Original subtitles

- Hello.

- Never before has so much porn been watched,

and yet the porn industry is in its death throes.

- These sites have turned the industry

upside down.

They've swallowed up everything,

absorbed everything, without mercy.

- We knew that it was gonna,

gonna kill the industry.

- Production companies are shutting down

one by one, and the first victims are women.

Actresses are forced to take part in increasingly

hardcore porn, for half as much money.

- Many production believe that the harder you shoot--

- yes the harder the better.

- The bigger you put inside.

- Yeah, she's had a lot of cocks in her ass.

Four cocks at the same time.

- Just a handful of geeks,

who came out of nowhere, have profited from this misery,

earning unprecedented amounts of money.

- How many users of pornhub--

- 16 million a day.

- Wait a minute, who is this?

- Turn over a month was roughly $40 million, us.

- A month? - A month.

- I don't believe anything that they say,

having worked for them, because nothing makes sense.

- Behind all of this

are shady financial operations,

an opaque business where the law of silence reigns.

- In the last three years,

I have had my life threatened maybe six times,

so I carry a gun, just in case.

- I made adult films for 17 years.

I know this industry very well.

A few years ago, I found out that my films

were being shown for free without my consent,

and that now, anyone can access them;

neighbors, colleagues, children.

The piracy of my films has affected my life far more

than anyone might ever suspect.

Since the mid-1990s, Budapest has been the undisputed

European capital of porn.

If we would find the victims

of this great transformation anywhere, it would be here.

- Hello. - Hi.

- I'm Alina, nice to meet you.

- Ovidie, nice to meet you.

- Welcome.

- Hello.

Yes.

Hello. - Hello.

- Come, come inside.

- Ovidie, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- This is the main page of our website.

Here you can find models who does hardcore shootings,

so like, girl-girl, boy-girl, anal and more.

So you have information here;

name, age, place of residence, the breast,

and all the stuff that productions need to know,

and what she does, from soft to,

to double anal or whatever.

- How many girls do you have right now?

- Right now? - Working right now?

- Right now, this i don't know, I don't count.

From our hardcore, it's i think around maybe 200,

150, but it's always changing because

some of them get pregnant, some of them get married,

some of them just don't want to work in porn anymore.

So we have, the girls are always changing,

but we keep it up like I think.

- So you started eight years ago.

The tubes arrived, meanwhile.

- It was sweet, sweet beginning.

It was super nice business, everything was,

everyone was cool, and the rates was higher,

the business was, and all the girls was pretty

because the rates was a bit higher.

And then one moment, everything started falling down,

crashing, productions began closing, after crisis.

I think that half of the big productions were closed,

the Americans stopped to come.

- And the practices, did they change as well?

- Oh yeah. - It's become more rough.

It's become more, let's say, generally,

humanity

changes, so it has become more pervert, more dirty mind.

- Do you think it's because of the tubes?

- Yeah, because the porn become more accessible.

Anyone now can open Internet and find anything they want,

and when they watch this, they say,

"okay, what's the next level?

"What's the next step?"

They always curious about,

go deeper and deeper and deeper.

People become crazy.

Much crazier than before.

- So today, very easy, it's only pussy sex today.

We don't want to push too much, she is completely new,

it's her second time she is with a boy out of me

for the casting, but afterwards David, and now it's you.

She is a super adorable person, she enjoys so much,

she likes to be slapped on the ass.

So do not hesitate to be very active,

but not too much aggressive.

And,

do whatever you want in term of position,

she enjoy very much, she do fantastic, fantastic,

you will see, she is great.

So I think you will have fun with her.

Kisses, you put the hand under the dress,

and you tickle the panties, okay?

And we will begin with that.

All right?

Action.

- The difference with previous generations

is that today's actresses have grown up with porn.

They've been subjected to and accepted practices

that most producers would never before have dared

to even propose.

- We are having a model house here,

in the city center, that is close to all locations.

