Pornography law in the UK

The law that governs the production of pornography in the UK is made out of a combination of unrelated legal concepts. UK participants in pornographic movies have few resources to learn from, about their legal position. If you wanted to understand what legal rights you have, as a performer in adult films, you should consult this website, or one of the other online resources, which we have created, or speak to one of our specialist porn lawyers.

Producers and publishers of pornography, must make sure that their operation is compliant with the criminal and the civil law, or they could possibly face serious legal consequences, including civil and criminal sanctions.

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How to remove your own nude images and videos from the internet

Proven strategies to help you remove porn films from the internet

People who participated in porn films earlier in their lives and now wish to move on, must be able to first get porn films off the internet, a massively challenging task for most.

How to clear your old videos from the internet  

How hard is it to remove a sex video you have made in the past from the internet

How to go about removing porn videos from the internet

How to clear your old videos from the internet

If say, 10 or 15 years ago, for whatever reason, you agreed to make a sex video in return for money, or because you had been coerced into doing this, and that video has in the meantime been published on the internet, you will, in most cases be able to have the video and any related video clips deleted from the internet. At the time, when you agreed to participate in making the sex video, you might have thought of it as being a matter of little long term importance.

Most actors who performed in adult films ten years ago or longer did not have the foresight or the understanding of what the internet was about to become. They could have hardly anticipated that their erotic films would be cut into dozens of short clips and published and republished an endless number of times by complete strangers who had nothing to do with creating the films. It is likely that before the production of a pornographic film you agreed to assign all your intellectual property rights to a production company who you thought would keep matters under control.

The assignment of your rights to the porn video might not be valid. What you probably did not anticipate at the time of making the firm is that it would replicate itself on the internet, often together with insulting and humiliating titles and texts. Also, if to go by at least some of our clients, at the time, starting a family and having children was the last thing on your mind. Now, it is likely that these porn films are following you whenever you go and particularly if you are planning to start a family, you probably wish you never made them in the first place or at least you wish there was a way to make them go away.

How hard is it to remove a sex video you have made in the past from the internet

The task of removing sex videos from the internet could be proven difficult and in many cases, emotionally charged. Most of our clients have only become clients once they felt that they have had the support of a partner on whom they could rely on to help them see through the process of the removal of the sex videos. If you're a celebrity or a video you participated in had become popular, it seems at first an impossible task to scrub all traces of the video clips from the internet.

Unfortunately, bootleg versions of your sex videos are likely to surface from time to time so if you will need do take a stance and decide to be ruthless with your efforts to completely clean up the internet of them. People who already downloaded the films may upload clips at any time they want but the fact of the matter is that the more available a film is online, the more likely it is to be copied and uploaded by opportunists. At the same time, erotic videos, which are rarely found online are usually far less likely to be copied. Think of it as a graffiti effect. A wall full of graffiti is much more likely to get more graffiti than a clean wall.

How to go about removing porn videos from the internet

Persevere and never give up

Assert your right to private life

Threaten the porn producer with legal action

Trademark your name

Persevere and never give up

Claim copyright or have it transferred to you If you created the original video yourself, you own the copyright to it so we can assert this right on your behalf and usually very quickly have the porn videos removed from nearly all websites. But even if you did not own the copyright to start with and even if you signed a release form, a good lawyer will still, in many cases, be able to secure copyright for you in the films as part of their negotiations with the producers of the film.

In some cases, if somebody else produced the video, we may ask them to allow us to buy the rights or at least some of the rights to the sex videos, enough to enable us to assert intellectual property rights on your behalf and to demand a permanent removal of traces of the films from various websites.

Assert your right to private life

Under the European Convention of Human Rights, everyone has a right to private life. Additionally, there are various privacy laws that help us persuade website operators to delete videos from their websites. Most do agree but if they refuse to your initial request to delete your videos from their porn sites, your lawyer will, in most cases put enough pressure on them to change their mind.

Threaten the porn producer with legal action

In extreme cases, you might be able to take legal action against porn producers and website operators who refuse to hand over rights to the films. It is very rare for either of them to go to court over a few old porn videos so there is a great deal of leverage for you, once you decide to take a legal route to have the porn films removed from the internet.

Legal action might be a civil legal action, for breach of privacy, for breach of contract or for breach of your data. However, in many cases, there might be criminal charges that you could possibly bring against the film producer, particularly, if you can show that you had been coerced in to making sex videos or if you claim that any consent you allegedly gave to participate in the porn films was invalid. Most operators of adult websites will honour a request to remove an image or a video even if you are unable to prove copyright to it.

Trademark your name

Finally, in some cases we have been able to trademark our client’s stage name and use intellectual property laws to facilitate the removal of any films and mentions of our clients’ stage name on porn websites. This could be a highly effective way to have your sex videos removed from the internet.

