If you want to benefit from a crime, you risk facing the full consequences of that crime. The man who commits acts of rape against a girl deserves to face justice. It’s for good reason that Michael Pratt is facing a long list of serious charges. But what about the people who watched that video? What about those who typed “Pornhub” into their browser, then entered in whatever search term delivered a result like the rape of an underaged girl?

You don’t have to be the one who pulls the trigger to be charged with the murder. Rather, anyone involved in the commissioning, planning, or execution of a crime can suffer its penalties. The person who hires a hitman will face a murder charge as surely the hitman himself. The driver of the getaway car, even though he never enters the bank and never demands the money, is still held accountable as if he did. Aiding and abetting the commission of a crime will bring a charge just like actually committing it. I’m sure you’d agree that such laws are right and just. They point to an important principal: if you want to benefit from a crime, you risk facing the full consequences of that crime.

A recent op-ed at the Washington Examiner (HT: Disrn) calls for the end of Pornhub—not only the biggest porn site on the web, but one of the biggest sites of all. It sees some 42 billion visits and 6 million video uploads each year. (That’s 100,000,000 visits per day, 1,000 searches per second—the statistics are as mind-blowing as they are nauseating.) It sees more traffic than online monsters like Reddit and eBay and earns mountains of money. It is so popular that it is fast becoming mainstream, even having some of its “performers” proudly participate in this year’s New York Fashion Week. It is to the digital generation what Playboy or Penthouse were to their parents’.

This op-ed highlights some “shocking cases of sex trafficking and child rape films” that have been hosted by Pornhub. It turns out that for all its popularity and all its money, Pornhub takes only the barest measures to prevent people from uploading content that displays underaged children or sexual assaults. In one case, a 15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was found only after her mother was told that there were videos of her on this site. It was eventually discovered that it hosted no less than 58 videos of the child being raped and sexually abused. And while this is unimaginably horrific, it’s not an isolated case. Michael Pratt coerced 22 low-income women into creating pornographic videos, promising they would be distributed only on DVD to private buyers. Yet these videos were soon made widely available online. Pornhub, like other similar sites, is profiting off of the basest forms of sexuality created by the vilest criminals.

Read More