SAN FRANCISCO – Gay entertainment company Titan Media has sued a Houston video store over content piracy.
The suit, filed Feb. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses Michael James Deitcher and his retail operation, Q-Video, of making unauthorized copies of at least 17 Titan titles and then renting them to customers.
According to Titan counsel Gill Sperlein, his client became aware of Q-Video’s behavior when one of the store’s customers called Titan to complain about a video he had rented. The customer reported the product was incomplete — it did not contain any DVD extras or a traditional box cover. In fact, according to the customer, the DVD was very apparently a copy, hand-lettered with the movie’s title. The customer told Titan representatives he had complained to the store about receiving an incomplete copy of the movie, but the store was unresponsive.
“We get an enormous number of tips from our customers,” Sperlein said. “They also call us when they feel they’ve been taken advantage of by someone on eBay or other auction sites.”
Sperlein said Titan always stands behind its product in cases where retailers and other sellers neglect to do so.
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and compensation of as much as $150,000 per title, according to Titan Vice President Keith Webb. Based on private investigators’ reports, Webb said the infringement seems willful and blatant.
“They offered their customers a three-ring binder with our DVD covers inside to choose from,” Webb told AVN. “When the customer found a title they wanted, the clerk would pull out a shoebox from under the counter and retrieve handmade and pirated DVDs of our films for rental. The pirated copies they made included our copyright statement and screens on them.”
Sperlein noted the Q-Video suit is one of only a handful Titan has filed against alleged brick-and-mortar copyright infringers. The majority of cases the company pursues involve the Web, and the vast majority of those are settled before going to court, he said. As much as 90 percent of Titan’s potential video-related revenue is lost to piracy, he indicated.
“We estimate from our investigations of the [peer-to-peer] networks that for every copy of a title we sell, 10 more are lost to content thieves,” Sperlein revealed.
“Obviously we want to get reimbursed for all the sales we didn’t get because [Q-Video was] renting unauthorized copies, but we also want to make sure a message gets out to other retailers that we will aggressively pursue this kind of conduct.”
Deitcher could not be reached for comment.
