A German court has released the names and addresses of about 20,000 people whose IP addresses were detected on porn website Redtube in a copyright infringement case, NBC News reports.

Law firm Urmann + Collegen (U+C) , who represented clients claiming videos uploaded to the site infringed on their copyright, fought for the release of personal details and for fines to be issued.

NBC has more:

U+C applied to the court to order German Internet service provider Deutsche Telekom to release the names of tens of thousands of people who had watched these videos. The law firm then sent out between 10,000 and 20,000 letters, each with a fine of 250 euros (approximately $343).

Other attorneys speaking to NBC claim the release was a mistake, because judges wrongly believed videos were downloaded rather than streamed.

"This is a huge mistake, and the fact that these people's private details were released is very worrying," Christian Solmecke, a partner at Cologne-based law firm Wilde Beuger Solmecke, told NBC.

One of the most popular sites on the web, Redtube attracts roughly 14 million visits per day.

See the full story at NBC News >

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Author Virginia Wade's fiction debut follows a group of women who embark on a week-long camping trip to Mt. Hood National Forest. There, in the shadow of Oregon’s highest mountain, they are kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a mysterious woodland creature. "What the hell is that thing?" asks one protagonist.

“‘It's f---ing Bigfoot,’ hissed Shelly. ‘He's real, for f---'s sake.’ Horror filled her eyes. ‘With a huge c---.’”

The book, with the decidedly un-PG title "Cum For Bigfoot," is just the first of 16 fiction ebooks that Wade (a pen name) has written about the legendary beast sometimes known as Sasquatch, each detailing a series of graphic and often violent sexual encounters between the apelike creature and his female human lovers. Wade has made an exceptional living writing these stories.

It began in December of 2011. A stay-at-home mother from Parker, Colo., Wade had no ambition to be a published author and no real writing experience other than a few attempts at historical romance in the mid-90s. But then, she says, "I got this crazy idea for a story." So she sat down and wrote the entire book — more of a novella, at just 12,000 words — in a matter of weeks. She never even considered trying to sell it to a mainstream publisher. Instead, she went directly to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, an online platform for self-publishing with a 70% royalty rate for authors. (The average royalty percentage for authors with mainstream publishers is between 8 and 15%.)

"Cum For Bigfoot" wasn't an overnight best-seller. "The first month, I think I made $5," Wade admits. But over the course of 2012, the book was downloaded well over 100,000 times. "And that was just Amazon," she says. "That's not counting iTunes or Barnes & Noble or any of the other places that sell self-published books." With no marketing muscle, no bookstore tours or print reviews or any of the publicity that most top authors use to sell books, she started bringing in staggering profits. During her best months, she says, she netted $30,000 or more. At worst, she'd bank around six grand — "nothing to complain about," she says.

She branched into other genres, penning ebooks like "Taken By Pirates" and "Seduced By The Dark Lord," but her "Cum For Bigfoot" series was the biggest money-maker. "I started cranking them out," she says. "If there was a market there for monster sex, I was gonna give it to them." She even brought in her family to help with the workload. "My dad, who's an English instructor, was my editor," Wade says. "My mom did the German translations"— including the equally popular "Komm für Bigfoot.""I even had my own 401k. It became a cottage industry."

The prose wouldn't win any fiction awards (a sample line: "From within the tufts of matted hair, the creature released a huge pale c--- that defied logic"), but her readers loved it, and their numbers seemed to be growing every day. "I was putting my daughter through college with the profits," Wade says. "I used to joke with her, 'Bigfoot smut is paying for your school.'"

Wade is hardly the only author who has made a mint writing about monsters and the women who love them (or at least submit to their sexual appetites). She's part of a burgeoning literary genre that's found a wide audience online: monster porn, otherwise known as “cryptozoological erotica,” or as some of the authors prefer to call it, "erotic horror." Their self-published books feature mythical creatures of every possible variety, from minotaurs to mermen, cthulhus to leprechauns, extraterrestrials to cyclops, who become involved in sexual trysts, often non-consensual, with human lovers. They have titles that are often more silly than sexy — from "Demons Love Ass," part of Trisha Danes' "Beasts & Booty" collection, to "Frankenstein's Bitch" and "Sex With My Husband's Anatomically Correct Robot" — and the plots are never less than imaginative. A feline shapeshifter might be saved from a tree by a firefighter with a cat fetish (as in the ebook "Out on a Limb"), or a buxom cattle rancher might be abducted and kept enslaved "in a strange, perverted alien zoo" ("Milked by the Aliens").

It's easy to snicker, but somebody is buying these things. Authors of monster porn may not be notching sales to rival E.L. James or Amanda Hocking, the trailblazers of self-published erotica, but they're making more than enough to survive. That’s especially remarkable given the low price tag on many of their books. "Amazon pays a royalty of 35 percent for books listed below $2.99," says K.J. Burkhardt (a pen name), the 45-year-old author of "Taken by the Tentacle Monsters" and "Bred to the Creature.""For those listed at $2.99 and over, I can claim 70 percent in royalty payments. But I didn't feel comfortable nor right in asking someone to pay $2.99 for a five-to seven-thousand-word short story." So instead, the majority of her titles are listed at 99 cents, the minimum allowed by Amazon. "Even with the small prices that I was asking," she says, "it doesn't take much imagination to guess that I was selling a lot of books to earn $4,000 each month."

Then everything changed.

Attack of the Pitchfork Brigade

In October, the online news site The Kernel published an incendiary story called "An Epidemic of Filth," claiming that online bookstores like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith, and others were selling self-published ebooks that featured "rape fantasies, incest porn and graphic descriptions of bestiality and child abuse." The story ignited a media firestorm in the U.K, with major news outlets like the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and the BBC reporting on the “sales of sick ebooks.” Some U.K.-based ebook retailers responded with public apologies, and WHSmith went so far as to shut down its website altogether, releasing a statement saying that it would reopen "once all self-published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available." The response in the U.S. was somewhat more muted, but most of the retailers mentioned in the piece, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble, began quietly pulling hundreds of titles from their online shelves — an event Kobo coo Michael Tamblyn referred to last month as "erotica-gate." 

The crackdown was meant to target the obvious offenders — ebooks like "Daddy’s Birthday Gang Bang" and others that fetishized incest and rape — but in their fervor to course-correct, the online bookstores started deleting, according to The Digital Reader blog, "not just the questionable erotica but [also].... any e-books that might even hint at violating cultural norms." That included crypto-porn. Wade’s sexy Sasquatch, not unlike the elusive hominid beast of legend, vanished without a trace.

Burkhardt had a similar experience. "Amazon has been systematically banning just about every book I have listed with them," she says. As with Wade, she was told her books had violated content guidelines. "The guidelines are very vague," she says. "Reading them implies any and all erotic pornography is prohibited, so I'm left to wonder exactly what erotica is allowed.""Taken By the Monsters 4," which Burkhardt first published with Amazon in July of 2012, disappeared from the site just a few weeks ago. "After 16 months, they have determined that it either no longer meets their guidelines or they didn't really look it over to begin with and just now caught it," she says.