There is six sleeping places,

and girl living all together and

they are not like, really alone here,

they can get everything they want and we are 24 hours online

to help them with anything they need.

- History of porn, they just need to

watch all of these movies.

Actually, it is including history for the last

15 years of porn.

It's Americans, Europeans, all nationalities,

all type of porn.

It's Rocco ravishes Prague 4.

I think now it's 27 already or

34 or something.

- If the girls want to see, they have DVD.

And time to watch.

- Niki, she worked in this industry just for

I don't know, for one month, maybe, a little bit less.

And she arrived and most of the things in sex,

she tried on the shootings,

even such a simple thing like a cowgirl position,

she had never tried it in her real life.

Of course, first anal, she tried it on the set.

First double penetration, she tried it on the set.

- And she's been here only one month?

- Yeah.

- It happens often that some girls--

- try new things?

- Try new things on the set?

- Yeah.

Not such simple things like a blow job for example,

or some positions.

Of course on special positions,

we shoot in the porn movies like upside down or something.

Normally we don't do in real life, they try here.

But anal, pretty often it happens

first time on the shootings.

- Breakfast.

- Only sweets for breakfast?

- Because sweets give energy.

Nothing food.

Water and sweets.

- Why?

- Because

anal sex,

it's

food

and whoa, it's no good, no good.

But I'm wash.

It's normal.

- Okay.

- So you can, you can get white with this and this,

and

what about the shoes, it's here?

Okay, perfect.

Perfect.

Okay.

- Would you prefer, two cocks, or three cocks?

- Five.

- Shit...

What about you?

- No, I have--

- what, guys?

What

- you prefer one cock, two cocks?

You like five?

- I have three holes, so three--

- in one...

- My pussy, my ass and my mouth, so it's--

- it's perfect.

- Perfect!

Hmm? - In my ass?

- Yeah, she's had like a lot of cocks in her ass.

- Four.

- Four cocks at the same time.

- Four in your ass?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

It's enough, plus it's in your ass?

- Really? - Show me your ass!

Show me your ass!

Because I have never have two in my ass.

- But it's three cock.

It's not, it's-- - okay.

- It's not...

- Five cocks, six cocks?

I wonder what the next challenge will be.

A hemorrhage?

Death, maybe?

The worst part is that the actresses' names

hardly ever appear on these sites.

They are reduced to a series of categories.

They're like a Cannon fodder.

One gaping hole amongst many.

How can you empathize with these girls,

if after all, they don't really exist?

I haven't been in the Berlin fair for 15 years.

Here too, things have really changed.

It used to be the biggest event of its kind in Europe.

Back then, adult film stars were worshiped,

and producers would sign contracts non-stop.

But today, at each stand, the gloom is palpable.

- So how did it come to this?

And if everything is available for free,

who is making any money?

- We launched youporn 26th of August, 2006.

So we took it from very, very small traffic to

the 26th busiest website in the world.

- Did you imagine that it was going to become so,

so huge?

- Yes.

We had round about 370 million visitors a month,

used to come into youporn.

- How did you get this idea of youporn?

- Right, the very first,

the first few weeks, it was a joke and then

we kind of realized what we had on our hands.

At that point, we realized the damage

it was gonna inflict on the industry.

So we made a decision

to help content partners.

Now, we were evil.

We were reaching out to content partners, saying,

"hey, we're from youporn,

"we want you to license us your content.

"We want to help you, we want to send our members,

"our users, to your websites,

"for you to convert them into memberships."

And the general consensus from

the whole of the industry was, "you've got to be kidding.

"Why would someone that is viewing content for free

"want to pay a membership?"

But tube sites have been there for eight years.

So, if you're an old school content producer,

you would have already adapted to using the tube sites.

Those that refuse to adapt,

they're simply no longer in business.

- J-t's right.

All the people I knew have disappeared.

If it was only j-t that had come along,

then perhaps they might have survived.

