YNOT – Axel Braun Productions on Friday filed a federal lawsuit accusing 7,098 John Doe defendants of sharing illegal copies of a porn parody recently released by Vivid Entertainment.According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, the defendants employed BitTorrent indexes to share Batman XXX: A Porn Parody, one of several Braun-written and -directed sexually explicit spoofs based on well-known comic-book characters. The lawsuit is the largest of its kind to date, surpassing by thousands of defendants similar suits filed against individual file-traders by adult companies including Lucas Entertainment, Titan Media, Third World Media and Larry Flynt’s porn empire.
Braun attorney Kenneth Ford of the Adult Copyright Group has asked the court to allow discovery of the defendants’ legal identities by subpoenaing records from the alleged pirates’ internet service providers.
The mechanics of the willful copyright-infringement claims are familiar, and the practice of suing individuals instead of the networks they employ is becoming more common in the adult industry. The Recording Industry Association of America famously employed the tactic of suing individuals from 2003-2008, but abandoned the practice for a number of reasons, including public backlash and the onerous nature of the pursuit. In recent months, a British law firm, ACS: Law, has come under public fire and professional investigation for bullying innocent defendants into paying relatively minor settlements because they could not afford to fight the allegations in court.
Earlier this year, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver resurrected the “sue-’em-all” philosophy on behalf of independent mainstream studios like Voltage Pictures, which reportedly (and understandably) was incensed to find copies of its Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker circulating on peer-to-peer online networks.
Typically, the attorneys seek subpoenas to force ISPs to identify their users based on internet protocol address. Then the attorneys offer the alleged file-sharers an opportunity to settle out of court for a fraction of what a judge might award in damages. It is unknown how many Does eventually settle, but as yet none of the mainstream or adult mass lawsuits have resulted in actual trials. Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she doubts many, if any, of the lawsuits will reach trial, because the process is expensive and time-consuming. In addition, she said, legal analysts frown on lawsuits that lump hundreds or thousands of people together under one umbrella suit, because none of the defendants is likely to receive a fair evaluation of his or her part of the case based on the facts related solely to that individual.
Braun’s attorney Ford told CNET he isn’t bluffing and intends to follow the defendants all the way through the system on behalf of his clients.