Beauty and the Beast

Amazon declined to comment for this article. Its content guidelines state that the company doesn't accept “offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts." But works that contain precisely that, from de Sade's "Justine" and Pauline Réage's "The Story of O" to the recently released French bestseller "The Victoria System" by Éric Reinhardt (which contains the memorable line "My erection beat time in my underwear") are readily available.

To explain the policy, the site offers this unhelpful bit of advice: "What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect." Vague as that may be, Amazon is within its legal rights to stock whatever books it chooses. "Bookstores are private enterprises, and are thus not required to sell every book that people ask them to sell," says Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at UCLA who specializes in First Amendment cases. "There is no law of which I’m aware that would require bookstores to sell a book that they disapprove of, whether or not we might think their judgments of disapproval are sound." Amazon makes the same point elsewhere in the content guidelines, when it notes, "We reserve the right to make judgments about whether content is appropriate and to choose not to offer it."

Burkhardt, who lives in Northern Virginia and writes as a hobby — she claims her day job is working as a personal protection specialist for a foreign ambassador — continued emailing Amazon with questions, and soon learned that the main objection was to her book's listing descriptions, which anybody pursuing the Amazon website could read. They were too graphic, she was told, and potentially offensive. Burkhardt wanted to compromise, but she worried that a less detailed description would cause more trouble in the long run. "I want readers to know exactly what they are buying when they make a purchase," she says, "and not be surprised and offended later because I couldn't say the book contains explicit sex with monsters.”

Her concern isn’t unjustified. One can only imagine a "Fifty Shades of Grey" fan happening upon Burkhardt’s ebook "Taken by the Monsters," and their horror upon reading about the vicious gang-rape of a woman by hirsute “humanoid” creatures in an abandoned building, which ends with them “filling her womb deep with [their] monster seed.” A little spanking this isn’t.

Author Emerald Ice (a pen name) — who lives in southern Illinois with her husband, a Catholic high school teacher — is less concerned about offending Amazon browsers than being overlooked by potential paying customers. The first three books in her Alien Sex Slave Series — "Alien Love Slave,""The Sex Arena," and "Alien Sex Cove"— were runaway hits, she says. At least until Amazon pulled them from distribution and requested changes, once again citing content guidelines. That's how "Alien Sex Slave" became "Sidney's Alien Escapades.""I hate it," she admits of the new title. "I came up with it because I was in a panic about the books disappearing." Her sales have since plummeted, and she isn't surprised. "If I was a reader searching for hot alien sex books, I wouldn't look twice at something called 'Sidney's Alien Escapades.'"

Alice Xavier (also a pen name) had her first experience with censorship when her ebook "Serpent God’s Virgin," originally published last April, was pulled from Amazon in mid-October. "They flagged it because it had virgin in the title," she guesses, because after she renamed it "Serpent God's Maiden," it again appeared on sale. "Amazon didn't care that the plot involves sex with a giant snake deity," she says. "Ultimately, Amazon is amoral. They don't care either way that they're selling dirty, filthy erotica. Their main goal is to keep their customers happy. They have plenty of customers who get righteously outraged and complain, complain, complain. And Amazon has way more at stake than just books. So they want to keep everybody happy, understandably."

Even so, she and other monster-sex authors are more than a little unsettled by the recent purge, which lumps their work in with ebooks depicting rape, incest and bestiality — unfairly they insist. The latter label is especially dangerous, says Xavier, who authored books like "Cuckwolfed" and "At the Mercy of the Boar God." Although she considers bestiality "an egregious act of animal cruelty when it occurs in real life," she's not so sure it should be off-limits to writers. "If writers want to write about it, that's great for them, because plenty of people love reading about it." Then again, that doesn’t mean she wants to be in any way associated with the genre. "It's a media ....storm waiting to happen,” she says. “It's massively taboo — more so than incest, I think. It has the potential to be incredibly damaging to the whole image of erotic literature.”

Wild Kingdom

Is crypto-smut the same thing as bestiality lit? It may seem like a fine distinction to the uninitiated, but for many authors, it’s crucial. "Is a werewolf an animal? What about a minotaur?” asks Mark Coker, the founder and CEO of Smashwords—one of the few ebook self-publishing platforms that didn't clean house in October. “Where do you draw the line? Sex with beasts is a common theme in paranormal romance. Do dinosaurs need to be a protected class of animal? What about a Sasquatch? When are they real, when are they not, when can you have sex with them and when can you not?"

And even in the cases when the creature is an animal (a giant squid, for instance) Xavier insists that the power dynamic is critical. “How can you commit animal cruelty when the monster is in control, is consenting, and is an intelligent being?” she points out. In the world of fantasy, a creature can be classified as a person, she says, even if it's not a human person. “A barnyard animal is just an animal without the power of consent.”

Modern crypto-porn has more in common with the myths of ancient Greece, many of which feature gods taking animal form — Zeus was famous for this move — and having their way with humans. “Just because he turns into a swan doesn't mean he's turned into an ordinary animal,” Xavier points out. “He's still a god with his godly powers and intelligence, just in the form of a swan.”

Smashwords, which gives authors 85% of net profit, regardless of their work’s length, had its own issues with censorship last February, when PayPal threatened to deactivate the ebookstore's account if it didn't cease selling, according to a PayPal statement, "erotic fiction that contains bestiality, rape and incest."

Although Smashwords initially complied, especially with regard to incest and sex involving underage characters, Coker was never comfortable with PayPal's other objections. "Dubious consent is a really big theme in mainstream romance," he says. "Where do you draw the lines? In mainstream romance, the woman may not want to have sex, and the man forces himself on her, and later in the book they're smiling and happy. Look at Gone With the Wind, where Rex is hauling Scarlett up the stairway and she's yelling 'No, no, no!' To what extent can financial institutions regulate what people are allowed to imagine in the safety of their own mind?"

PayPal and Smashwords reached a truce in mid-March. “PayPal's worst fear was always that their payment systems would be used for illegal underage erotica and illegal underage pornography,” says Coker. “Once they learned of our prohibition against such content … they gained the confidence they needed to lift the proposed restrictions.”

The initial purge of erotica on Amazon may have passed, but according to several authors, their monster sex ebooks continue to disappear from virtual shelves on a regular basis. Given her initial success, Burkhardt says, "I was seriously considering quitting my job and taking up writing full time. I'm glad I decided to wait and see, because after Amazon started banning some of my titles, my sales dropped dramatically." Her monthly profits from Amazon went from over $2,000 in early 2013 to just $400 last month. "I can't really complain," she concedes. "It's still a great supplemental income. But I can't help but wonder how much I would be making if I was allowed to publish with Amazon some of the stories they have since blocked or banned."

Some of the genre's authors would like to give up on Amazon entirely, furious at the way they've been treated. But it's difficult to walk away from the world's largest online retailer, even if you're confident that you've got something readers want. "There is a growing audience for this type of literature," says Burkhardt. "And I wish Amazon could see that." Of course, authors could sell exclusively with Smashwords, which offers mostly unlimited creative freedom and a better cut of the profits. But the platform doesn’t have nearly the reach. "Amazon is the big dog," says Emerald Ice. "They're well known, their books are easy to download. It's easy, and consumers want easy. Heck, I want easy. Smashwords is still kind of underground."

