YNOT – Cecil Howard’s venerable Command Cinema studio has filed a lawsuit claiming two websites owned by a Houston company are selling copies of Command’s classic adult titles without authorization.
Filed May 10 in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas, Houston Division, the suit alleges ClassicPornBox.com and MegaClassicPorn.com, both owned by a Houston-based company called Pinnacle Entertainment, allow users to purchase and download five Command Cinema titles: Babylon Pink, Foxtrot, Dangerous Stuff, Neon Nights and Platinum Paradise. The lawsuit also names as defendants Floyd Edward Hodges and Ray Reiter, who are thought to be Pinnacle’s owners.
Producer-director Howard, who owns Command’s library, said the only authorized online outlet for his company’s intellectual property is HotMovies.com. He was both saddened and angered by the discovery of the alleged infringement.
“Those are some of my best known and most beloved titles,” Howard said. “It hurts. So much work and financial investment went into producing these movies, and I’ve worked hard to protect their integrity in every way. It really gets my goat that people are profiting from the investment of time and money I made.”
According to the lawsuit, filed by Denton, Texas-based attorney Evan Stone, “Defendants Reiter and Hodges, individually and/or through their company Pinnacle Entertainment, are copying, duplicating, reproducing, advertising, distributing, selling, and/or offering for sale items in this judicial district that infringe Plaintiff’s exclusive rights under U.S. copyright law.”
Pinnacle’s websites allegedly offer paid subscribers the ability to download “a wide selection of digital files containing copies of adult motion pictures.”
Among other things, Howard’s lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring further infringement of Command Cinema’s intellectual property rights, destruction of all unauthorized copies of the subject movies, legal fees and court costs, and unspecified financial damages.
Howard said the alleged infringement was brought to his attention by the HotMovies staff, who reported having received a tip from Eric Green at copyright watchdog Removeyourcontent LLC.
“I know HotMovies makes every effort to ensure the original producer or holder of rights for every movie on their site is properly compensated,” said Green, whose company provides services to HotMovies. “Our job is to help protect those same businesses from website operators who don’t have the same type of scruples. I’m glad for Howard’s sake that we found these guys.”
Once the files were discovered, Green said they were purchased to ensure that, in fact, the movies being advertised were the same ones being sold. They were. HotMovies and Removeyourcontent subsequently offered to help Howard finance the legal battle against the alleged infringers.
No court date has been set for the case.
