YNOT – Miami-based Flava Works has filed another lawsuit accusing an online social network of enabling and encouraging copyright infringement. The suit — which names as defendants myVidster.com, parent company Salsa Indy LLC, the registered owner of the company and 26 “John Doe” users — is the third of its kind to be filed by the gay adult studio in Chicago’s U.S. District Court.According to the complaint, Marques Rondale Gunter created and promotes myVidster.com as “a social video bookmarking and backup service that lets you collect, share and search your videos. You can also explore video collections from other users using myVidster.” In addition, the site allows users to post links to third-party websites that harbor pirated video files.
“At any given time, an enormous number of infringing digital files are available for downloading through the defendant’s network,” the suit claims.
Particularly galling to Flava Works is that Gunter sells storage space on myVidster’s servers at prices that range from $3 for 5GB (approximately 300 videos) to $8 for 20GB (1,000 videos), then encourages customers to invite their friends to join the service.
“Gunter has developed a business model whereby members are encouraged to bookmark, store and share copyrighted materials and videos,” according to documents filed with the court. “By offering storage space at very low costs … and encouraging users to invite friends and others to view the users’ online stored videos defendant Gunter … has purposefully created a system that makes it more difficult for copyright owners to monitor the site for infringement. Defendant Gunter purposefully facilitates the infringement to increase traffic to the website, thereby driving up ad revenue.”
Nearly 16,000 postings at myVidster offer clips or full-length movies bearing Flava Works registered or common-law trademarks and servicemarks, the complaint alleges. Many of the postings appear in Google searches.
On at least four occasions during 2010, Flava Works’ attorneys delivered takedown notices to myVidster and its hosting company as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but the companies “took little or no action toward stopping, reprimanding, or banning repeat infringers,” according to the complaint. Moreover, “[d]efendants are engaging in this course of action willfully and with full knowledge and awareness of the superior trademark rights of plaintiff and with the purpose and intent of confusing the relevant trade and public into mistakenly believing that defendants’ services are associated with, affiliated with or licensed by plaintiff” in order to increase the website’s revenues.
“Due to myVidster’s lack of checks and balances, it practically promotes copyright infringement of vast amounts of work,” said Flava Works Chief Executive Officer Phillip Bleicher. “It even specifically allows for ‘adult’ clips, of which a majority are full-length videos. myVidster then profits off our work from charging subscription fees and running their own porn ads.”
The lawsuit seeks unspecified statutory and punitive damages, injunctions barring continued infringement and transfer of the domain name myVidster.com to Flava Works.
Bleicher estimated a damage award could top $1 million if the action is successful.
