YNOT – Two gay porn consumers are $1.5 million poorer apiece after failing to respond to a lawsuit accusing them of illegally sharing an adult studio’s copyrighted content.
Whether gay adult studio Flava Works ever will collect the money is up in the air, but the awards themselves are notable because two different Illinois judges found the plaintiff’s arguments and proof of theft compelling enough to levy the maximum in damages. Both decisions were rendered in October.
Kywan Fisher of Virginia and Cormelian Brown of Delaware were the only two of 15 defendants who failed to respond when notified Flava Works had sued them for copyright infringement. All defendants in both lawsuits at one time were paying members of a Flava Works website. According to documents filed with both courts, members are allowed to download copyrighted content for their personal use, but the 15 defendants shared their private stashes on BitTorrent sites including Fileserve.com and Gay-Torrents.net, violating not only the website’s terms and conditions but also Flava Works’ proprietary interest in intellectual property.
As part of its cases against Fisher and Brown, Flava Works presented evidence that every website member is assigned a unique identifying number when he or she joins. Thereafter, any time the member downloads content from the website, an encrypted copy of the unique identifier is embedded in the material. The system allowed Flava Works to track copies of ethnic gay porn movies including MiXXXed Nuts and several Thug Boy titles through nearly 3,500 downloads from Gay-Torrents.net alone.
Judges John Lee and Joan Lefkow found in the plaintiff’s favor on 10 copies each, awarding Flava Works a staggering $1.5 million per case, plus attorney fees and court costs.
“That was the maximum we were entitled to, so it wasn’t unexpected,” Flava Works Chief Executive Officer Phillip Bleicher told Forbes.com. “But I thought they might tone it down.”
Cases against the remainder of the accused continue in Lee’s and Lefkow’s courts, but Bleicher said he wants others who might be tempted to “share” Flava Works content to know they can’t escape the same fate. Over the past two years, the studio has caught 40 of its reported 10,000 members pirating content, and it doesn’t intend to let any them get away with the illegal activity. So far, the majority have responded to letters or phone calls offering absolution in return for a fee, but those who don’t can tell their story to a judge.
“We want to go all the way,” Bleicher said. “We want them to understand you can’t just steal.”
He also said the company’s zero-tolerance policy for porn-sharers includes immediate banishment from the rolls of Flava Works’ site members. The studio maintains a database of those it has caught uploading content to BitTorret sites and one day hopes to share the list with other adult website owners.
