AMSTERDAM – An Amsterdam appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling ordering xHamster to remove all content featuring Dutch people who have not given explicit permission for their images to be posted.
As XBIZ reported, in April 2023, the Amsterdam court ordered the Cyprus-based tube site to obtain consent from every Dutch-based amateur model featured in videos posted to the site, or else remove those videos.
A Dutch activist group, Offlimits, claimed that some of the videos were non-consensual revenge material or obtained through hacking, according to the Dutch News site reported.
xHamster was given three days to remove the videos, under penalty of a fine of 10,000 euros per video, with a maximum of 500,000 euros.
Offlimits director Robbert Hoving told Dutch News that the ruling “underlines the fact that these types of images should not be on the internet unless explicit permission has been given. Porn sites should take more responsibility for making sure everything is okay for everyone in the photo.”
The earlier ruling followed complaints from another local non-profit organization, EOKM.