Litigious Porn Producers Claim People Infringe Even If They Accidentally Downloaded Its Porn Disguised As Popular Works

from the seems-like-a-stretch dept

TorrentFreak has a fascinating article about how porn producers Io Group/Titan Media, who it should be mentioned have a history of being involved in questionable lawsuits, aren't just doing the standard IP-address shakedown of thousands of people for cash -- they appear to be going after people who clearly downloaded one of their files by accident. At least some of the files Io/Titan is suing about were clearly mislabeled, and had the names of mainstream popular works instead. In fact, Titan's lawyers even make this clear in their "demand" letters for people to just pay up without going to court. The threat letters name exactly what the file was called, even if that content wasn't actually in the file.

One woman even told the court that she had absolutely downloaded the file in question -- but did so believing it was someone else's content (Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto) -- and as soon as she realized it was gay porn, she deleted it. Now, some may reasonably argue that she may deserve some punishment for downloading such works in the first place, but it raises a fascinating legal question. If you download a file that you think is music from Ryuichi Sakamoto, but it actually turns out to be gay porn from Io that you don't want... have you actually infringed on Io's copyrights? At the very least, I can't see how Io can claim any legitimate "harm" in that situation. This was someone who did not want the work in question at all, so it's not like it impacts the market...

TorrentFreak posits that this could be a honeypot, with someone purposely mislabeling files to get more downloads (and to issue more demand letters). The company (not surprisingly) denies all of this, saying they haven't set up a honeypot. But, I imagine there's going to be a lot more scrutiny on them either way.

Filed Under: copyright, honeypot, porn
Companies: io group, titan media

Why Are Gay Porn Producers So Quick To Get Involved In Shakedown Copyright Pre-Settlement Schemes?

from the hoping-people-pay-an-embarassment-tax? dept

Over in the UK, where firms like Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law made the whole mass "pre-settlement" letter "pay us or we'll sue your for infringement" practice popular, it seemed that many of their early customers were gay porn producers. And now, we're seeing something similar in the US. While US Copyright Group is getting lots of attention for bringing this sort of campaign to the US with some independent films, the gay porn producers are jumping into the game quickly.

In July, we noted that one such gay porn producer had filed a bunch of lawsuits for sharing films via BitTorrent, and now THREsq is reporting that litigious porn producer Io Group is also suing a bunch of John Does for the same thing. If Io sounds familiar, that's because they were also one of the first to sue a video site for infringement, in this case Veoh, in a lawsuit that Io lost.

Of course, with gay porn movie claims, the privacy questions for ISPs who received demands to turn over names associated with IP addresses becomes a bit trickier. One reason why gay porn producers may be drawn to these sorts of legal actions is because they're assuming that at least some of those they target may not be "out," and having it go public that they were being sued for accessing gay porn could present a bigger issue -- so they may be more likely to pay up quickly. But for ISPs, this also makes the privacy issues a lot clearer. I could definitely see some people turn around and sue ISPs right back for revealing their private info in these cases.

THREsq notes that many ISPs are getting sick of these pre-settlement schemes, but it's not yet clear how far they're willing to go to stand up for the privacy of their subscribers.

Filed Under: copyright, gay porn, pre-settlement
Companies: io group