Porn website xhamster.com has been told by judges in Amsterdam that it must stop hosting amateur films for an audience in the Netherlands if the participants have not given consent for them to be placed online.

The case was brought by Dutch anti child-abuse campaign group Expertisebureau Online Kindermisbruik (EOKM) which previously had similar legal success against porn site vagina.nl.

The EOKM said it is aware that porn websites sometimes carry amateur footage. ‘We are sometimes requested to help have it removed, but that is not easy,’ director Arda Gerkens said earlier.

Hammy Media, the Cyprus-based owner of xhamster.com, said it checks all material prior to publication and does not include any illegal images on its website. It also disputed the claim that is was targeting the Netherlands.

The court said that Hammy Media has a Dutch sub domain (nl.xhamster.com ) and includes Dutch language films, some of which have been machine translated into Dutch. Hammy Media ‘therefore focuses partly on the Netherlands and so much have realized that it could be called to account under Dutch law,’ the court ruling said.

The court ordered Hammy Media to take down any videos which it is alerted too as being problematic by EOKM within three days or face a fine of at least €10,000 per video, up to a maximum of €30,000 per film.