Adult entertainment is big business on the internet, and several of the largest brands in this niche are owned by the Aylo conglomerate.
Formerly known as Mindgeek, Aylo is the driving force behind free ‘tube’ sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube. It also owns many adult brands, including Brazzers and Reality Kings, that charge for subscriptions.
Over the years, the company has built an impressive library of more than 40,000 registered copyright works. The company’s enforcement arm, Aylo Premium, protects this content by various means. It has sent many millions of takedown requests and also targets pirate sites in court, hoping to shut these down.
Earlier this year, Aylo won a $90 million default judgment against a porn piracy network that included ‘Freshporno,’ ‘Kojka,’ and ‘PornHeal,’ among others. While that was a major win, at least on paper, plenty of targets remained.
That included Pornhits.com, which Aylo sued in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington last December. The complaint named Anatoly Chernov as the alleged operator, along with twenty unidentified Doe defendants, and accused them of displaying 5,635 of Aylo’s registered works on the site without authorization.
According to Aylo, Pornhits misleadingly suggests that it is a user-generated content platform. The complaint alleges the upload feature visible on the site is “inoperative and illusory,” which means that all infringing content was added by the site’s operator directly. Aylo also said it sent 44,934 DMCA takedown notices, which were all ignored.
Aylo’s $84 Million Demand
As is often the case in these types of lawsuits, the defendant did not appear in court to defend himself. As a result, Aylo requested a default judgment, asking for $15,000 in statutory damages per infringed work, which is less than the maximum of $150,000 per work.
However, with 5,635 works at issue, the total does add up to $84,525,000.
To justify the figure, Aylo pointed to SimilarWeb data showing that Pornhits attracted approximately 1.7 million U.S. visitors in October 2025 alone. If all these visitors signed up for official subscriptions, the company said it would earn roughly $17 million per month.
While pirate views do not directly translate to lost sales, Aylo also referenced that the same court awarded $15,000 per work in near-identical adult content piracy defaults. This includes the Yespornplease case, which was also handled by the same U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle.
“More Than Mere Guesswork”
Last week, Judge Settle granted the default judgment but rejected the damages calculation. Instead of $15,000 per work, he awarded the statutory minimum of $750, bringing the total to $4,226,250.
The order recognizes Aylo’s previous wins in the same court, but it also signals a clear shift in approach.
“The Court acknowledges these cases but determines that, upon further review, a lower award is warranted here,” Judge Settle wrote.
He noted that other district courts have begun requiring more rigorous evidence to support above-minimum awards in these types of cases. That includes evidence of its own lost profits or the infringer’s profit increase, which is clearly not available here.
“Calculating damages is difficult but the Court requires more than mere guesswork. Aylo fails to offer any concrete evidence of lost profits, relying instead upon conjecture as to the effect of Chernov’s piracy on its bottom line,” the order adds.
Judge Settle pointed out that Aylo had also failed to estimate the added profits of Pornhits, the number of visitors who might have actually paid for an Aylo subscription, or how much of the Pornhits site is dedicated to Aylo’s content.
“It is unclear to the Court whether Aylo’s works constitute even a substantial portion of pornhits’ overall content. Without such evidence, an award of $84 million would be an inappropriate windfall,” the order reads.
Domain Transfer Granted
The damages reduction clearly stands out, but the practical impact is limited. Chernov never appeared in the case, lives outside the United States, and is unlikely to pay any damages amount, whether $84 million or $4 million.
The injunction that comes with the order, on the other hand, is enforceable.
Specifically, Judge Settle ordered Verisign, the registry operator for the .com top-level domain, to change the registrar of record for pornhits.com to EuroDNS, which has to transfer the domain to Aylo Premium Ltd. The current registrar, Namecheap, was also ordered to cooperate.
The order also includes a ‘dynamic’ aspect, as we’ve seen previously, allowing Aylo to return to court to extend the injunction to additional domains, subdomains, or IP addresses that the Pornhits operator might use to continue or evade the infringing activity.
This permanent injunction is much needed because, at the time of writing, Pornhits.com remains up and running.
—
A copy of Judge Benjamin Settle’s order on the motion for default judgment is available here (pdf).