But the worst was yet to come.

With manwin, Fabian thylmann built the first multinational

empire of sex.

The majority of the world's porn videos are now hosted

on websites that he owns.

The only people interested in this unknown man

are German journalists.

They were the first to reveal the obscure nature

of the company.

Who is thylmann?

What kind of guy is he?

- He is certainly what you would call a geek.

More of the technician kind of guy.

Sort of the person that has never been at a porn shoot,

and in a way, he was probably at that moment

the right person for the distribution of porn

in the 21st century.

- Can you show me how,

when it all started?

- Yeah, well I mean, this is how it all started for us.

So that's the front page of the paper

that was published in September 2012,

and it's basically

the result of a long time of work

because we started in January with our investigation.

So it took us nine months in a way to get this thing done.

All description, how it worked,

when he bought what, everything.

You've got also some documents that we could show

that led us to quite a lot of questions.

- Fabian, tell us about yourself,

where you're from, how did you get on the Internet and,

we want to know it all.

- So, Fabian.

I started online in '99, roughly, as a programmer.

And I,

I was very interested in high speed, high traffic websites,

so complicated programming.

So it's the stuff you would find

at that time was porn, with a lot of traffic.

So I started buying a couple of companies in Europe first.

But the biggest coup really i did was

buying a company in Canada,

which was back then already one of the big players

in the market.

- Can we name, is compliancy,

can we name of one of those sites?

- This biggest one is pornhub.Com.

- Pornhub, okay. - Yes.

The second one which is bigger but more known--

- how many users does pornhub--

- 16 million a day.

- 16 million daily active users?

- Yes, active users, yes.

About-- - very active.

- Yes, very active.

- Anyway, that's why we invited Fabian,

so it's not only about the materials.

- How old is he?

- 36, 37 I think.

- So he was quite young when he

became the king of porn.

- Well, I mean, that's sort of how our story started.

Because we saw this,

this video from this big porn conference in las Vegas.

And it's a four part video, it's on YouTube,

and there is suddenly coming this young German guy

on the center stage, sitting down in his sweater and

he was looking like a sort of

cheap version of mark zuckerburg or something, yeah?

And he sits down there

in front of the American porn industry

and he tells them his vision and how he's doing things.

And it's like a nobody appearing, yeah?

And for us, it was like, "wait a minute, who is this?

"And why the hell are all the others listening to him?

"What does he have to say?"

- We had roughly 65 million people on our websites each day.

Different ones.

About 450 million people a month, different ones.

- 450 million a month?

I'm not sure if I'm mixing up numbers as usual,

but that sounds like half the size of Facebook

some time ago, right?

- So, turnover a month was roughly $40 million, us.

- A month? - A month.

Yeah, I always think in months, I don't know why,

everybody else does it in years, I don't know.

And...

- You grew so fast. - Yes, that's probably,

it just kept changing so--

- well, the first thing that a reporter does is

go into the archives,

looking whatever has been published before.

So we had a list with webpages,

we had a list with company names,

and then we started to pull for every company

the record from the trade register.

In the end, we had a network of about 35 or more companies

that belonged to this empire of manwin

that Mr. thylmann was running.

We started to ask ourselves,

why do you need companies in Cyprus, for example?

Then the headquarter,

the headquarter was in Luxembourg.

So we asked ourselves, why is the headquarter in Luxembourg?

And we went to Luxembourg and when we arrived there,

I have actually photos that i can show if you like.

Then, it's a building out of concrete and glass.

We could look basically through the door in the office,

and the office was entirely empty.

There were a few pieces of furniture standing around--

- so this is the headquarter

of the biggest porn company in the world?

- This was, in 2012, the headquarter of

the biggest porn company in the world.

But the point is, in that building, we asked the neighbors

and on the lower floor, there is a Chinese bank.

And we asked the lady there and we said,

"what is going on the fourth floor, where's manwin?"

