Pornhub announces new measures against illegal porn following allegations

Pornhub is giving 45 places around the world free premium memberships (Courtesy: Pornhub).

MONTREAL — Days after Pornhub management denied their website profited off videos featuring abuse and the sexual exploitation of children, the Montreal-based pornography giant announced big changes are coming.

On Tuesday, the company announced numerous alterations to the site's policies. The largest change is that, effective immediately, uploading videos to Pornhub will no longer be open to everyone.

“Only content partners and people within the Model Program will be able to upload content to Pornhub," the company wrote in a statement.

"In the new year, we will implement a verification process so that any user can upload content upon successful completion of identification protocol."

Pornhub also announced it will no longer permit users to download videos -- a previous feature of its system which meant that even if Pornhub itself deleted a video, any regular person could continue to circulate that video around the web after downloading it.

The company said the change will “mitigate the ability for content already removed from the platform to be able to return.”

The new policy will have one exception: “paid downloads within the verified Model Program."

Other changes include an expanded moderation and flagging process to detect potentially illegal material and the creation of a transparency report, which will be published in 2021.

According to a New York Times investigation of Pornhub, which is owned by Montreal-based company MindGeek, some videos hosted on the site featured child rape and other forms of illegal sexual abuse, prompting numerous provincial and federal government officials to call for investigations.

The company denied the allegations, saying “any assertion that we allow that is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”