Another option is following the path forged by E.L. James, who started out writing "Twilight" fan-fiction under the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon before landing a major publisher and going on to earn something in the neighborhood of $95 million. But as Emerald Ice learned, even with a track record of sales, books about monster sex are hard to place with an established imprint. "Nobody wants to touch the taboo risqué alien books," she says. "They're just too out-there, I guess. I tried a few publishers, and it was the fastest rejection I ever got in my life. Within two days, it was 'Thank you, no, no, this isn't what we're looking for! Please get this off my computer!'"

We attempted to contact several publishers, asking if they'd ever been offered monster erotica. None of them responded. Literary agent Steven Axelrod, who represents Amanda Hocking — an author who made close to $2 million with her self-published paranormal romances, including "Hollowland" and "My Blood Approves" — says he has "absolutely no knowledge of 'horror erotica.'" A representative from Valerie Hoskins Associates in London, the literary agency that reps E.L. James, was apparently so opposed to being included in a story about the genre that they responded to requests for comment with "We know nothing about self publishing or erotica." (You read it here first: "Fifty Shades of Grey" has absolutely nothing to do with self-publishing or erotica.)

Judging a Book by Its Cover

Xavier, who when not writing smut works as a user-interface designer, has taken a different tack. Rather than argue with Amazon over content guidelines, she's looked for ways to make her books less of a target. "At its core, Amazon is trying to clean up the presentation," she says. "I think that's a good thing, because it keeps all the erotica online and for sale."

Ebooks featuring incest and rape tend to share a singular defining feature: sexually explicit and poorly produced covers. The way for monster erotica to survive, she thinks, is to "dress it up like fantasy." No more trashy illustrations. "My covers are pretty classy," she says. "It's all a facade, of course. My plots are depraved. They're definitely not for kids or grandmothers. But I put it in a glossy package, so it doesn't offend anybody who's just searching through Amazon.”

Her book "Alien Seed" is a perfect example of this strategy. The cover looks like any mainstream romance novel, with the image of a reclining and scantily-clad model bathed in green light. But the image doesn’t even hint at the content (sample: “I was either in some ridiculous ... dream or aboard an alien spaceship full of robotic tools capable of delivering epic orgasms”).

"If you want to be a major player in this field,” Xavier adds, “you need to act like one.”

Virginia Wade has a different plan. "Writing monster erotica has become a hostile work environment," she says. "I'm tired of the BS. It's just easier to write in a different genre and avoid the scrutiny." She hasn't written a monster sex ebook in months, and has instead focused her creative energies on books that don't involve hirsute creatures or kidnapped campers. Even if censorship weren’t an issue, she's not sure if she has the inspiration for another sequel.

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This will be the strangest Christmas ever for millions of British households as a new law goes into effect forcing every web user to choose whether they want to be able to access porn on the internet — and then register that choice with their internet company. BT, Sky and TalkTalk have already implemented the ban. Virgin Media and other are expected to follow in January.

The new law, passed by Britain's ruling Conservative government, is intended to protect children from accidentally coming across sexual material on the internet, and to generally ward off the "hypersexualization" that many Brits believe has overrun the country, not just in terms of adult entertainment but in marketing and media too.

But not everyone is happy about it. It's a mass exercise in censorship that requires individuals to declare themselves to private companies: Blogger and radio host Mark Shields writes, "As we know, lists don't stay hidden. I would imagine people don't want to be on a list that is possibly accessible by anyone (Virgin Media or not) that says they're into porn, right? I can imagine politicians, media personalities, church goers etc don't want to be on the list, and thusly are blocked because of fear. That's an insane jump for our government."

The actual filter requires users to select from one of three "levels" of internet censorship: strict, moderate and light. The Telegraph notes that the choice over sexual material is mixed in with choices over gambling, violence, smoking, and social media:

Those who opt to switch on the parental controls will have to choose between three set filter levels – strict, moderate and light. All three filters cover pornography, 'obscene and tasteless' content, hate and self-harm, drugs, alcohol and tobacco and dating sites.

Moderate and strict also block sites featuring nudity, weapons and violence, gambling and social networking; strict also blocks fashion and beauty sites, file-sharing, games and media streaming. Additional websites can be added to the list manually to be allowed or blocked.

Here is what they look like. You can see that BT's filter forces some odd choices. The "light" setting blocks "pornography" but allows "nudity":

And this is TalkTalk's:

Already, it has been discovered that the filters fail to block some types of X-rated material and inappropriately block health, education, and public safety sites, according to the BBC:

... BBC's Newsnight has discovered all the major ISPs that have launched full default filters are also failing to block hardcore porn-hosting sites.

Among the sites TalkTalk blocked as "pornographic" was BishUK.com, an award-winning British sex education site, which receives more than a million visits each year.

TalkTalk also lists Edinburgh Women's Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre website as "pornographic."

BT blocked sites including Sexual Health Scotland, Doncaster Domestic Abuse Helpline, and Reducing The Risk, a site which tackles domestic abuse.

It's all the Daily Mail's fault, according to Slate.

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If you needed any more evidence that the era of ubiquitous computing is upon us, here is one stat that shows us how prevalent smartphones and tablets have become to the daily lives of people everywhere: the majority of porn in the United States is now consumed through mobile devices.

Porn aggregator PornHub released its stats for the year last week to show that 52% its adult content was viewed through a mobile device in 2013. Another 10% of its traffic came from tablets. That’s up from 47% on mobile in 2012 and 7% on tablets. 

It is not like PornHub is just some small site serving the whims of a subset of randy Internet users. The site served 14.7 billion visitors this year. That’s 1.68 million visitors an hour. Those viewers watched 63.2 billion videos.

That is an impressive total, to be sure. Especially for one website. But it is not really all that surprising. The Internet has long been dominated by porn and the healthyviewing habits of users have been well documented. At the same time, more than a billion smartphones will be shipped this year with more than 250 million tablets flood out of manufacturers. The desktop and laptop are still important drivers of Internet usage, but increasingly people are reaching for the closest computer to them to get on the Internet. Often, that computer is just the smartphone in your pocket. 

The United States was the only country listed on PornHub’s statistics to have the majority of its traffic come from mobile. This makes sense as smartphones have become nearly ubiquitous in the U.S. while still being adopted in countries across the world. That distinction is beginning to blur through as 49% of PornHub’s traffic in 2013 was on a smartphone (40%) or a tablet (9%). The United Kingdom used their tablets most for adult content (15%) while Mexico was second to the U.S. in mobile usage at 45%.

While PornHub is just one network of adult video sites, 14.7 billion visitors is a statistically relevant number to ascertain trends in user viewing habits. Porn usage has mirrored Internet usage for the last 20 years. The writing on the wall is clear: you will use your smartphone and tablet for everything that can be done on the Web.

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Sometimes, the rights people think they have sound absurd on paper.