And she said in this funny Chinese voice,

"oh, there's nobody there.

"Oh, there's nobody there."

And it was weird, yeah?

And those were all things where we said,

"okay, it doesn't make sense,

"it doesn't prove anything,

"it doesn't show, okay, this must be tax evasion."

For us, in the end, obviously as a German newspaper,

we follow the German angle.

There was one company in Hamburg,

the manwin Germany company, that was very interesting to us.

Because they run this website, my dirty hobby.

The company said actually on their webpage here,

"we are run from Cyprus."

And even though we knew that the performers were

living in Germany and were shooting their movies in Germany,

the tax that was deducted was the cypiotic vat.

It's really hard to judge if everything is going

in a legal way there from the outside,

but at that point, we had a lot of reasonable doubt.

- I've heard of my dirty hobby.

It's one of Germany's largest amateur porn sites.

But what I didn't know is that it was one of

Fabian thylmann's first businesses,

and a cornerstone of his manwin empire.

- Let's see.

There, it's you.

Naughty over forty.

- I'm a German milf.

- Do you have an idea of how many fans you have?

- For my dirty hobby, over 15,000 fans.

It's a very great fan base on my dirty hobby.

- How many videos have you done?

- 500.

- 500? - Yes.

- When you do a video, you have to upload it yourself?

- Mmhmm.

- When we start with the film, i give it to my dirty hobby.

- Okay. - I can give the go,

and then it's go online.

- But they control it.

- They control it, yes, really.

But the marketing for these clips, it's our.

- Is it inconvenient to ask you how many percent

they take from your,

from your income?

- 78-- - 78%.

- 78?

- And-- - we get

22%.

- 22%.

And then we must pay tax and other things from this 22%.

It's not much.

In my next life, I'm owner of a good website.

Yeah.

- Fabian thylmann may have had his first successes

in Germany, but he made his fortune in the American market.

And it's also there that he extended his monopoly

over the entire industry.

- I was under contract with a studio called

digital playground from

late 2007 to

the middle of 2013.

And then digital playground was purchased

by a larger company called manwin,

and they have a monopoly on

the production studios in America.

One of the first things that i noticed with the new owners

was this complete lack of respect for the crew.

And they put in extremely long hours sometimes,

like especially in a large feature, 20 hour days.

I was there at 6:00 am, shoot all day,

leave set at two o'clock in the morning,

go home, sleep for a couple hours, come back the next day.

It was a capitalism machine to

the detriment of any other concerns.

You don't take care of your people.

Which then, sure enough, they've repeated

massive firings of the workers,

and that's just it.

Capitalism.

Yay.

- Have you ever met the board,

someone like Fabian thylmann?

Have you ever met him?

- I met him.

I don't necessarily believe

that he ever owned the company, really.

They're just fishy, all right?

They're just a fishy, weird company.

My fleshlight royalties, when the wire transfers come in,

go through banks in places like South Africa,

they have offices in Ireland.

It's a bunch of,

it's a bunch of men with Greek last names

and thick Greek accents claiming to be quebecois.

I just don't believe anything they say,

having worked for them, because nothing makes sense.

- I was investigating a load of online black markets,

digital activism, anonymous, that kind of culture,

that was mostly what I was writing about.

And there were rumors, and actually,

one company did, for all intents and purposes,

own a complete monopoly on porn distribution online

and no one really know about it.

They have hundreds of tube sites.

But pornhub was always their main one.

I think it's the one they focused primarily on

attracting to a female audience more,

so they took a lot more of the aggressive, extreme,

horrifying fetishes out of it

and left in all the other ones.

But also using pornhub as an advertising campaign online,

billboards, Times Square, everywhere, just kind of

recognizing that it's already popular,

but for anyone out there who may not use pornhub

or know of pornhub as their main go-to,

just show that it's a legitimate business,

because of course, if you can advertise in public,

you must be legitimate.

