SAN FRANCISCO—The German owners of a gay adult video-sharing website found a big surprise waiting for them at last weekend’s Internext trade show: A lawsuit with their names on it.
Io Group Inc., parent company of gay adult studio Titan Media, served MonsterCockTube.com owners Thorsten Palicki and Maik Herrmann with a copyright-infringement suit while the men were on U.S. soil at the trade show in Hollywood, Fla. According to General Counsel Gill Sperlein, Titan filed the original lawsuit in August 2008 and has been chasing Palicki and Herrmann through an evolving web of shell companies ever since.
The amended complaint with which Palicki and Herrmann were served is the third to be submitted to the court and the first to name the two men as respondents. Previously, as soon as Titan served the corporate entities listed as the owners of MonsterCockTube, the corporations dissolved and ownership of the website was transferred to another business entity in a new country, Sperlein told AVN. In every case, the new corporation was owned or controlled at least in part by Palicki and Herrmann.
When the suit originally was filed, MonsterCockTube was owned by Antelope Media LLC of Arizona. Antelope dissolved nine days after being served, and MonsterCockTube was transferred to a British company, Sunrise Media Ltd., which disappeared when ownership was transferred to the current domain registrant, Newhaven, located in The Netherlands.
According to documents filed with the court, “Defendants, and each of them, have used technological advancements to engage in massive willful infringement of copyrights belonging to Plaintiff and others and has thus deprived Plaintiff of the lawful rewards that accompany creativity, effort and entrepreneurship. Defendants’ blatant disregard for copyright laws threatens Plaintiff’s business and the businesses of others.”
Moreover, Titan alleges MonsterCockTube’s management did nothing to respond to takedown notices rendered in accordance with provisions outlined in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and similar foreign legislation. In addition, not only did MonsterCockTube’s controllers solicit uploads of copyright-protected files from at least nine unnamed respondents, but MonsterCockTube also profited from the unauthorized use of the copyrighted materials by selling premium memberships to the site, according to the lawsuit.
“Defendants have reproduced, publically displayed and distributed by and through the Monster website at least 10 unauthorized video files of Io Group works. Defendants’ customers have viewed those unauthorized files over twenty-six thousand (26,000) times,” the complaint notes.
The “willful infringement” continued even after Titan filed the original complaint.
“Plaintiff…alleges that Defendants’ business plan depends on the uploading, posting, display and performance of copyrighted audiovisual works belonging to Io Group Inc. and others,” the court documents state. “In other words, Defendants deliberately and knowingly built a library of infringing works to draw Internet traffic to the subject website, enabling them to sell memberships to view the works while also increasing the value of their business and earning large amounts of revenue.
“Plaintiff…[also] alleges that Defendants have deliberately chosen not to take reasonable precautions to deter the rampant copyright infringement on the Monster website. Defendants make no attempt to indentify the individuals providing the works, where the individuals obtained the works, or whether the individuals have authority to further reproduce and distribute the works. Instead of attempting to monitor the uploading of works to their website, Defendants have decided to shift the burden onto copyright owners to monitor the website on a continual basis to detect infringing files and to send notices demanding that they take down the infringing files. Defendants have willfully chosen this approach because it allows them to profit from infringement while leaving copyright owners, such as Plaintiff, with the continued expense of monitoring the website and without sufficient means to prevent continued infringement in the future.”
Titan seeks an unspecified amount in financial compensation as well as injunctions barring Palicki and Herrmann from continuing to infringe Titan copyrights and trademarks and from engaging in any further domain-name transfers in an attempt to avoid pursuit.
Sperlein told AVN he and Titan much rather would have worked out an amicable deal with MonsterCockTube and its owners, and Titan remains amenable to a settlement instead of the jury trial requested in the complaint. However, the longer the matter remains in the court—and especially the longer the respondents attempt to evade the lawsuit—the more expensive the matter will become for everyone involved.
“I don’t know what kind of resolution we could have come to if they had opened a dialog with us, but they decided to play a corporate shell game,” Sperlein said. “This weekend should have convinced them that’s not going to work. Whatever they do, we’re going to keep coming until we get them. And we will.”
The lawsuit may turn out to be the least of the German men’s woes. Reportedly well-known and liked within the gay adult industry, Palicki and Herrmann also own and operate the AlphaMaleCash affiliate program. Prior to service of the lawsuit at Internext, the connection between AlphaMaleCash and MonsterCockTube was not common knowledge. Consequently, at least one large gay affiliate program has cut all ties to AlphaMaleCash.
Badpuppy, which prior to discovering the connection between the entities enjoyed a mutual affiliate relationship with AlphaMaleCash, has severed all ties with the latter until the lawsuit is settled. According to Marketing and Advertising Manager Lisa Turner, Badpuppy was caught by surprise when the connection was made public on the gay webmaster forum GayMainStreet.com.
“We really didn’t know,” Turner told AVN. “I’ve known those two [Palicki and Herrmann] for three or four years, and I didn’t know. Their pay sites contain all original content.”
Turner described Palicki and Herrmann as “nice guys,” but said Badpuppy would maintain its distance from the men and their business ventures pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
“An email notification was quickly sent to Alphamalecash, notifying them that their affiliate account was being de-activated,” she posted in a thread at GayMainStreet. “They were asked to cease promoting Badpuppy and any other site in our program, whether by listing or banner, on all of their properties. In addition, we had to inform them that all of their site listings on our directory sites were being removed as well.”
The move was one Turner said she hopes she does not have to make often.
“Whether we like somebody or not, if they’re doing or we believe they’re doing something illegal, [Badpuppy believes] disassociation is appropriate,” she told AVN. “It’s one thing not to know [about alleged illegal activity], but another thing to know and ignore. We let the legal system take its own course. If something changes, we may reverse our decision. We certainly would not pass a judgment that we couldn’t change back.”
Neither Palicki, Herrmann nor any representatives of AlphaMaleCash or MonsterCockTube responded to AVN’s requests for comments. Turner told AVN no one had responded to her notices to AlphaMaleCash by Tuesday afternoon, either.