This year, the Institute for Legal Reform, a division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, identified the most ridiculous lawsuits based on votes cast on FacesOfLawsuitAbuse.org. 

"Is this really what we want our legal system to look like?" ILR President Lisa A. Rickard said. “Abusive lawsuits both big and small take a collective toll on our society and our economy."

The ten worst:

1. Idaho inmates' blamed a life of crime on alcohol companies.

A group of five inmates at a Kuna, Idaho prison facilities sued a group of eight brewers for failing to warn them adequately of the dangers of alcohol. 

“I have spent a great deal of time in prison because of situations that have arose because of people being drunk, or because of situations in which alcohol played a major role,” one inmate wrote, according to the Idaho Statesmen.

Others claim they never would have started drinking had they known about alcohol's addictive nature.

The inmates don't have a lawyer and drafted the suit themselves.

2. An Ohio teacher claimed fear of children in a suit against her district.

Maria C. Waltherr-Willard, 61, teaches Spanish and French at the Mariemont school district. She claims, however, to experience stress, anxiety, chest pains, vomiting, nightmares, and high blood pressure when she spends time around young children — a disability she calls "pedophobia," according to Fox News.

So she sued the district for discrimination for reassigning her from high school to middle school. A federal judge dismissed three of her six claims in January 2013.

3. A New Jersey school kicked a student off the track team for excessive absences, and his dad sued the county for $40 million.

The father claims a family death and leg injury can account for the absences, also that his freshman son was bullied and harassed before being kicked off the team, according to Yahoo! Sports.

The suit also claims the coach chose seniors over the boy for races despite him running faster times. 

4. A West Virginia woman sued over "severe and permanent injuries" despite completing a half-marathon.

Less than six months after her car accident, Erica Tamburin ran a half-marathon in 2010. She finished 50 out of 173, according to the West Virginia Record.

Claiming she suffered severe injuries, however, she filed suit the next year against Cabela's, the owner of the parking lot where her accident occurred.

Tamburin also listed her daughter, for allegedly losing the service and comfort of her mother, on the suit.

5. Two New Jersey men sued Subway because their "footlong" sandwiches fell short.

Earlier this year Australian Matt Corby measured his Subway sandwich. The sub, advertised as a "footlong," was only 11 inches long. The photo quickly went viral. 

Now, two New Jersey men have sued the company because their footlong sub sandwiches allegedly only hit 11 inches, too.

“The case is about holding companies to deliver what they’ve promised,” the duo's lawyer Stephen DeNittis told the New York Post.

A Manhattan shop owner also told the Post the company has decreased its cold-cut sizes by 25% recently. 

The case has since transferred to Federal Court at the request of the defendants. They also moved to seek class action status, according to the Burlington County Times. 

6. A grown man in New York sued his parents for their "indifference" to his problems.

Homeless Brooklyn resident Bernard Bey, 32, sued his parents because they refused to give him $200,000 to open up two Domino's pizza franchises, the New York Daily News reported. He thinks his parents should mortgage their Bed-Stuy home and give him one-eighth of the money.

Bey's parents' actions over the years "have caused deep rooted wounds that cannot heal on their own," the suit states. They "are indifferent to their children's problems, relationship, poverty, status and station in life."

7. A customer sued a Bob Evan's over a hostess' rude comment. 

When Joel Acey entered a Bob Evan's in West Virgina and asked to sit in the front of the restaurant, the hostess allegedly didn't listen.

He claims she led him to the back, slammed the menus on the table, and called him "a damned idiot," the West Virginia Record reported. 

Unsatisfied with the manager's apology, Acey sued the company for discrimination based on his race. 

8. A grad student who received free tuition sued her Pennsylvania school over a grade.

Megan Thode, a graduate student at Lehigh University, sued her school because she got a C+. Her attorney Richard J. Orloski claims the grade meant to force her out of becoming a licensed professional counselor, according to The Morning Call, Lehigh Valley's daily newspaper. 

The professor, however, spoke of unprofessional behavior, including swearing in class. 

Thode filed a civil suit totaling $1.3 million for a breach of contract and sexual discrimination. Notably, she attended the university for free since her dad is a professor.

A judge rejected her claim in February 2013, the Associated Press reported. 

9. An injured robber sued an Arizona shop owner.

Scott LaFonte allegedly took merchandise without paying from Mike's Mini Mart while brandishing a knife, according to Prescott, Ariz.'s The Daily Courier.

Store owner Michael Lewis took a gun from his car and chased after the robber, whom he knew. When LaFonte approached him, Lewis fired a warning shot in the air and then, as he continued to approach, shot him three times, according to a police report.

LaFonte sued Lewis in 2011, asking for unspecified damages, including lost wages and medical expenses, saying the store owner was not in danger and only fired out of "spite or ill will."

Two years later, a judge found Lewis not liable for damages.

10. A Tennessee man sued Apple for his porn addiction.

One day, former attorney and amateur model Chris Sevier accidentally typed "F---book," instead of "Facebook" on his Apple device.

Now, he's suing the tech giant for selling him a machine with unrestricted Internet access. Since Apple is "concerned with the welfare of our Nation's children, while furthering pro-American values" it should "sell all its devices in 'safe mode,' with software preset to filter out pornographic content," according to his suit. 

Sevier also claims that by giving access to porn at users' fingertips, Apple has harmed actual, brick and mortar adult stores, the Huffington Post reported. 

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A new fantasy genre known as "monster porn" is a lot more popular than you might imagine.

So popular, in fact, that Amazon has cracked down on it and started banning it from its bookstore.

Sometimes known as "cryptozoological erotica" or "erotic horror," monster porn features mythical creatures, extraterrestrials, and robots that have sex with humans. Sasquatch, Werewolves, and Frankenstein are popular characters.

Last month Business Insider published an investigation into the business of monster porn and Amazon's attempt to squelch it (See: MONSTER PORN: Amazon Cracks Down On America's Latest Sex Fantasy). In this story, we revealed the popularity of the genre and the startling amount of money that popular monster-porn authors can make. 

Still, some of our readers were left wondering... what is monster porn actually like?

So we decided to do a dramatic reading and reenactment of (part of) a monster porn scene for you.

K.J. Burkhardt's "Taken By The Monsters: An Erotic Monster Tale" was temporarily banned by Amazon, but it has now been reinstated. So if you're curious about all the nitty-gritty details, you can go buy it.

In the meantime, Burkhardt (a pen name) has graciously allowed us to excerpt from her short story for a G-rated video re-enactment. The scene involves a hairy "humanoid" creature and a young woman.

Produced by William Wei & Kamelia Angelova. Follow us on YouTube >

NOW WATCH: Here's Our Best Bet For Finding Life In Space

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The Washington Post’s Andrea Peterson reports that traffic to Pornhub spiked on January 7 and 8, at the height of this week’s polar vortex. How does the Washington Post know this? Because Pornhub reported it on its “Pornhub Insights” blog, and included the following handy chart:

It’s a cute little stat, but it’s not exactly shocking that NSFW sites would get more traffic on days when people are forced to stay home from work.