The natural conclusion, why would anyone think that

an evil company could put a billboard anywhere in New York?

All you need is hand

ba ba da da da

all you need is hand

ba ba da da da

all you need is hand, hand

hand is all you need

- one more time and go!

All you need is hand

ba ba da da da

all you need is hand

ba ba da da da

all you need is hand, hand

hand is all you need

- the bigger they become,

the more they can get away with.

This is how our suffering became part of pop culture,

with a little bit of cynicism, and a lot of lube.

Worst of all, everyone is lapping it up, or seems to be.

It seems that asking too many questions

would kill the excitement of it all.

- Why would anyone pay

if you gave them something for free?

Why would people choose to do the moral thing?

I don't think people in their nature

are altruistic all the time,

especially when it's something that has

the connotation of shame and secrecy.

And we're not really comfortable with our erotica

and our pornography in general.

It's easy, it's available.

- A lot of people don't even realize

the videos that they're watching on those sites

are probably not there with the permission of

the studio that produced it, or the performers or anything.

People just kind of disregard it, like,

"oh those are porn people,

"who cares if they're getting ripped off?"

People just don't have much sympathy for

porn performers or studios.

You know, in the 80s, you had the meese commission

and you had anti-porn people, like Andrea dworkin,

who were determined to put an end to all pornography.

And those people sought to really destroy

the adult entertainment industry.

And they were unsuccessful in doing that.

But then you have a company that comes along,

owning these tube sites, who's done more damage

to the adult industry than any politician

or anti-porn person could have ever dreamed of doing.

And instead of circling the wagons and putting up

a unified front against them, we've invited them in.

So, just so many people, in my opinion, have just sold out.

They said, "well, I'll just take the money."

And ethics, money talks and ethics walks.

And it's very disheartening to some extent.

- Since the beginning of the crisis,

the porn industry has been facing a sharp increase

in sexually transmitted diseases.

Because they fear losing out on work,

some actors falsify their medical tests.

In 2012, a syphilis epidemic affected the whole industry.

Ironically, during that same year,

manwin financed a large campaign against measure b,

a law that would make the use of condoms

during filming obligatory.

- Hi, I'm Tara Patrick.

- And I'm Ron Jeremy.

- A mandatory condom law will not

make our work place any safer.

But it will drive our $20 billion dollar industry

and 10,000 jobs out of la county.

- Vote no on measure b.

And keep the adult business in California.

- Sorry, you need some drink,

otherwise this will never work.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very honored to be here tonight.

Obviously, we have to find a way to stop

harmful acts against people in the industry,

which goes for both women and men.

For me, this was very important in many, many ways,

because I knew the way I ran the business.

I, in my opinion at least,

protected everyone as much as i could.

So I do prefer

people coming to my websites than going to others,

which are much more,

more underground so to speak, and do not control so much.

Thank you.

- Success proved to be fleeting.

Game over for the king of porn.

At least with Fabian thylmann, we had a name and a face.

But since manwin became mindgeek,

the picture is far less clear.

But who's behind this company?

- It's not clear.

I mean we know at the beginning,

the original company was called mansef,

and that was Stefan manos and yuissem youssef,

which was the man and the sef.

And those were allegedly the original founders.

And then, after a while, they changed their name to manwin.

And at that point, they would not say whether or not

the original owners were still involved or not.

They said, "well it's under new ownership",

but they wouldn't say who it was.

And that's when Fabian thylmann became

the face of the company.

And even then, people were like,

"is he really the owner of the company

"or is he just kind of the front man for it?"

It was still very unclear.

And then a few years ago, they rebranded their name again

to mindgeek, and they still won't say whether or not

the original owners are involved.

With other adult studios, you pretty much know

who owns the company.

But with these guys, nobody really knows

who's behind everything.

It's very kind of mysterious.

- On the paper, Mr. thylmann was the owner and ceo,

he was running the show.

