The Porn Guardian
MEL Films traveled to Sofia, Bulgaria to meet the woman whose job is to keep pirated porn off the internet
For Sylvia Nikolova, browsing for porn is a 9-to-5 thing. Day in and day out, she scans tube sites, torrents and blogs, searching for adult content that’s been posted without the permission of its creators. When she finds this unlicensed material, she flags it and monitors the host sites until the pirated files are removed.
Her employer is the U.S.-based Porn Guardian, which porn studios and distributors like Vivid and Hustler hire to bring pirates “to their knees” — according to their tagline. Nikolova is their foot soldier, taking down porn pirates from the comfort of coffee shops around her hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria. At a glance, Nikolova looks like just another freelancer, that is, until you peek over her shoulder at the porn scenes streaming across her screen—something MEL got a chance to do this summer.
