Chris M
An adult content creator has filed a lawsuit against several big name adult tech companies, after alleging they allowed her content to be leaked.
Deniece Waidhofer has avoided mainstream channels, instead opting for selling her content directly via Onlyfans.com, Patreon, and a couple of other social channels.
Ms Waidhofer has filed against Thothub.tv, 21 of its users, and notably, cloud security giant Cloudflare. Websites Chaturbate and BangBros have also been named on court documents.
Waidhofer describes herself as amongst the most successful non-nude creators on OnlyFans, putting her in the top 1 percent of all creators on the platform.
The lawsuit is being brought under the Racketeering, Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (RICO) after much of her content was reposted on Thotub, a site with over 1 million members.
“Thothub and the Members—with the material support of the other
Defendants—caused Waidhofer’s content to be stolen from the Licensed Sites and
unlawfully published on Thothub. In addition, Thothub published certain of
Waidhofer’s unpublished works that reveal her partially nude body, which
Waidhofer never intended to publish,” the complaint says.”[…] This has caused, and continues to cause, personal, reputational, and monetary harm to Waidhofer.”
One member of Thothub, going by the name of ‘Captain Thotcakes’ is mentioned in reference to an admin message he posted which stated:
“We are looking exclusively for PAID material/ LEAKED photos and vids / PREMIUM content. (Stuff that’s not easily available to the public / or is locked behind the paywall / subscription) Examples: Patreon, Onlyfans… stuff like that.”
Pretty damning stuff, leading Waidhofer to allege that Thothub’s entire business model is built around such theft.
Cloudflare is accused of aiding and abetting through its provision of security services to Thothub, describing it as the ‘lookout man’ actively preventing theft of content from being scuppered.
Chaturbate and BangBros are implicated because they advertise on Thothub, and ‘cannot reasonably avoid knowing’ that Thothub is ‘a pirate site’.
Neither site is likely to be quaking in its boots, however – its unlikely that they will be found guilty by association, especially as most ads will have been served up by a third-party ad provider. Cloudflare, meanwhile may need to show it did nothing deliberate or maliciously to aid the alleged piracy.
As for Thothub, this could be bad news for the site. We tried to get in touch, but the site has been offline since the suit was filed. We’ll let you know if anyone gets back to us here.
No official rebuttal from the defendants, or court dates, have been set as yet.
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