YNOT – A federal raid on a warehouse and private residence in California netted thousands of illegally reproduced adult DVDs, exposing a pirating operation even larger and more diverse than authorities suspected.
U.S. Marshals, acting on a court order, seized a massive stash of illicit gay adult content from a home and warehouse belonging to David Aldorf. The raid resulted from a successful two-year lawsuit that saw Media Partners and BelAmi awarded a judgment of more than $4,975,000 against Aldorf and his business, Media West Entertainment. Aldorf was not present during the raid.
In addition to adult content belonging to BelAmi and Media Partners’ CockyBoys lines, the raid uncovered material owned by a number of other studios including Falcon, Raging Stallion, JOCKS, Treasure Island, Dark Alley, Bait Bus, EuroCreme, Men.com, Next Door Entertainment, Staxus, Helix Studios and Chaos Men.
“The raid proved it was much worse than we thought, because in addition to thousands of copies of the 33 titles listed in the seizure order, thousands more copies from other well-known studios were discovered,” said Gill Sperlein, the attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the case.
Sperlein also said the raid was necessary, as the court’s decision did nothing to curtail Aldorf’s illegal activity. During the raid, marshals discovered hundreds of DVDs packaged and ready to be shipped to customers, allegedly as free premium items attached to the purchase of other merchandise from Media West.
“BelAmi has seen strong DVD sales even given a market that is being killed off left and right,” said Chief Operating Officer Stuart Davis. “The more people like David Aldorf that are stopped, the better the chances BelAmi and other studios will have continued success with our DVD lines in the years to come. Let this be a reminder to pirates that there are companies who will fight to protect our content.”
According to court documents, Media West utilized the websites JrDVD.com and MaleMall.com to sell DVDs online. The company also operated a mail-order business using a catalog listing hundreds of DVDs for as little as $5 each. Each paid order earned customers a free DVD from a name-brand studio. Media Partners alleged in the lawsuit that Aldorf and Media West employed the MaleMall.com website in an attempt to engender consumer confusion with Media Partners’ trademarked name StudMall.com.
“With so much attention paid to online piracy these days, I hope this highlights the huge problem the DVD business has been facing for over a decade: people like David Aldorf going unchecked for years while making money on the back of hardworking producers, singlehandedly helping to kill off the DVD business as we know it,” Sperlein said. “Those days are soon over.
“Next we will be looking at the replicators and printers who knowingly aid people who illegally pirate and distribute other people’s content,” he continued. “Shockingly, during the raid documents in plain view were discovered that showed Mr. Aldorf was using one of the industry’s largest replicators to replicate much of the product being pirated, in addition to a brand new in-house replication system which was discovered as well. This was a large-scale, fully functioning and thriving operation.”