What’s fascinating to me is how Pornhub has succeeded in parlaying its own traffic stats into an ongoing orgy of mainstream publicity. A Google News search for “Pornhub” (which I’d highly recommend over an actual Google search for “Pornhub,” especially if you’re at work) turns up a steady stream of articles and blog posts about who’s watching porn when, where, why, and for how long. A quick sampling:

• Porn trends in the UK: from time online to the biggest search terms
  -          The Guardian, Jan. 7
• Pornhub reveals how long Northern Ireland users spend on the site
  -          Belfast Telegraph, Jan. 10
• Pornhub Data Shows 5 Surprising Trends in Americans’ Porn Habits
  -          PolicyMic, Dec. 23
• Brits watch less porn on Christmas Day says new research—but Japanese view MORE
  -          Daily Mirror, Dec. 22

January is the porn site's hottest month.

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Lee Roy Myers has everything you'd expect to find in the nation's porn capital in Southern California: sets of a classroom, hospital room, locker room and a bedroom, as well as a list of porn stars waiting to perform.

But his plywood universe is not in the San Fernando Valley. It's a few paces away from the glittery casinos of the Las Vegas Strip.

"Las Vegas is a fresh town, and it's where people need the business," said Myers, whose new studio is part of a boom in X-rated production in Sin City sparked by a Los Angeles law requiring male actors to wear condoms.

The rule and potential opportunities in Nevada were the talk of the Adult Entertainment Expo this week. The annual sex industry trade show culminates Saturday with an awards ceremony for adult films.

"It's not really an option to change the way we make our movies, and moving production isn't that hard," said porn purveyor Jules Jordan, who hid out behind nearly naked models at his booth.

The voter-approved Los Angeles regulation survived a constitutional challenge, but other lawsuits are ongoing, and the industry is still waiting for the first big prophylactic bust.

The number of permits requested to make porn films in Los Angeles County has declined by an estimated 95 percent since the law took effect, according to Film LA, a private nonprofit that issues the licenses. The number of applications fell from about 480 in 2012 to just 24 through the first nine months of 2013.

For Myers, who co-owns Mission Control studios and also directs web films, the condom police are just the start of his troubles with Los Angeles. The region had also gotten too expensive for him.

With DVD sales continuing to plummet, the bounce provided by the mommy-porn series "Fifty Shades of Grey" wearing off, and no solid business model in sight, producers in this notoriously low-budget industry are looking for new ways to cut costs.

While Los Angeles requires health checks and charges hundreds of dollars for location permits, Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, does not require health permits and gives out location licenses for a nominal fee.

The warehouses are cheaper, and it's also more affordable to rent out mansions and put actors up in hotels. The hardest part, Myers said, is making sure the stars leave at the end of the shoot.

Myers has also found that Las Vegas, a town already suffused with commercialized sex, is less squeamish about his line of work.

"They're used to it here because they already kind of have it," he said, sitting among rows of desks in his studio's classroom set. "Figuring out how to make these things more cheaply won't include shooting in Los Angeles."

Before he moved in, the building was just another empty warehouse on blighted Industrial Road behind the town's tourist corridor. Local officials appear content with the arrangement and have no plans to pass additional rules.

"It's a legalized industry and properly regulated, so I don't see it as a problem," said Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani. "I think the city and the county will benefit from any expansion of the film industry. It's economic diversification."

Las Vegas is home to some major porn players, including Brazzers, Bait & Tackle, Corbin Fisher, VCX Ltd. and newcomer Bluebird Film.

Several producers with top porn purveyor Evil Angel are talking about moving to Las Vegas, according to owner John Stagliano, and enough porn actors have settled down in the area to supply all the extras a film could need, if not all the stars.

Derek Hay, owner of adult talent agency LA Direct Models, opened an office here last fall. He estimates that 20 percent of the industry will have moved to Las Vegas by the end of the year.

Some contrarians believe the boom will eventually lead Clark County to adopt the same regulations that are scaring the industry in Los Angeles. This September, the group that championed the 2012 condom law started a similar campaign in Florida.

For now, concerns about an eventual condom showdown in the desert are not stopping producers from making investments.

Myers has several producers coming through his studio this week. After that, he will turn his attention to repurposing the cave set featured in a high fantasy spoof "Game of Bones" for another pornographic parody, based on The Hobbit.

The star of both films, James Deen, a millennial porn icon who acted alongside Lindsay Lohan in "The Canyons," said moving the industry to Las Vegas is just a Band-Aid.

"The issue with running to Vegas is it doesn't actually fix anything," he said, taking refuge near a stairwell at the convention hall to avoid interruption by a constant stream of fans. "We should explain to the people who put that law in place why it's unnecessary, and appeal it the same way any community would appeal any asinine law."

___

Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier

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Yesterday, Google asked developers to write new apps for Chromecast, a dongle device that lets you stream Web content from a tablet, smartphone or PC to your TV.

Today, the sharp eyes of Hot Hardware's Paul Lilly noticed a very strong caveat: Google has banned porn apps, along with a long list of other morally dubious things, from Chromecast. 

Or, to be more precise, Google wants the people who write apps for Chromecast to also obey the rules governing its app store, Google Play. And Google Play clearly forbids porn. It says:

We don't allow content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material.

Google Play also bans things like gambling, hate speech, depictions of violence and illegal activities, all of which applies to Chromecast apps, too.

If a developer ignores the rules and writes an app with forbidden content, Google reserves the right to cut off the developer's access to Google's tech needed to run the app.

We've seen this before. Google banned porn apps from Glass, too, and when the first porn app was released for it anyway last summer, Google said it would block the app from working on Glass.

None of this will stop human beings from doing what human beings like to do with technologies like Chromecast or Glass. As we previously reported, after Google banned facial recognition technology from Glass, a young developer, Stephen Balaban, started building an alternative operating system for Google Glass that Google couldn't control, he told Business Insider.

So, if Chromecast proves popular enough with consumers, we're sure some smart developer will figure out how to sidestep Google's restrictions for this device, too.

But, just so you know, Google isn't messing around and wants its first crop of Chromecast apps to be clean and family friendly.

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A tongue-in-cheek "calendar" is being passed around at a major auditor of online video advertising. The months depict  pinups of ads from major companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and AT&T running on sites with explicit sex and violence.

A source leaked a copy to Business Insider.

Our source took pains to point out that the six companies whose ads ran on the X-rated sites — including Unilever's Dove and Axe, Reckitt Benckiser's Finish, P&G's Gillette, AT&T, Netflix and Kellogg's Special K — are not at fault for running the ads. Rather, the misplacements happen because of shady ad networks and ad servers who fail to check the quality of the media inventory they are serving to advertisers, or the origin of clicks being driven by ad campaign dollars. Clients can lose up to $488,000 a month paying for fraudulent ad clicks.

The calendar, from online video auditor Telemetry, is arranged so that each month shows a different company or brand's ad running on a truly horrendous website.

We've redacted these images for obvious reasons.

This is a typical but mild example of how bad click fraud can be.

As you can see, it can get much worse.