Now, obviously, there are other dependencies.

There are people that gave him the money,

people that we don't know.

Then also what is weird is Mr. thylmann

was sitting in Brussels,

but the main headquarters with the most employees

and still the same thing today,

mindgeek is actually residing in Montreal in Canada.

Now from Brussels to Canada is quite a distance, yeah?

So and, I'm very certain that other managers in Canada,

the same that bought manwin and renamed it mindgeek

that they were very influential also in the days back then.

To me, it's like, of course, the Canadians

manage the show in that moment, you know?

During the course of our investigation,

we pulled up some trade register records in Cyprus.

And there was a remark on a charge.

And that was giving the number of

$362 million us dollars,

I think was the number that they gave there,

so I assume that this was sort of the amount that he got

to buy companies, other companies.

- And where does this money come from?

- Well, it's tough to say.

We tried to follow the money.

In the end we found

two guys that were former Goldman sachs bankers

in New York, wall street,

who are now working on their own ticket.

And,

they were deeply involved with the,

the moving of the money to Mr. thylmann.

But, obviously, at some point, people are not telling you

where the money is coming from anymore.

- Two journalists, two German journalists from die welt,

they say that some of the money from the loan

came from wall street, which is right here.

- Yes.

- And from a hedge fund, but, i mean,

no hedge fund never, ever invests money in porn.

- Oh yeah, you would never, i mean,

for the longest time, the only people who would finance porn

back in the early days was like, the mob.

You weren't getting a loan from the bank to shoot

the next deep throat, that wasn't gonna happen.

So, it's still that way to some extent.

You see, to this day, performers get their bank accounts

shut off from different banks,

so there's still that kind of stigma.

So I can't imagine,

Goldman sachs saying,

"here, take a bunch of money to shoot porn."

So I mean, it's,

it's mind-boggling, it's just crazy,

would they really get money from a hedge fund for that,

or was there something else involved?

It's just,

it's hard to wrap your mind around.

- Advertising campaigns, wall street money,

swanky offices in Canada,

you could almost forget that their business is pornography.

But if mindgeek seems so respectable,

why then do so many people in the business fear it so much?

- My experience was mostly a wall of silence.

I probably could have spent weeks

calling hundreds of more producers and performers and

there were people who just didn't even know

what mindgeek or manwin was,

and the ones who'd been around for a while

were much more hesitant to talk openly.

And as more publications came out,

you began to realize that many actors and producers

that went out publicly to talk against mindgeek

said that they were blacklisted as a result,

that they were blacklisted in the industry,

couldn't perform, couldn't get any deals.

There was intimidation.

You can look on several publications online where

porn stars have talked openly about being threatened

through legal documents or warnings,

and many who have been outright blacklisted,

who don't work anymore and who had to create their own

independent brand, and very small boutique site,

that they hoped people would come to.

But as we know, 95 plus percent of porn viewers online

go to tube sites.

So the majority of the porn audience,

if you want to get their attention,

you have to work with mindgeek to some degree.

So, it had this kind of

cartel, mafia feel to it more than a business model.

- The more I dig,

the more complicated it all seems to become.

The American authorities seem strangely uninterested.

The only investigation dates back to 2009 in Atlanta.

Maybe there, I will find some answers.

- Yeah, I was afraid he was gonna run into that because,

yeah, everybody will tell you about mindgeek

until you ask them on the record.

You know, when they actually have to say it

in front of a camera,

or say it with a tape recorder rolling,

then they don't want to say anything because, yeah,

they depend on mindgeek for work.

- Mike knows the dirty secrets

of the American porn industry.

He was one of the first to be questioned

by the secret services after the accounts

in Atlanta were seized.

- I got a tip from someone inside manwin who said,

"look at fortress investment group."

It turned out that fortress investment group

bought a small piece of a larger loan

that was made by cold back capital.

So cold back capital loaned to manwin $350 million dollars.

