The Daftsex lawsuit ended in a $32.1 million default judgment for MG Premium Ltd., a MindGeek subsidiary, after the piracy site’s operator failed to appear in federal court in Washington. The November 2022 ruling also transferred four domains to MG Premium, but the operator promptly relaunched on new addresses, forcing a second round of litigation that produced a contempt finding in August 2023.
Who Was Sued
Daftsex.com was a large tube site hosting unauthorized copies of adult videos, drawing roughly 66 million visits per month at its peak and ranking among the 350 most-visited sites on the internet. MG Premium, which owns brands including Reality Kings, used a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare to identify the operator as Vasily Kharchenko, who also ran the affiliated sites Biqle.com, Artsporn.com, and Daxab.com.1TorrentFreak. MindGeek Tries to Unmask Operator of Massive Pirate Adult Site Daftsex
MG Premium filed suit against Kharchenko in October 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, case number 3:21-cv-05733-BHS.2TorrentFreak. 90 Million DMCA Takedowns in 90 Days: MindGeek’s $32M Piracy Win Meets Reality Kharchenko never responded.
The $32.1 Million Judgment
On November 10, 2022, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle entered default judgment awarding MG Premium $32,145,000 in statutory damages for willful copyright infringement. The court set damages at $15,000 per work across 2,143 infringing works, noting actual damages could have exceeded $1.2 billion.3TorrentFreak. MindGeek Wins $32M in Damages From Adult Pirate Site Daftsex The court added $27,297.50 in legal fees.4XBIZ. MindGeek Wins $32M Judgment Against Copyright Infringer Daftsex
Judge Settle also issued a permanent injunction and ordered the domain registrar Verisign to transfer Daftsex.com, Artsporn.com, Daxab.com, and Biqle.com to MG Premium.5TorrentFreak. Someone Tried to Hijack a Domain Seizure Order Posing as Rightsholder
The Site Moved and Kept Running
Losing the original domains did not shut Daftsex down. Almost immediately, Kharchenko migrated to Daft.sex, Dsex.to, Biqle.ru, and Biqle.org, openly advertising the moves on social media and directing users to the replacements.2TorrentFreak. 90 Million DMCA Takedowns in 90 Days: MindGeek’s $32M Piracy Win Meets Reality
In December 2022, MG Premium asked the court to reopen the case, hold Kharchenko in contempt for violating the permanent injunction, and hand over the new domains along with the Daftsex Twitter account.2TorrentFreak. 90 Million DMCA Takedowns in 90 Days: MindGeek’s $32M Piracy Win Meets Reality
A Record DMCA Takedown Campaign
While the contempt motion was pending, MG Premium ran what was described as the largest DMCA takedown campaign against a single site in the statute’s history. Between November 14, 2022, and March 3, 2023, the company asked Google to remove more than 91 million URLs tied to Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org.2TorrentFreak. 90 Million DMCA Takedowns in 90 Days: MindGeek’s $32M Piracy Win Meets Reality The Pirate Bay, by comparison, had accumulated about six million requests over a decade.
The impact was limited. Google reported that roughly 80% of the flagged URLs were “not in index,” meaning they were already absent from search results when the notice arrived, and the site kept growing.2TorrentFreak. 90 Million DMCA Takedowns in 90 Days: MindGeek’s $32M Piracy Win Meets Reality MG Premium eventually submitted more than a quarter of a billion takedown requests targeting the replacement domains.6TechSpot. Single Company Asked Google to Delist Almost One Billion URLs
Contempt Ruling and Second Round of Domain Seizures
In August 2023, Judge Settle found “clear and convincing” evidence that Kharchenko had knowingly violated the permanent injunction by continuing to display the 2,143 copyrighted works on the replacement domains.7TorrentFreak. Judge Gives MindGeek Domains After Porn Pirate Violates Injunction The court held him in contempt and declared MG Premium the rightful owner of Daft.sex, Dsex.to, and Biqle.org, ordering the registries to transfer them.8AVN. MindGeek Awarded Domains After Pirate Ignores Injunction
The order also covered two GitHub pages, daftsex.github.io and daftpost.github.io, and directed Twitter to transfer the Daftsex account.7TorrentFreak. Judge Gives MindGeek Domains After Porn Pirate Violates Injunction The judge declined to order third-party registrars to take proactive steps against future infringement.
What the Judgment Did and Didn’t Accomplish
The $32.1 million figure is a paper win. Kharchenko never appeared, operates from outside U.S. jurisdiction, and has shown he can spin up new domains faster than the court can seize them. The Washington court itself acknowledged uncertainty about whether the second round of transfers would finally stop the operation, given his track record.7TorrentFreak. Judge Gives MindGeek Domains After Porn Pirate Violates Injunction The case has since become the template MindGeek — now operating as Aylo after its August 2023 rebrand — uses against other piracy operators, with the same structural limits on collection and enforcement.9Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. PIPEDA Report of Findings 2024-001