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Pornotube faces stiff lawsuit and fine |
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Written by Felix Da Silva (fdasilva@bitnip.com)
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Tuesday, 11 December 2007 |
 Vivid Entertainment Group, the world’s leading adult film producer, today sued Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network (AEBN) and related companies for unlawfully posting or allowing third parties to post copyrighted Vivid content on its 'PornoTube.com' website.
According to BusinessWire, Vivid requested a jury trial to hear its claims that the defendants,
...have used technological advancements to willfully infringe copyrights belonging
to Plaintiff, depriving Plaintiff of the lawful rewards that accompany
creativity, effort and innovation...[Pornotube.com]'s business plan depends on the uploading,
posting, display and performance of copyrighted audio-visual works belonging to
Vivid and others... [Pornotube] knowingly built a library of infringing works to draw
Internet traffic Vivid contends that PornoTube’s infringement cannot be fully
compensated or measured in damages. The
suit asks for a permanent injunction to bar future infringement and damages of
at least $4.5 million. The suit also noted that the
law provides for damages up to $150,000 for each willfully infringed work.
Vivid’s attorney Paul Cambria said
Vivid has already found dozens of violations of its copyrights, and AEBN needs
to know that it cannot continue pilfering Vivid’s
products no matter how they might reformat or reshape it. Once they put up any
material on their site and fit it into their format, they are no longer just a
‘pass through’ medium—they have become producers or distributors under the law. For research purposes, I visted Pornotube.com to see what kind of videos are being hosted there. The claims by Vivid does seem to be valid and that the site contains mostly copyright infringing material.
Granted that there are some home made or 'amateur' pornography but according to the top all time most viewed videos, they're all professionally made and most likely infringes copyright.
Some might think that this is not important because it's porn but this case is no different than Viacom suing Youtube for $1 billion dollars. The porn industry is a big industry which brings in billions every year and they deserve equal protection and enforcement.
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