Washington Post
Solomon Friedman is addressing a standing-room-only crowd in Hollywood, rooster-printed socks peeking out from his New Balance sneakers from his perch onstage.
Friedman, a lawyer who is also trained as a rabbi, is an unlikely face of Pornhub, which offers free, usually short, adult videos classified by content to 130 million daily visitors, according to the site. He speaks with the confidence and clarity of a college professor because he is one at the University of Ottawa. He certainly looks the part with his black-rimmed glasses, closely cropped beard and gray sport coat.
Pornhub also has few friends within the industry. Its original business model was ripping off copyrighted content, streaming it on its website free and raking in cash from advertising. People stopped paying for porn. Eventually, Pornhub gave performers and directors a way to monetize their content, but the damage was done.
“It was an absolute disaster for the porn industry,” said sex worker Cherie DeVille, who spoke on the condition that The Post use only her stage name for safety reasons. “Their entire business model, like Napster back in the day, was to steal. … The first time Pornhub came to AVN [another porn conference] people spat on them.”
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