It also happens on Spanish-language sites...

Adtech fraud doesn't discriminate: Ads are misplaced on both gay and straight sites.

Most advertisers have rules against their ads running next to content that shows violence or other distressing material.

There are also taste guidelines that prevent this sort of thing.

Adtech fraud happens when shady ad networks serve an ad on what appears to be legit, mainstream ad space...

But the ad that appears is actually being served on a porn site that sits "behind" the user's browser in a non-visible window...

The traffic is then encrypted so that clicks on the ad appear to have come from the mainstream site and not the hidden site where it actually ran.

In the end, the advertiser is presented with a bill for all the clicks that were generated.

SEE ALSO: This leaked document shows how big brands' ad budgets get spent on Asian porn sites

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The adult video site Pornhub is planning its first ever national advertising campaign, and it's asking the public to help.

Far from shying away from the limelight, the site is holding an open contest asking people to submit their best ideas for clever, safe-for-work advertising to run on television, in magazines, and on the Web. The winner will be awarded a one-year contract to be the site's first creative director.

"There’s a lot of people who really invest in the brand, and we really want to give them an opportunity to create for it and then become our creative director," Pornhub.com Vice President for Marketing Corey Price said. He said that users frequently email him with their own marketing ideas.

If you're unfamiliar with Pornhub.com (or prefer to pretend you are), think of it as a sort of YouTube for porn — a place where people come to upload and watch free adult content, some of which has, of course, been pirated — in spite of what Pornhub says are intense efforts to prevent such infringement. According to the online tracking company Quantcast, the site is visited by around 15 million unique users monthly.

In the past year or so, Pornhub, one of a handful of adults sites owned by the company MindGeek, has worked to bring itself out of the shadows and into the mainstream. In early 2013, it (perhaps facetiously) sought to purchase a Super Bowl ad, but CBS rejected the ad on the grounds that CBS' policy prohibited it from promoting pornography.

More recently, the brand has won mainstream media attention for its Insights blog, which offers fascinating statistics about viewing habits and how those habits are influenced by major events (for instance, the site received a surge of traffic from Denver after the city's football team lost this year's Super Bowl).

But despite this influx of publicity, mainstream media outlets could very well refuse to allow Pornhub to advertise with them. Chauntelle Anne Tibbals, a sociologist who studies the pornography industry, said major corporations are unlikely to touch an ad for adult content, and that Pornhub's contest was likely a publicity stunt.

Indeed, when we reached out to Spike TV, a cable network Pornhub executives said they would like to advertise with, a representative was quick to shoot down the idea of such a partnership.

"We would never allow Pornhub advertising, ever," said David Schwarz, Spike TV's senior vice president of communications.

Nonetheless, Price, the Pornhub marketing executive, said he was confident the site would be able to work out deals for its media placements, noting that Playboy has been a mainstream brand for years and that Brazzers, a paid site also owned by MindGeek, had its own billboard in Times Square.

In the event that television networks are not receptive to letting Pornhub advertise with them, Price said the new creative director would still be an important part of building the brand's identity and shaping its communications strategy.

"In the worst case scenario, resourceful minds will ultimately prevail," Price said. "Following our rejection by CBS, we were able to leverage traditional press and social media to garner exposure that rivaled, if not surpassed that of ads featured in those primetime slots. In short, while I can’t tell you exactly what we have up our sleeves, you can trust that we will be heard no matter what."

The contest will accept applications through March 31, with submissions being posted for the public to see at pornhubcampaign.tumblr.com. As an idea of what the site is looking for in a creative director, Price said this early print ad submission had the appropriate level of humor without being explicit:

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Canada's broadcasting regulator wants to see more locally-made porn on Canadian television, judging by a notice on its website that accuses three channels of failing to meet licensing requirements.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said three Toronto-based adult channels have failed to provide a minimum of 35 percent Canadian content.

The rules require a portion of programming to be at least partly written, produced or presented by persons in Canada, in order to bolster the local industry and showcase Canadian content.

A hearing has been scheduled for April 28 to decide whether the broadcasting licenses of AOV Adult Movie Channel, XXX Action Clips and Maleflixxx should be renewed.

The permits are set to expire at the end of August.

CRTC spokeswoman Patricia Valladao told AFP they will be asked to justify a renewal of the licenses, adding that "the CRTC has tried several times to bring the company into compliance."

The networks' parent company Channel Zero did not immediately responded to requests for comment.

But others have not been shy to speak out.

The daily National Post satirically lamented the Canadian porn industry's "reluctance to tackle distinctively Canadian issues."

And the tabloid Toronto Sun hailed the CRTC's call for more "naughty Newfoundlanders and Manitoba MILFs."

But the Globe and Mail disagreed, saying: "Unlike sitcoms or dramas, which are potentially filled with meaning that contributes to a social conversation, porn is a generic product whose national origins are as unimportant as those of... a vibrator."

But the newspaper conceded that "a porn shoot hires lighting technicians and camera operators just like any other TV production and, hey, jobs are jobs."

The CRTC also chided the channels for not providing enough closed-captioning and for not alerting the regulator of a change in ownership.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China has shut down more than 100 websites carrying pornography and closed thousands of accounts on social media sites in an re-newed effort to clean up the internet, state media reported.

The campaign, named "Cleaning the Web 2014", was launched in response to the spread of online pornography despite repeated bans, according to a circular issued by the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.

Pornography is illegal in China, but some overseas critics are concerned that the crackdown on material deemed obscene is the latest government attempt to tighten its grip on the internet and will be used in broader censorship of websites.

In the latest drive, authorities have closed 110 websites and more than 3,300 accounts on China-based social networking services, and deleted more than 200,000 items containing pornography since January, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

"Disseminating pornographic information online severely harms the physical and mental health of minors, and seriously corrupts social ethos," an unidentified official with the State Internet Information Office was cited by Xinhua as saying.

The campaign, set to last until November, comes after a crackdown on Wechat, Tencent Holdings Ltd's social messaging app, which has had dozens of widely read accounts run by outspoken columnists shut down.

It also follows a move last year to purge online rumor-mongering, widely seen as a tool to punish critics of the ruling Communist Party, which has chilled political disclosure especially on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

Sina Corp, a major Chinese web portal, temporarily shut down its entire online reading section shortly after the campaign was launched, because "works containing inappropriate content have appeared," the company said in a statement on one of its Weibo microblogs.

Last week, a Beijing court sentenced a man to three years in prison for spreading rumors on Weibo that the court said defamed celebrities and the government.

(Reporting by Li Hui and Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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JPMorgan Chase shut down the bank accounts of a bunch of adult film industry workers and didn't tell them why.

"We recently reviewed your account and determined that we will be closing it on May 11, 2014. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience," a letter from the bank to porn star Teagan Presley posted on Perez Hilton's site reads.

"You may close your account before the date we provided. Your account agreement says that either of us may close your account at any time, without notice and without reason," the letter from Chase continued.

Some of those affected have expressed on Twitter that the reason their account was shutdown is because they work in the porn industry.