And manwin used that money

to buy the digital playground,

they used that money to buy babes.Com,

they used that money to buy redtube.

So you look at all these purchases they made,

and most of them are failing.

I cannot think of one legal business

that is making money, that mindgeek owns.

The important thing to remember here

is what mindgeek is selling.

They're selling traffic, okay?

And they are selling it

to other mindgeek companies.

And they sell it to other mindgeek companies,

and they sell it to other mindgeek companies.

And what is traffic?

It's nothing.

There's no inventory of traffic.

I can't call up a parts supplier and say,

"hey, I need more traffic,

"so you have to send me a million widgets."

They can create traffic anytime, for free.

There is no inventory, so it's very difficult to track.

It appears that their primary industry is not pornography,

but moving money

from country to country to country to country.

What we call in America money laundering.

Can I prove that?

No.

That is my opinion.

But it is well-founded.

- In the end, the judicial inquiries

remain in limbo, and some have been settled out of court.

Even in Atlanta, despite the allegations

of money laundering, the only penalty was a fine.

The empire appears to be untouchable.

Has he ever tried to contact you?

- They have contacted me many times.

Even Fabian thylmann contacted me,

and he was going to buy advertising on mikesouth.Com.

And he offered me a lot of money.

But I understood

it was not really advertising he was trying to buy,

it was my silence.

In the last three years, i have had my life threatened

five, maybe six times.

- And do you know who it is?

- No.

- No? - No.

- It's anonymous. - They are anonymous.

- Okay. - And, you know,

if they call me on the telephone and say,

"I'm going to kill you",

or if they send me an email and say,

"I'm going to kill you",

that doesn't concern me very much.

But the last time, they left a box on my front door.

It had a toy fire truck and a fire extinguisher

and a book of matches and a card that said,

"I'm sorry your house burned down."

To me, that is a direct threat.

And so I carry a gun wherever i go.

Honestly, I would hope that i never have

to draw my gun on someone.

I hope that never happens.

But if it does happen, I will do it.

- Throughout my investigation,

I heard some wild rumors.

Mafias across the world seemed to be implicated,

in south America, the middle east, eastern Europe,

and even Asia.

I'm not sure if we will ever get to the bottom of it all.

Ultimately, today's porn industry is all about

big Internet companies that generate billions of hits

that have no connection with the workforce

at the end of the production line.

Tube sites are not the only websites

that took advantage of the Internet.

Another lucrative venture is the live cam,

a kind of peep show 2.0.

It's one of the premium offers to which the video sites

try to redirect consumers.

- Hello.

- Welcome in my room.

- The girls perform for consumers for a price,

and the it platforms connect the two.

Even porn has not escaped the uber-ization of work.

The market leader is live Jasmin,

also one of mindgeek's main customers

in terms of advertising space.

But live Jasmin is more transparent than mindgeek,

and they agreed to open their doors to me.

- This is the product development department.

These are the guys who are actually working on

the development of live Jasmin

and our live streaming products.

So this is the finance department here.

Here we have the legal department, hr,

office management, vr department.

- How many employees are working here in Luxembourg?

- Around 200.

200, and most of them,

more than half of them are developers.

For example, here are the guys who are developing

the platform for the models.

- It's funny because it doesn't look like

an adult company at all.

- No, it's not.

It could be a bank because we have all the,

all the roles and all the activities and

staff that's needed for a bank.

It's a well-structured big company

that stands behind this business.

So this why we don't consider ourselves as adult company

because we are it company.

We are company which is responsible

for development of the platform.

We give the platform

and we give them to the members and models,

and they can meet on the platform.

- In fact, you never meet the girls?

It's very-- - not really, no.

Physically we don't meet the girls because

they are the other side of the world,

and we just give them a platform.

- How many cam girls are working for live Jasmin?

- Well, that's, that's a tricky question because

they are, lots of models come and leave.