Some of clients also trademarked their real names, which means, in many cases, that no publication can be made of the porn films without their permission. If you are serious about taking steps to remove porn videos from the internet regardless of how many of them are out there, give us a call to discuss. We have experienced lawyers and an award winning dedicated legal and technical team who will do their best to help you achieve your goal.

Can you remove porn videos featuring yourself from the internet

If you have acted in a porn film earlier in your life, it does not mean you will no longer be entitled to claim back your privacy. Each case of ongoing publication of pornography online is considered in its own merits and actors in porn films should not assume that they can never have movies removed from the internet

What to do if you regret having participated in a porn film

In a recent case, Cohen Davis solicitors secured damages in excess of £20,000 for a client who had participated in a pornographic video five years earlier but has since changed his mind.

Why people regret doing porn films

Is it possible to remove porn videos because you regret making them

Example of removal of porn following regret

What to do if you regret making a porn video

Why people regret doing porn films

There is a large number of individuals who participate in porn films, only to regret this later, who at the time of shooting the film did not fully appreciate the consequences of their actions.

This could be because it was promised to them that any videos produced from the porn film shooting would have limited distribution, on paid for websites, or that the films had been produced by a special request and that they would be subjected to strict confidentiality and limited viewers. In other cases, participants in porn movies have been persuaded to take part in the filming whilst in a bad place, whether being homeless, hungry or having suffered alcohol or drug addiction.

A growing number of people who participate in porn films, who later regret their action, are young people, who had been lured by predators on social media to do some modelling and whilst arriving at the studio were put under pressure to take matters further and take part in creating pornography. There is, of course, another group of people who fully consented at the time to participate in pornography and to have their videos distributed, but later in life, have moved on, started a family or decided to pursue another career. Often this group’s regret comes 5-15 years after creating the porn films.

Is it possible to remove porn videos because you regret making them

It is impossible, in many cases, to have porn videos removed from the internet if you regret ever making them. The fact that you regret making a porn film, by itself, is not often sufficient to have the porn film removed from websites. What you will need to show in addition, is that the publication of the porn film results in the breach of your right to private life, in breach of your data, it constitutes misuse of your private information or that it constitutes a breach of contract. Every case is different and we will examine carefully the evidence before advising you on the right strategy that is most suitable for your case.

Example of removal of porn following regret

In a recent case, our client, who was known by his stage name Arthur Z, and he agreed to participate in porn film shooting which took place approximately 5 years earlier. He signed a release document at the time and got paid £150 in cash for 3 hours of shooting of hardcore gay pornography, but later he changed his mind. As part of the settlement of his case, we secured him damages of £20,000 and in addition to the damages, we ensured that he had the copyright to the porn films transferred to his name, together with a binding contract compelling the film producers to help us with the enforcement of taking down the porn video permanently. 

Yair Cohen, a partner at Cohen Davis Solicitors took on the case on compassionate grounds and later acted for Arthur on a no win no fee basis. Minutes after leaving the flat where the shooting of the highly intrusive video too place, Arthur telephoned the film producer and told him he had changed his mind. He begged the producer to not publish the film on the internet. Arthur, who was homeless at the time, living on the streets of London, was persuaded by the producer to take part in the porn film, even though he had never done anything like this before. He claimed that he had been under the influence of drugs when agreeing to the filming and that he was, at the time, at a very low point in his life. The film producer refused to delete the film from the internet and went on the sell the pornographic videos on a lucrative gay porn website over a period of nearly 5 years. The video, snippets and previews were also published on other porn sites, such as YouPorn and Xhamster, together with highly derogatory titles and descriptions.

Some of the videos had been best sellers for years due to their highly humiliating nature. The case was highly challenging particularly because we needed to first identify and locate the video producer who had done all he could to conceal his true identity. However, after some detective work, the porn producer was traced and located and after sending him a following a letter of claim, threatening him with legal action, he accepted liability and agreed to all our demands, including payment of compensation and legal costs.

What to do if you regret making a porn video

If you regret making a porn video, find out what you can do about it.

Unfortunately, the internet is loaded with pornographic videos, many of which have been produced at the unfair expense of vulnerable individuals. At times it could seem nearly impossible to secure removal of pornographic videos from the internet following regret, particularly if they had been produced some time ago. However, if you regret making porn videos and you now want to see whether you can have them removed from the internet, give our friendly lawyers a call.

We have a log of experience in this area of law, being one of the only law firms that specialise in internet pornography. There is a high likelihood that we will be able to help you remove unwanted adult video from the internet and even secure you compensations on a no win no fee basis.