MONTREAL -- Dozens of protesters gathered outside the offices of Pornhub in Montreal Sunday accusing the website of profiting off the sex trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children.
Maylissa Louby is a counsellor at La Sortie, a not-for-profit group that works with victims of sexual exploitation, and she joined the protesters.
"Porn has a lot of acts that are degrading, that are shaming, that are hurting women's bodies," she said.
The protesters stood outside MindGeek on Decarie Blvd., the parent company of Pornhub, with signs and megaphones for passing motorists to see.
Pornhub made the news recently when one of its content providers - Girls Do Porn - became the subject of an FBI investigation.
"Just like girls and women can be trafficked into the sex industry, they can also be trafficked into the pornography industry," said Glendyne Gerrard of Defend Dignity. "They're promised all sorts of things that don't get delivered."
The FBI charged four people with the company of luring women into making pornographic films under false pretenses.
Pornhub pulled videos made by the company after charges were laid.
Many protesters Sunday believe Pornhub should cease operations because it exploits women.
Others favour stricter criteria for vetting the people appearing in the videos.
"Pornhub should make sure, before the videos are online, that it has the consent of all the participants in the porn videos," said Canadian Senator Julie Miville-Dechene.
Miville-Dechene said she's aiming to find a way within the law to place better checks on the industry.
Pornhub said in a statement that it is committed to fighting illegal content on the net including non-consensual content and videos that depict children. It added that it uses software tools to that end.
Some at Sunday's protest said they've unsuccessfully lodged complaints to take down objectionable content.
"Attempts to have those taken down are often ignored," said Megan Walker of London Abused Women's Centre.
Also, one protester pointed out that, once a video is up, it's very hard to stop it spreading.
"The abuser posts a video on Pornhub, all these other websites around the world take that video and it's almost impossible to eradicate that video," said Louby.
