LOS ANGELES and MIAMI – Porn megalith MindGeek is fighting simultaneous copyright infringement lawsuits — one as the accuser and one as the accused.
The two suits were filed days apart on opposite U.S. coasts and make very similar allegations.
In the first, filed Oct. 13 in Los Angeles federal court, MindGeek accuses WGCZ S.R.O and owners Stephane and Deborah Pacaud of using a network of tube sites including XVideos.com and XNXX.com to “copy, adapt, publicly perform, display, distribute and otherwise disseminate to the public” content belonging to MindGeek, Brazzers, Reality Kings, Digital Playground, Wicked Pictures and others.
“…[D]uring the past 18 months alone, defendants transmitted (i.e. publicly performed) copies of the subject works in excess of 100 million [emphasis in original] times…,” the lawsuit states.
In addition, MindGeek alleges WGCZ does not comply with Digital Millennium Copyright Act safe harbor provisions and therefor is ineligible for protection under the act. WGCZ, located in the Czech Republic, is not subject to the DMCA and similar U.S. law, but voluntarily agreed to abide by the terms, MindGeek alleges.
However, “[d]efendants have failed to expeditiously remove infringing material after receiving actual and/or constructive notice of such infringement,” court documents state. “Defendants frequently have waited weeks or months to take down infringing content after receiving a formal written notice of infringement from plaintiffs. In some instances, plaintiffs have been required to send multiple notices of infringement before their content is removed from the XVideos Websites.
Additionally, “[d]efendants have made no serious effort to terminate members of the XVideos websites who consistently infringe plaintiffs’ copyrights (i.e. “repeat infringers”) or to implement a repeat infringer policy,” the lawsuit continues. “Many users retain active accounts with the XVideos websites even after having been the subject of dozens of claims of infringement.”
MindGeek seeks up to $15,000 per infringement and a restraining order to prevent WGCZ from displaying copyrighted materials belonging to MindGeek and associated companies in the future.
The second case, filed in federal court in Miami, puts the legal shoe on the other foot. In that case, Hush Hush Entertainment — which owns the labels Blackzilla, Dog Fart Video, Bone Digital, Blacks on Blondes, and others — accuses MindGeek of hijacking content unlawfully uploaded to MindGeek’s free tube site Pornhub and using the pirated material to feed the video library on the related pay site Pornhub Premium.
“Infringing adult content is uploaded onto the Pornhub.com website, utilized by defendants to collect plaintiff’s copyrighted works for unlawful and unauthorized display,” the lawsuit alleges. “Defendants then, on their own, transfer, direct and control such content so that it can be viewed on defendants’ new pay-only membership site, Pornhubpremium.com. Once on the Pornhubpremium.com website, members can download any content they desire, including infringing content, an unlimited number of times. There are no limits as to how someone can further use or replicate a video once on the Pornhubpremium.com website.
“In addition, the file is accessible to anyone on the internet,” the complaint continues. “Thus, defendants offer nothing less than a file distribution network that relies upon infringed content. It is merely a pirate network in the adult entertainment industry.”
Finding pirated content on tube sites is de rigueur, but Hush Hush alleges MindGeek engages in intentional theft.
Hush Hush “discovered numerous copyrighted works on Pornhubpremium.com that were not provided by [Hush Hush], and were not authorized for display on Pornhubpremium.com,” the lawsuit states. Furthermore, although users are allowed to upload content and in sometimes do so illegally without Pornhub Premium’s knowledge, “plaintiff’s copyrighted videos on Pornhubpremium.com were not uploaded by members of Pornhubpremium.com. The posting dates of the videos and photographs predate the inception of Pornhubpremium. And, the videos mirror Plaintiff’s copyrighted works displayed without authorization on Pornhub.com.
“In short, defendants make money through its premium website’s monthly subscription fee,” the filing continues. “Defendants’ ‘premium’ website contains content owned by plaintiff that was downloaded, transferred, directed or otherwise provided access by defendants from their free site to their pay site so that defendants could directly benefit from infringement of plaintiff’s content.”
The lawsuit states as of the date of filing, Hush Hush had found 47 of its copyrighted works displayed on 304 Pornhub Premium URLs.
Hush Hush also seeks a restraining order and up to $150,000 per infringement.