"The branch and telephone bankers said it was because of our industry but their executive branch said no it wasn't and categorically denied this," Presley's husband Joshua Lehman told us via email. Lehman also had his Chase account closed. 

The Chase letter didn't cite a specific reason. It also didn't mention anything about pornography.

This is actually standard across the banking sector. There's no requirement by law that banks have to tell account holders why they're closing their account. In some cases, the banks are even obligated under the law not to disclose the reason why an account is being closed.

Also, there's no written rule saying that a porn star can't bank with Chase. Just because you're a porn star, it doesn't mean you'll get your account taken away either. 

A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the matter.

Some media reports claimed that the accounts of hundreds of porn stars were shut down by Chase recently. Business Insider has learned that's not the case.

All of this came actually came to light last week on Twitter. Many of the adult film workers affected have hundreds of thousands of followers. Some stars have Tweeted that they're going to cancel their Chase accounts before they get cancelled.

People are definitely paying attention to this story. There's now a #BoycottChase hashtag. There's also an online petition with over 6,000 signatures as of this morning. 

On April 21, Teagan Presley (real name Ashley Erickson Lehman) Tweeted to her 187K followers that Chase was closing her personal account. She's had the account since she was 18. She said she uses it to buy groceries and pay for gymnastics for her kids. 

Thank you for @Chase for closing my personal acct that Ive had since I was 18yrs old.I was w/ Washington mutual before you bought them out

— Teagan Presley™ (@MsTeagan) April 21, 2014

@chase told me I was an infamous figure in the adult business&thats reason why they closed it.So infamous I pay my utilities&kids gym class

— Teagan Presley™ (@MsTeagan) April 21, 2014

Presley's husband Joshua Lehman (@DirectorJoshua) also had his account closed.

He Tweeted at blogger Perez Hilton that hundreds of them got letters. Lehman provided us with a few names of people who've been affected, but it wasn't hundreds.

@PerezHilton@Chase they did it to hundreds of us today. We all got letters closing them as of 5/11/14. Mine was because my wife’s a star

— Joshua™ (@DirectorJoshua) April 22, 2014

Adult film director David Lord got a letter from Chase earlier this month.

@PerezHilton@DirectorJoshua@Chase they did !!!!! pic.twitter.com/mE45d5UzyO

— David Lord (@davidlordxxx) April 22, 2014

Porn star/ fetish model Veronica Avluv also had her account shuttered by Chase.

Violence gets much more acceptance than sex in this society- how many producers of horror flicks have accts at Chase no problem? Hmmm

— Veronica Avluv™ (@VeronicaAvluvXX) April 22, 2014

Los Angeles-based porn star Layton Benton, the 22-year-old in "The Bomb Booty", told Page Six that she wants to take legal action against Chase for shutting down her account.

Check out the article I'm in on the front page of the @nypost@PageSixhttp://t.co/xPpqqCqUUs💋

— Layton Benton (@laytonbentonxxx) April 30, 2014

Stormy Daniels Tweeted that Chase cancelled her account a few years ago. She said her friends got theirs cancelled a couple weeks ago.

@PerezHilton@DirectorJoshua@Chase They did it to me a few years ago..they did it to Chanel Preston and @KeiranLee a couple weeks ago

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) April 22, 2014

Male performer/director Keiran Lee said on Twitter his account was cancelled.

@davidlordxxx@chase - I'm with ya

— Keiran Lee (@KeiranLee) April 22, 2014

Kirsten Price Tweeted that Chase closed her account and had some choice words for the bank [NSFW].

Porn actress Bonnie Rotten Tweeted that she was closing her Chase account and moving it to Wells Fargo before they could close it on her.

@ohsoslider I closed my account before they close it on me

— Bonnie Rotten® (@thebonnierotten) April 30, 2014

(If you work in the adult film industry and have had your bank account cancelled, feel free to send an email to jlaroche@businessinsider.com.)

Also, below is a copy of the letter Teagan Presley received:

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Adult performers have launched a campaign to encourage fans to pay for the porn they watch, rather than pirating videos on the internet.

The Pay For Your Porn campaign, backed by publishers Adult Empire, argues that piracy is hurting the industry, and that porn fans need to take responsibility for that if they want the industry to remain sustainable.

"Purchasing content ensures it’s better produced, delivered in higher quality formats, more secure, and fosters the creation of new adult content," the campaign argues. "Porn piracy hurts everyone, from the creators behind the scenes to the porn stars fans love to watch.

"Everybody needs to make a living – theft only helps take away the ability of the tens of thousands of people in the adult industry," it adds.

The campaign was launched just as the actor Samuel L Jackson sparked outrage among porn performers by naming porn sharing site RedTube as one of the best pop culture achievements of the past 50 years. Jackson's comments led the adult star Catalina Cruz to call for a boycott of his movies, telling the Avengers actor that "these sites are stealing whole members' areas and have to potential to kill an industry."

The adult performer and sex educator Jessica Drake is one of the actors launching the campaign. "I can speak first hand about the very real effects of piracy on the entertainment industry and the economy. Piracy is a very serious criminal activity," she says. "Theft is also a violation of personal consent and ethics."

Megan Wozniak, who works for Adult Empire, argues that porn is in a trickier position than most media industries. "Unfortunately, porn still has a stigma attached to it, so we know that we won’t ever receive help or support from legislatures, that’s why we decided to rally together this grassroots campaign on our own and spread the word."

But some "tube"-style sites, which mimic YouTube's model of user uploads and free streaming, are attempting to build their own sustainable business model. Porn.com's David Kay, who says he is "100% behind the campaign", argues that his site's pay-per-view scheme "keeps a lot of content owners in business," by offering a cut of the ad revenue to studios which upload their own videos and clips to the site's system.

Just as the movie and music industries were forced to adapt in the face of piracy, becoming more user-friendly to win back customers who were used to getting what they wanted for free, Kay says the porn industry needs to change as well. "The industry needs to adopt "Netflix" pricing," he says, "of $7-$10 per month as opposed to the standard $39.95 monthly that you commonly see. We switched to this pricing years ago and are one of the few companies still flourishing."

• Will buying porn turn out to be bitcoin's killer app?

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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Back in March, we told you about Pornhub's plan to run its first ever national ad campaign on television and in magazines.

Since then, the adult video website has been accepting submissions from fans, who have sent in proposals for what the campaign should look like. The person with the best ideas will get a one-year contract to be Pornhub's creative director.

On Monday, the company announced its list of 15 finalists, all of whom submitted innuendo-laden, safe-for-work ads promoting the site's benefits.

We've collected our favorites here. The others are either a little bit too explicit to run on our site, or frankly, not that clever.

To see the rest and to vote on your favorites, you can visit Pornhub's safe-for-work Tumblr page.

This ad cleverly hints at the diversity of the site's video catalog.

Here's that idea represented with shoes.

Another promotes the idea that everybody you know is secretly using the site.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — considered America's second-most important court after the Supreme Court — has issued an opinion railing against a copyright holder that another judge has called a "porno-trolling collective."