I mean, we have registered around two million models

who are registered for the website.

But I mean, I would say, actively,

there are around 50,000 who are active currently

on the website, that they have account

and they come online.

- Far from Luxembourg and its business districts,

thousands of workers struggle to make a living.

Here in timisoara,

I get the feeling that a new form of exploitation

of sex workers has developed.

- I'm 25.

I was working as a waitress

in restaurants.

It was pretty hard and

I wasn't earning as much money as I wished to,

because I have plans.

I want to finish university.

And my mother,

it's gone in another country for work.

So I'm staying alone and,

and I have to pay for all.

So...

- Romanians, we produce 50% of all incomes in the world.

Half from this industry is produced by Romanians.

From my opinion, I think that there are active models,

at least 10,000,

in Romania.

- I'm from arad.

It's near from timisoara.

I have four sisters more

and one little brother.

My mother is cooking in a big restaurant,

and my father, I don't know.

I saw him only one time in my life.

I think I will do this job

until I reach my goal.

And I open a little business for me.

And, 'til I have a family.

Guys, if you want, there is more.

You want a bit more?

- From here, they are not so wealthy.

They are coming from poor families.

And they are struggling to build a future.

- My life is like this.

I work, I sleep.

I work, I sleep.

I don't do nothing.

- How many hours per day do you work?

- Eight, nine, 10.

- Any you told me that

some girls are from Colombia?

- Yeah.

Colombia is the next country competing with Romania with

numbers of webcam orders.

- Colombia.

- Yeah. - Why Colombia?

- Because I think they are poor also.

- But, this is this life.

We have to fight for have something.

We can't have all the things without, make something.

- The platforms take on average of 60 to 70% share

of what the customers pay.

For a girl working in a studio, her fees are even halved.

But users always beg for free shows

and the girls waste their time.

Sometimes the camgirls go home at the end of the day

having earned no money at all.

- We figured out that every day, maybe 200 or 300 people

at least visit their chatrooms.

Figure out,

customers that are entering and said, "you are a bitch",

or said bad things to them.

And also the hardest part outside here it's that

they renounce their social life.

So for my opinion,

it's a job that takes

from one year to five year maximum.

- How much do they earn per month?

The average?

- Average, around

$1,400 us dollars.

The average.

- What's the turnover of live Jasmin?

- It's, I can tell approximate number,

it's around $305 million a year.

We have our incomes growing year by year.

We can grow, we usually grow our incomes,

it depends on the year but more than 10% every year.

Sometimes even more.

- And why are you in Luxembourg?

- Well, there were several reasons for Luxembourg that time.

The obvious reason would be to say that yeah,

it's for the tax reasons but

we are always focusing on having

the best people working with us.

The best people, especially in technology.

And,

in terms of having an attractive environment for people,

worldwide, I think Luxembourg is a good place.

I think we are really happy to be here and

we want to stay here.

- So, smitty, I want you to remove your clothes

and down on your knees,

that you are positioned in front of me.

Great, very good, my boy.

You like my boots?

Leather.

Clean my dirty soles.

Lick my heels.

Very well.

Now, I want you to put the plastic bag in your hand,

and then around your neck.

Use that tape.

You will have no air.

So do it.

And how I promise you, i will show you my ass.

- In principle, it's a private exchange

between consenting adults.

But if problems arise, who is responsible?

- You see?

What do you think about her?

You like it?

She can do very dirty things in private like

eating poo and drinking pee.

Most of the Chinese girl are submissive ones.

It's asking just 50 credits for natural squirt,

including blow job, that's almost nothing,

less than one dollar.

So it's, in my opinion, selling herself very,

very cheap.

- With the arrival of the sex multinationals,

what we knew as porn has given way to a sector subject

to the same rules of an ultra-liberal world.

An unrestrained capitalism, a scorched-earth policy,

a complete disregard for workers.

When you think about it,

mindgeek is a little like the monsanto of porn.