June 02, 2012, 7:35 AM — It shouldn't surprise anyone that an online service with more than 900 million members will attract some attention from the porn industry, as Facebook has through the years. That attention has spurred the social network to fight smut peddlers in court, with mixed results. Here's a brief history of Facebook's legal battles with the XXX set.
December 2007.Facebook sues SlickCash, a Canadian company specializing in Internet porn, for attempting to access the social network's servers at least some 200,000 times to obtain information on its users. According to AVN, an adult entertainment news website, that case was settled in April 2008. Under the deal, a permanent injunction was issued against the individuals involved in the incident and they promised not to become members of Facebook for ten years following the date of the settlement.
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October 2009.Facebook is awarded $711 million in a civil judgment against Spam King Sanford Wallace who flooded the social network with junk messages. According to the lawsuit, Wallace and two cronies launched a phishing campaign on Facebook to promote porn and gambling sites and were guilty of more than 14.2 million violations of the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act.
April 2011.Facebook files a trademark infringement lawsuit PDF against Face Book of Sex website. Lawsuit alleges that the site rips off Facebook features such as profiles and a "like" button. It also encourages members to upload photos, preferably of the pornographic variety. About a year after filing the lawsuit, Facebook obtained control of the facebookofsex.com domain.