Writing for the DC Circuit this week, Judge David S. Tatel ruled that AF Holdings can't subpoena five internet service providers for the identities of roughly 1,000 people who allegedly downloaded and shared the porn movie "Popular Demand."

AF — which supposedly owns the copyright for several porn movies — is represented by a lawyer named Paul Duffy, who was part of Prenda Law Firm, which is notorious for filing copyright lawsuits against "John Does" whose identities are only known through their ISP addresses.

AF and Prenda have been accused of using the discovery process to obtain these Does' real identities and get them to pay to settle the cases out of court rather than be exposed through litigation.

Tatel accused AF and its lawyers of abusing the discovery process to obtain these identities and never really intending to pursue litigation in the District of Columbia. From his opinion:

Generally speaking, our federal judicial system and the procedural rules that govern it work well, allowing parties to resolve their disputes with one another fairly and efficiently. But sometimes individuals seek to manipulate judicial procedures to serve their own improper ends. This case calls upon us to evaluate and put a stop to one litigant’s attempt to do just that.

Tatel reversed a lower court's ruling that had granted AF's discovery request, in a win for the internet service providers that did not want to expose the owners of the ISP addresses.

While Tatel may be the most important judge to slam AF and its lawyers, he is far from the first to do so. AF's firm, Prenda Law, even officially disbanded after another judge accused its lawyers of "moral turpitude." However, as Tatel noted, that firm appears to have "reconstituted itself in a similar form."

We reached out to AF's lawyer, Paul Duffy, to give him a chance to comment and will update this post if we hear back.

SEE ALSO: Porn Actors Start Campaign To Save Their Struggling Industry

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The brains of men who watch lots of pornography tend to be smaller in certain key areas and have fewer connections than those of other men, a new study has found.

The differences appeared in a brain region called the striatum, which is associated with reward and motivation.

"Since the striatum is part of the brain network that is known to respond to sexual cues, one can assume that this reflects a blunting of the reaction to erotic stimuli," study co-author Simone Kühn, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany, wrote in an email to Live Science.

But although the findings are suggestive, it's not clear that watching porn actually causes men's brains to shrink. Perhaps men who watch a lot of porn are different in some underlying way from those who don't, and that could explain the smaller size, experts said.

Sexual disorder?

With the rise of the Internet, people can now anonymously access pornography at all hours of the day with just the click of a mouse. [Hot Stuff! 10 Unusual Sexual Fixations]

"This has fostered the pervasiveness of pornography use and raises the question of whether it has any effects on brain structure and function," Kühn said.

Some psychologists argue that porn-watching is harmless, while others claim porn is bad for mental health and can spiral into sex addiction. (The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, doesn't include sex addiction as a separate disorder.) [Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders]

A 2013 study in the journal Socioaffective Neuroscience and Psychology, found that people who reported problems controlling their urge to view sexual images did not display brain patterns that are characteristic of people with addictions.

But even behavior that doesn't rise to the level of an addiction or disorder can still be problematic, said William Struthers, a neuroscientist at Wheaton College in Illinois, who was not involved in the new study.

"We now need to acknowledge that this fits somewhere on a pathological spectrum," with some people affected relatively little by porn, while others may have their relationships and life compromised, he said.

Brain scans

To assess the effect of pervasive porn watching on the brain, Kühn and her colleague, Jürgen Gallinat, a researcher at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Germany, placed 64 healthy men in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, and measured the men's responses to sexual and neutral images. On average, outside of the lab, the men watched about four hours of pornography a week, with some of the respondents watching nearly 20 hours a week and others watching none at all.

The avid porn watchers showed lower activation of reward circuitry in the brain (as suggested by lower blood flow to certain brain regions) in response to the sexual images.

When their brains were at rest, they also had smaller grey matter volume in areas of the brain, such as the striatum, associated with reward processing and motivation, compared with men who watched less porn.

Past research, detailed in 2012 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, suggested watching porn can quiet a brain region that processes visual stimuli called the primary visual cortex.

Questions of causality

It's not surprising, or necessarily worrisome, that frequent porn exposure reduces the brain's reward response to sexual images, said Nicole Prause, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, who co-authored the 2013 study on sex addiction. In fact, that's how the brain becomes habituated to anything, she added.

"They're basically demonstrating a principle of basic learning," Prause told Live Science.

In her lab, Prause and her colleagues monitored brain activity as people smelled chocolate. "When they first start smelling it, their brain is like 'Whoa that's wonderful!'" Prause said. "And then the second time it's like, 'Okay we're kind of done with this now.'"

Furthermore, the imaging the researchers used in the new study to assess brain volume leaves a few open questions, she said.

Both alcoholism and depression shrink the same brain areas that were found to be smaller in porn watchers in the current study. Depressed people are less likely to be in a relationship, and may therefore have fewer sexual opportunities in real life and more time on their hands to look at sexual content. In that instance, it may be the underlying depression, not the porn itself, altering the brain, Prause said.

Still, the researchers did use surveys to try to control for depression and alcoholism, and the brain activity findings are convincing because there's a plausible mechanism — namely, that constant exposure to erotica could make men habituated to sexual rewards, Struthers said.

"The fact that viewing sexually explicit material could potentially become something that is habitual and has negative side effects should not come as a shock to anyone," Struthers said.

The findings were published online Wednesday (May 28) in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLive Science @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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SEE ALSO: Sex Might Actually Make You Smarter

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Pornhub announced it has selected Nuri Gulver, a copywriter from Istanbul, to be its first creative director and help launch its first national advertising campaign.

The site has been holding a contest for three months in which the public was solicited to come up with ideas for a clever, safe-for-work ad campaign that could run on TV, in magazines, and on billboards.

Gulver, 24, was selected as a finalist in May for this ad:

The description Gulver included in his winning entry explains the logic behind his campaign idea: "Because of our icon is a hand, our campaign will easily integrated into any media. Because everyone has it or familiar it. And they use it often in their daily life. So, with our effective insight, we will announce 'Pornhub' name to the whole world in a short time."

Click here to see the ads submitted by the other finalists>>

For his victory, Gulver will be awarded a one-year contract to be in charge of future ad campaigns and creative content for Pornhub. According to web analytics firm Quantcast, the site was visited by about 13 million unique visitors in May.

According to his LinkedIn page, Gulver has been working as a copywriter at Alametifarika, a Turkish ad agency responsible for, among other campaigns, an immensely popular 2012 Turkish Airlines ad starring Lionel Messi and Kobe Bryant.

"The gig suits me, as I have a passion for creatively solving problems – in this case launching an advertising campaign for a taboo industry in the mainstream press," Gulver said in a statement included in Pornhub's press release. "I used to think I was lucky, but now I think I am the luckiest person on earth."

Pornhub VP Corey Price praised Gulver for coming up with an idea that could easily be run as a catchy, multi-media campaign.

"The concept is smart, relatable and it has potential to work across all advertisement platforms," Price said in the press release. "We’re thrilled to announce Nuri as the winner and are looking forward to working with him to roll out the industry’s first mainstream ad campaign.”

SEE ALSO: Pornhub Is Planning A National Advertising Campaign — And It Wants You To Help

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