alleging violations of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). Those being sued are the parent firms of Pornhub, Kink, Bellesa, and Redgifs.
Collectively, all four proposed federal class action lawsuits allege that these companies violate the VPPA due to sharing the viewing and web behaviors of users on the sites with Google’s tracking and marketing behavior tools. These tools include Google Ads, Google Analytics, Search Console, and other platforms developed by the search giant.
Online tracking tools from Google are commonly used in all aspects of digital marketing, including in adult entertainment and mainstream social media industries.
But these similarly worded lawsuits attempt to apply the VPPA, a law first drafted to protect people’s video rental or purchase history and personal information back in the 1980s, to pornography sites and the most popular marketing software suite, Google, in the world. AVN reported last summer on a similar lawsuit filed against Pornhub.com and its parent company, Aylo, for similar claims. The lawsuit was met with skepticism by First Amendment attorneys AVN spoke to at the time. An anonymous source told AVN that they believe these lawsuits are simply performative tactics and are unlikely to hold merit. The lawsuits were filed in federal district courts throughout California.
Siri & Glimstad LLP filed lawsuits against Kink.com and Pornhub. The suit against Aylo represents two anonymous plaintiffs serving as the initial class in the class action, going by their first and last initials, M.S. and C.P. Both allege that they are being victimized by Aylo’s use of Google marketing software that communicates generalized user behavior to the search engine provider to better refine search engine results, page rankings, and what is topical via Google Trends. This software informs marketers at Aylo as to the trends in paid and organic web traffic and contributes to Pornhub’s annual “Year in Review” report. M.S. and C.P. say this data sharing violates their VPPA rights.
In the suit against Kink, counsel for Siri represents S.H. and C.C. People in the Kink suit allege virtually the same violations of the VPPA as the Aylo lawsuit. The law firm is also fielding potential plaintiffs in the VPPA litigation, AVN additionally discovered. Siri & Glimstad LLP published an attorneys’ marketing website called Join Class Actions (.com). The website advertises, “Join Class Actions and Siri & Glimstad are investigating whether the porn sites below are improperly using pixels to track users’ movements and viewing history on their site and then are using that collected data to target users with advertisements online.” Plaintiffs might be “entitled to substantial compensation.”
The other two lawsuits against Redgifs and Bellesa were brought by plaintiffs represented by Srourian. And, upon review, all of the complaints allege several claims that using Google marketing and tracking software on their websites constitutes a violation of the VPPA. What is worth noting is that neither Google, nor the search engine giant’s parent company, the publicly-traded Alphabet, is listed as a defendant for administering and developing the very software the plaintiffs allege violates their rights.
A spokesperson for Aylo declined to comment on the case, citing ongoing litigation. AVN received no comment from the parent companies of Bellesa, Kink, and Redgifs. The Free Speech Coalition failed to offer a comment by post time. Siri & Glimstad LLP and the Srourian Law Firm PC have previously worked on class action lawsuits as co-counsel.
